6 ms·

Groom your programming skills and make some money

56 points by tundebabzy 15y ago

veyron 15y ago
Are you normalizing the execution time across languages? For example, when they introduced java, the USACO assumed that java code would run 5 times as slow as equivalent C code (so they would give 1 sec for C and 5 secs for java)
bradfa 15y ago
The "make some money" part is only $1, unless I'm missing something, and currently there's only 1 contest paying. So that's not really going to be incentive to participate. It sounds like Project Euler except code size, code speed, and code submission time matter. Neat idea but how's this significantly different? Project Euler already has a huge number of challenges, a leader board, and a vibrant community. What differentiates amebopost?
- mapleoin 15y ago
  IMHO code size and code speed is already a great and welcome difference in making this more geared towards programmers than mathematicians.
  - eru 15y ago
    Implicitly Project Euler already takes speed into account, but more as a step function not as a fine differentiator between players: Either you get the answer in your lifetime, or you should work towards a faster algorithm.
sad_bug_killer 15y ago
It needs some polishing, there are quite annoying aspects: 1) Mandatory gender and country? Seriously, why? Even e-mail shouldn't be mandatory IMO. Hitting 'Enter' on register/login forms doesn't work as submit, I need to grab the mouse for that (especially annoying on a programming-related site) 2) The "How are programs run" section is completely useless. It's never mentioned how is my code actually invoked, just how it is compiled (when applicable). Let's take C for example, it says 'gcc contestx.c -o contestx.c'. Assuming the argument to '-o' is a typo, this way of compilation includes linking... so it seems I'll need `int main()` to avoid linker errors, but what's to be in `main`, I'm never told. I'm just assuming .c code is just `-c` and `dlopen`ed, but I'm not sure, since 15 minutes after submitting a solution, there's still no feedback. Other nitpickery includes email validation code that's not clickable (okay, this is arguably a good thing) and other stupid memes implemented on the site like asking for the email twice or showing me my local time in the upper-right corner even though all other times on the site are displayed in the server's time zone (e.g. upper-right corner shows 16:45, but the solution I just sent is shown as submitted at 7:45)
- a_m0d 15y ago
  Another interesting thing on the "How are programs run" page is the fact that the programs are apparently run on a Linux system, yet C# files are compiled with Microsoft Visual C# somehow!
yangez 15y ago
It would be nice if Ruby was one of the permitted languages.
- OwlHuntr 15y ago
  Right? They're alienating a very large developer community. I tried to send them an email about ruby support and the typo on their compilers page but their email form doesn't even work. I take this to be way too amateurish and scam-like.
  - parfe 15y ago
    "very large" and "very loud" are two different things. I'm sure you'll take exception with any metric that shows Ruby to be a less common language but http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ruby http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ruby 127 questions. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python 272 questions. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php 466
    - bromagosa 15y ago
      In a website for programming challenges, the market status of a language should be the least regarded metric to decide whether to include it or not. Just check this out: http://projecteuler.net/languages http://projecteuler.net/languages
      - buster 15y ago
        What about the infamous TIOBE Index? http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html There should be atleast 3 other languages before ruby then ;)
    - saintfiends 15y ago
      https://github.com/languages https://github.com/languages http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html I wonder what made Lua take the leap.
Jun8 15y ago
I mean, is this a joke or a viral site or something? The About page explains that it was done by someone called "Sir Pastor Alhaji Babalawo omotodun, Ph.D, MSc, etc...", which sort of brings to mind the Nigerian emails. Couple this with the outregous "also get paid tons of money($1 for winning a special challenge per week)" and P(legit site) goes really low. On a different note, in the longest palindrome problem, the C++ function header doesn't pass (or return) references, which seems to be amateurish.
- ryanhuff 15y ago
  He/she clearly states in the About page that he is from Nigeria.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't want to disparage this guy too much but if I'm from Nigeria, I would bend over back backwards to appear legit. I wouldn't advertise gimmicks like "cheap money" or "Phd., MSc, etc."
- synnik 15y ago
  As someone who works for a Nigerian boss, I get very tired of this kind of racism. I see it frequently. I see people refuse to do business with us because of his origin. I also see people try aggressively to scam us because of his origin, assuming we are naive. But you cannot judge an entire country based on some highly visible scammers from there. Not all Nigerians are trying to scam you. And many Americans ARE trying to scam you. Many Nigerians have left their country, gotten educations, and become highly successful businessmen throughout the world. This specific guy who runs this site? I have no idea. But I will judge him on his own merits, not his country of origin.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    You are absolutely right. Two points, though: (i) As you see from my comments, my judgments were based on the site, the Nigerian thing is an afterthought and (ii) unfortunately, people do have Bayesian prior probabilities, commonly referred to as prejudices. You cannot avoid them and they need to be addressed sometime. What I said was that if I were from Nigeria, I would be work more on my site to erase any spammish connotations. This is probably true of your boss, too.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
synnik 15y ago
So... you can get up to 50 points for the fastest code, and 20 points for the smallest code. And you only lose up to 20 points for code that doesn't work. I think I just detected a wonderful loophole in this scoring method.
- rcthompson 15y ago
  I think you only get the fast code and small code bonuses on working solutions.
  - tadfisher 15y ago
    Right, submitting fast but incorrect+buggy code nets you -20 points.
buster 15y ago
Mh, i don't think giving points based on code size is a good idea, developers really really shouldn't try hard to minimize the code size, this just leads to unreadable garbage. Time to Solve and Speed to Run is ok, imo..
nathanb 15y ago
Hopefully the command line for the C compiler invocation is a typo, because "gcc contestx.c -o contestx.c" will overwrite your source with the executable--which (while catastrophic if done at home with no backup) is probably not a big deal, so long as the relevant code length metrics are extracted beforehand...but still amateurish.
agscala 15y ago
Why not have "time to submit" points work as follows: The problem details aren't shown, only a brief description. User clicks a button "accept challenge", is given problem details, and the server starts recording time until a solution is submitted. Base points on that time difference. Sure, there are loopholes (such as someone else posting the question on another website so you can create a solution before accepting the challenge). I think it's better than checking for new problems and get lucky by noticing a new challenge came out very recently and there are no submissions.
omotodun 15y ago
Good day I created www.amebopost.com. I am extremely sorry if I annoyed anyone. If I had known that I'd be getting this many users, I would have endeavored to make it more professional and thoroughly fix the bugs before making the site online. My original goal was to create an avenue where Nigerian programmers could convene and share programming ideas and code. The About Page was just me being Silly. It will be taken down.

56 points by tundebabzy 15y ago

Are you normalizing the execution time across languages? For example, when they introduced java, the USACO assumed that java code would run 5 times as slow as equivalent C code (so they would give 1 sec for C and 5 secs for java)

bradfa 15y ago

The "make some money" part is only $1, unless I'm missing something, and currently there's only 1 contest paying. So that's not really going to be incentive to participate. It sounds like Project Euler except code size, code speed, and code submission time matter. Neat idea but how's this significantly different? Project Euler already has a huge number of challenges, a leader board, and a vibrant community. What differentiates amebopost?

mapleoin 15y ago
IMHO code size and code speed is already a great and welcome difference in making this more geared towards programmers than mathematicians.
- eru 15y ago
  Implicitly Project Euler already takes speed into account, but more as a step function not as a fine differentiator between players: Either you get the answer in your lifetime, or you should work towards a faster algorithm.

sad_bug_killer 15y ago

It needs some polishing, there are quite annoying aspects: 1) Mandatory gender and country? Seriously, why? Even e-mail shouldn't be mandatory IMO. Hitting 'Enter' on register/login forms doesn't work as submit, I need to grab the mouse for that (especially annoying on a programming-related site) 2) The "How are programs run" section is completely useless. It's never mentioned how is my code actually invoked, just how it is compiled (when applicable). Let's take C for example, it says 'gcc contestx.c -o contestx.c'. Assuming the argument to '-o' is a typo, this way of compilation includes linking... so it seems I'll need `int main()` to avoid linker errors, but what's to be in `main`, I'm never told. I'm just assuming .c code is just `-c` and `dlopen`ed, but I'm not sure, since 15 minutes after submitting a solution, there's still no feedback. Other nitpickery includes email validation code that's not clickable (okay, this is arguably a good thing) and other stupid memes implemented on the site like asking for the email twice or showing me my local time in the upper-right corner even though all other times on the site are displayed in the server's time zone (e.g. upper-right corner shows 16:45, but the solution I just sent is shown as submitted at 7:45)

a_m0d 15y ago
Another interesting thing on the "How are programs run" page is the fact that the programs are apparently run on a Linux system, yet C# files are compiled with Microsoft Visual C# somehow!

yangez 15y ago

It would be nice if Ruby was one of the permitted languages.

OwlHuntr 15y ago
Right? They're alienating a very large developer community. I tried to send them an email about ruby support and the typo on their compilers page but their email form doesn't even work. I take this to be way too amateurish and scam-like.
- parfe 15y ago
  "very large" and "very loud" are two different things. I'm sure you'll take exception with any metric that shows Ruby to be a less common language but http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ruby http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ruby 127 questions. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python 272 questions. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php 466
  - bromagosa 15y ago
    In a website for programming challenges, the market status of a language should be the least regarded metric to decide whether to include it or not. Just check this out: http://projecteuler.net/languages http://projecteuler.net/languages
    - buster 15y ago
      What about the infamous TIOBE Index? http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html There should be atleast 3 other languages before ruby then ;)
  - saintfiends 15y ago
    https://github.com/languages https://github.com/languages http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html I wonder what made Lua take the leap.

Jun8 15y ago

I mean, is this a joke or a viral site or something? The About page explains that it was done by someone called "Sir Pastor Alhaji Babalawo omotodun, Ph.D, MSc, etc...", which sort of brings to mind the Nigerian emails. Couple this with the outregous "also get paid tons of money($1 for winning a special challenge per week)" and P(legit site) goes really low. On a different note, in the longest palindrome problem, the C++ function header doesn't pass (or return) references, which seems to be amateurish.

ryanhuff 15y ago
He/she clearly states in the About page that he is from Nigeria.
- Jun8 15y ago
  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't want to disparage this guy too much but if I'm from Nigeria, I would bend over back backwards to appear legit. I wouldn't advertise gimmicks like "cheap money" or "Phd., MSc, etc."
synnik 15y ago
As someone who works for a Nigerian boss, I get very tired of this kind of racism. I see it frequently. I see people refuse to do business with us because of his origin. I also see people try aggressively to scam us because of his origin, assuming we are naive. But you cannot judge an entire country based on some highly visible scammers from there. Not all Nigerians are trying to scam you. And many Americans ARE trying to scam you. Many Nigerians have left their country, gotten educations, and become highly successful businessmen throughout the world. This specific guy who runs this site? I have no idea. But I will judge him on his own merits, not his country of origin.
- Jun8 15y ago
  You are absolutely right. Two points, though: (i) As you see from my comments, my judgments were based on the site, the Nigerian thing is an afterthought and (ii) unfortunately, people do have Bayesian prior probabilities, commonly referred to as prejudices. You cannot avoid them and they need to be addressed sometime. What I said was that if I were from Nigeria, I would be work more on my site to erase any spammish connotations. This is probably true of your boss, too.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

synnik 15y ago

So... you can get up to 50 points for the fastest code, and 20 points for the smallest code. And you only lose up to 20 points for code that doesn't work. I think I just detected a wonderful loophole in this scoring method.

rcthompson 15y ago
I think you only get the fast code and small code bonuses on working solutions.
- tadfisher 15y ago
  Right, submitting fast but incorrect+buggy code nets you -20 points.

buster 15y ago

Mh, i don't think giving points based on code size is a good idea, developers really really shouldn't try hard to minimize the code size, this just leads to unreadable garbage. Time to Solve and Speed to Run is ok, imo..

nathanb 15y ago

Hopefully the command line for the C compiler invocation is a typo, because "gcc contestx.c -o contestx.c" will overwrite your source with the executable--which (while catastrophic if done at home with no backup) is probably not a big deal, so long as the relevant code length metrics are extracted beforehand...but still amateurish.

agscala 15y ago

Why not have "time to submit" points work as follows: The problem details aren't shown, only a brief description. User clicks a button "accept challenge", is given problem details, and the server starts recording time until a solution is submitted. Base points on that time difference. Sure, there are loopholes (such as someone else posting the question on another website so you can create a solution before accepting the challenge). I think it's better than checking for new problems and get lucky by noticing a new challenge came out very recently and there are no submissions.

omotodun 15y ago

Good day I created www.amebopost.com. I am extremely sorry if I annoyed anyone. If I had known that I'd be getting this many users, I would have endeavored to make it more professional and thoroughly fix the bugs before making the site online. My original goal was to create an avenue where Nigerian programmers could convene and share programming ideas and code. The About Page was just me being Silly. It will be taken down.