elof
4/10/2008 10:33:00 AM
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:25:11 +0900, Alex Shulgin <alex.shulgin@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Apr 4, 6:47 pm, Matthew Moss <matthew.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Quiz #159
>> Guardian of Middle-earth
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> *** Your task this week will be to analyze the combat log and provide
>> some statistics on attack types and creatures fought. ***
>>
>> What kind of statistics? At the least, you should include average
>> damage inflicted per creature, and also average damage per attack
>> type. As an example, your report might look like this:
>
> Pardon me if I appear to be speaking for the others, but to me this is
> one of the distracting `features' of the quiz lately--vague problem
> formulation. Personally, I have just too much of this stuff at
> work. :-)
>
> To me, the appeal of the quiz is that problems are clearly formulated
> and can be solved in reasonable time. Also, put it one way or the
> other--the quiz is like a challenge, and it's always interesting to
> see how your solution compares to what others have come up with. When
> the problem statement is that vague, it's not very likely that anyone
> can reasonably compare his solution with any other one...
>
> Please come back to short, clearly stated quizzies, and I believe most
> of us will participate with great enthusiasm! :-)
I fully agree with what Alex wrote.
On top of that I would like to add that it is crucial for my participation
that I can create a working solution within a couple of hours of starting
to read the challenge.
Any time requirement above two hours greatly diminishes the chance that I
will find the time to finish a solution within the 48 hour timelimit.
Weekends are family time, and time for participating in full day
activities, so ruby quizzes are solved in the late evenings or early
mornings.
The earlier quizzes were attractive because the challenges was so unlike
what I do at work. Parsing simple file formats, doing basic statistics on
their content and trying to figure out "what the customer wants" from
reading vague jargon filled texts is something people pay me to do at work.
Please get the quiz back to the purely artifical simplistic world of CS ;-)
Kristian