Comments on Default Rules: Loopholes
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Default Rules: Loopholes
What sort of loopholes are assumed to be disallowed in any challenge on this site?
One loophole per answer, please. Vote up answers if you want them disallowed, and down otherwise.
Outsourcing the answer to unof …
3y ago
Interpreting the challenge too …
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Using the lack of features in …
3y ago
Multiple URL shorteners in a w …
3y ago
Cat Quines Quines that simp …
3y ago
Optimizing specifically for th …
3y ago
Using inconsistent I/O An e …
3y ago
Using a non-free (beer) langua …
3y ago
Storing information in the pla …
3y ago
Abusing native number types …
3y ago
Empty answers to questions req …
3y ago
Bypassing source restrictions …
3y ago
Sneakily using macros In a …
3y ago
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Optimizing specifically for the given test cases
Applies to "code-speeding" or fastest-code where your program must run as quickly as possible, as well as compression challenges. Obviously, there is a finite amount of cases because we have to measure speed/compression somehow.
It's not in the spirit of the challenge if you optimize your program to work extremely quickly for some cases (E.g. hardcoding the test cases and mapping them to ASCII characters to compress them in one byte), but the program works much worse for other input.
As there is no way around test cases, the general conduct should be that an algorithm's performance on the test cases is representative of its performance on other cases.
Rule of thumb: if you make your algorithm do well on the majority of cases and the test cases happen to be in the majority, that's fine, but not if your algorithm does well on a minority of cases which happens to cover the test cases given.
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