

Groom your programming skills and make some money - tundebabzy
http://www.amebopost.com/index.php

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synnik
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
I think you only get the fast code and small code bonuses on working
solutions.

~~~
tadfisher
Right, submitting fast but incorrect+buggy code nets you -20 points.

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sad_bug_killer
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
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!

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omotodun
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.

------
Jun8
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.

~~~
synnik
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.

~~~
Permit
I thought everyone just assumed that the "Nigerian Prince" thing was a front
and it was likely some Eastern European or American behind it all.

I thought the "Nigerian" bit was just to add to the allure or something.

~~~
cpeterso
I am surprised that scammers, Nigerian or otherwise, don't know better than to
still reference Nigeria in their emails.

~~~
gojomo
I also found it surprising that scammers devote so little effort to proper
spelling/punctuation/grammar.

But then it occured to me: maybe errors help filter out attentive respondents,
who have a low chance of completing the whole scam funnel. Those people who
don't notice the errors, or don't consider them a red flag, are better leads.

In the context of a cliche'd Nigerian origin, sure, mentioning Nigeria puts
anyone familiar with the 419 scam formula on guard. But anyone who does reply
is likely a fresh, naive prospect. Ka-ching!

~~~
lurker19
This is perceptive. 419 is like any other advertising: if you think it is
stupid, you are not in the target market, but someone else is.

Who communicates in all caps? The elderly and the mentally ill. Target market.

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bradfa
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
IMHO code size and code speed is already a great and welcome difference in
making this more geared towards programmers than mathematicians.

~~~
eru
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.

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veyron
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)

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buster
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..

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agscala
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.

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nathanb
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.

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

~~~
OwlHuntr
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
"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> 127 questions.

<http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python> 272 questions.

<http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php> 466

~~~
bromagosa
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>

~~~
buster
What about the infamous TIOBE Index?
<http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html> There should be
atleast 3 other languages before ruby then ;)

