There should be a round in Code Jam which asks people to write the slowest possi...

hueving · on March 11, 2015

How do you eliminate stuff that is slow just for the sake of being slow? For example, a find_in_list function that iterates through the list N! times to 'protect against cosmic rays' or something along those lines.

Ygg2 · on March 11, 2015

By requiring to terminate and return a result?

minikomi · on March 11, 2015

Of course. Just test to see if the program terminates or not.

Ygg2 · on March 11, 2015

While halting problem can't be solved, you can solve the problem by saying all programs must terminate within 20min and program must scale with input length.

And/Or you can forbid sleep and similar nop functions.

And/Or you can sit down and analyze the code.

Truth be told, it makes for a very boring competition, but a very useful exercise.

anirudh24seven · on March 11, 2015

How will a code-checking engine get past infinite loops?

while(earth_has_not_blown_up) {}

"Hey, I need the earth to blow up to solve this problem!"

tmmm · on March 11, 2015

you'll never get the answer. when earth blows up, you lose electricity

wz1000 · on March 11, 2015

Just before the electricity goes, an electromagnetic disturbance or a shockwave causes the CPU to skip a few instructions, printing out the answer.

yodsanklai · on March 11, 2015

It reminds of an interview question. What is the slowest program (that still terminates) it is possible to write, and how would you do it?

one-more-minute · on March 11, 2015

    sleep(10000)
    return fizzbuzz(10)

jskonhovd · on March 11, 2015

This reminds me of the busy beaver problem.

yen223 · on March 11, 2015

  while True:
        continue

  return solve(x)