Jul 2023
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Jul 2023
Jul 2023
nguyen_dev
Jul '23
1

For example, https://www.spoj.com/submit/LOSTNSURVIVED/4

I thought that any problem only cares the input and output files.
And how the code is run by which language is not relevant to any specific problem.

So, I really wonder why spoj cannot enable all its supported languages for all problems.

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    Jul '23

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    Jul '23
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simes
Jul '23

The problem setter chooses which languages to make available to solvers, and also whether any new languages added later will be allowed.

In this case, Umang Malhotra either chose to disallow Kotlin, or the Kotlin language support was added to SPOJ after this problem was published, and Umang Malhotra chose not to allow solvers to use new languages.

nguyen_dev
Jul '23

hm, what is the purpose of letting problem setter to disallow a language?
I mean, problem setter shouldn’t have the right to disallow a language, right?
As I wrote, language is just a black box, problem setter shouldn’t know about which language is running because it’s irrelevant to his task:

  • Describing the problem
  • Giving input texts
  • Giving output texts

Everything else should be done by the platform automatically.

simes
Jul '23

I’m only a user, not a designer or admin of SPOJ, so I can’t really answer as to why something is the way it is.

But one example comes to mind - when a problem requires big numbers, but the problem setter wants to exclude those languages with built-in big number support.