{"id":168677,"date":"2015-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/experience-with-constructing-code-hunt-contests\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:43:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:43:30","slug":"experience-with-constructing-code-hunt-contests","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/experience-with-constructing-code-hunt-contests\/","title":{"rendered":"Experience with Constructing Code Hunt Contests"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Puzzles are the basic building block of Code Hunt contests. Creating puzzles and choosing suitable puzzles from the puzzle bank turns out to be a complex operation requiring skill and experience. Constructing a varied and interesting mix of puzzles is based on several factors. The major factor is the difficulty of the puzzle, so that the contest can build up from easier puzzles to more difficult ones. For a successful and fun contest aimed at the expected abilities of the contestants, other factors include the language features needed to solve the puzzle, clues to provide when the puzzle is presented to the player, and test cases to seed into the Code Hunt engine. We describe our experience with contest construction over a period of year and provide guidelines for choosing and making adjustments to the puzzles so that a Code Hunt contest will provide a satisfying trouble-free experience for the contestants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Puzzles are the basic building block of Code Hunt contests. Creating puzzles and choosing suitable puzzles from the puzzle bank turns out to be a complex operation requiring skill and experience. Constructing a varied and interesting mix of puzzles is based on several factors. The major factor is the difficulty of the puzzle, so that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-168677","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"ACM - Association for Computing Machinery","msr_edition":"CHESE 2015 Proceedings of theProc.1st International Workshop on Code Hunt Workshop on Educational Software Engineering (CHESE) pp1-4","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2015-06-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"http:\/\/doi.acm.org\/10.1145\/2792404.2792405","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"204300","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"10.1145\/2792404.2792405","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"chese-paper-V7.pdf","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/chese-paper-V7.pdf","id":204300,"label_id":0},{"type":"doi","title":"10.1145\/2792404.2792405","viewUrl":false,"id":false,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":204300,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/chese-paper-V7.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"R. Nigel Horspool","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"jbishop","user_id":32195,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=jbishop"},{"type":"text","value":"Jonathan de Halleux","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"nikolait","user_id":33102,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=nikolait"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"jhalleux","user_id":32253,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=jhalleux"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[],"msr_project":[171435,171432],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":171435,"post_title":"Code Hunt Community","post_name":"code-hunt-community","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2015-02-14 17:35:20","post_modified":"2020-03-13 16:58:01","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/code-hunt-community\/","post_excerpt":"Code Hunt is a serious educational game. The Code Hunt community is interested in all aspects of research and development around the game, including analysis of the data and development of the platform. Join the Community Get updates. Tell us what you are doing. Sign up here. Announcing CHESE 2016 The 2nd Int\u2019l Code Hunt Workshop on Educational Software Engineering (CHESE 2016) will be held in Seattle, WA, on November 18 in conjunction with FSE&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/171435"}]}},{"ID":171432,"post_title":"Code Hunt","post_name":"code-hunt","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2015-02-04 16:56:12","post_modified":"2020-03-13 16:57:52","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/code-hunt\/","post_excerpt":"Code Hunt is a serious gaming platform for coding contests and practicing programming skills. It is based on the symbolic white box execution engine, Pex. Code Hunt is unique as an online coding platform in that each puzzle is presented with test cases only, no specification. Players have to first work out the pattern and then code the answer. Code Hunt has been used by over 350,000 players as of August 2016. 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