I spent ~42 hours placing musicians randomly on stage for ICFP 2023. I had a good time.
Repository of my final submissions is available here, with a bit of write up:
https://github.com/uguu-org/icfpc2023
But actually my one strategy is summarized above in the opening line -- I placed musicians randomly and hoped for the best. I had optimizations to avoid collisions (via grid placement) and speed up scoring, but most of what I got was probably best attributed to luck. At one point I did try some manual placements, but that didn't work out. Trying to to minimize dislikes was basically futile given the complex attendee relationships.
This wasn't the smoothest contest, there were some server outages and a few problems changed in the middle of the contest. But overall, I greatly appreciate the concise problem and the backward compatible extensions. I ended up somewhere in the middle of the rankings, which is where I strive to be every year.
Since I tried relatively few things this year, I also have relatively few regrets this year. This year's contest was perhaps not as colorful as last year, but I had a good time. Many thanks to the organizers for another great year!
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