If AnalystBot would play against himself, the program would fail with a java.lang.StackOverflowError as both opponents use their enemies bids to calculate their own bids.

@ovs didn't you read the comment?

Attempting to sabotage your opponent is explicitly allowed. How about attempting to sabotage the auction runner?

@PeterCooperJr. How do you plan to do that?

@RamenChef No specific plans yet, but I wanted to know before looking into some possibilities. Some sort of messing with the ClassLoader or SecurityManager before the auction runner does, or pausing/interrupting the main thread from some other thread within my bidder, or that sort of thing. No idea if any of that would actually work, I just didn't know if that sort of thing was (1) the point of the challenge, or (2) entirely against the spirit of the challenge.

@RamenChef May a bot that causes the while-loop to loop infinite without giving an exception or error (except maybe OutOfMemoryError) compete, or does that fall under the "All methods should return in 500ms or less." rule? :) return Integer.MAX_VALUE; will always be larger than the opponent's bod, but won't break at next < bid1 + 5 because Integer.MAX_VALUE + 5 == Integer.MIN_VALUE + 4 (both -2147483644). The loop only breaks if the opponent also bids more than 10000.

I generally consider the runner to not be part of the challenge; simply an implementation of the spec, which is why I'm not going to allow sabotaging the runner.

New guy question - When and where will the results be posted?

How are you combining scores of different auctions? Why are you only playing 2 games against each other?

score should be private

@NathanMerrill 1) They're added together. 2) score can't be private because then the runner can't access it. 3) "Both bots bid over $100. If this happens, both bots pay $100, and neither bot gets the dollar."

@RamenChef 1). That needs to be in your spec. 2). Store the score outside of the player then (in a Map). Right now, players can modify it themselves. 3). Oh, I understand. I saw 10000, and assumed that was 10,000 dollars :)

@NathanMerrill Players cannot modify those scores because score is package-protected.

Are they not allowed to be in the same package?

@NathanMerrill correct.

Can you specify that then? I don't see it in your code anywhere either.

can you consider randomizing class names to prevent things like the insider trading bot?

@Mendeleev Unfortunately, class names can't be changed at runtime.

@RamenChef Not at runtime, but before the testcases are run, compile the classes with random names

this.tainted = instances++ != 0; Since this.instances is initialized to 0, isn't it tainted even if there is only 1, since 1 != 0?

@NoOneIsHere var++ returns the value, then increments.

@NathanMerrill really? I thought that was ++var. TIL

Is sabotaging like Darth Vader does legit? It seems like a jerk move, but idk.

I think this challenge itself is a dollar bill auction - as @NathanMerrill mentioned, you have to One-Up the existing answers. The question is, how much is an upvote worth?

I think the method nextBid is a bit of a confusing term for what it does. It's more of a raise / raiseTotalBid (to use Poker terms).

@NoOneIsHere Darth Vader doesn't work.

@KevinCruijssen It's kinda too late to be changing the spec

For those looking to beat all of those reflection bots: Read your stack trace.

"Bids go up in increments of 5¢". You don't have anything in your code to validate this, though.. LuckyDiceBot for example bids in increments of 2-12 randomly..

@NathanMerrill or use static variables.

@KevinCruijssen lines 105 and 132.

@RamenChef that isn't reliable. You don't know who is reading you. The stack trace gives you that.

@NathanMerrill What do you mean by "who is reading you"? And how would the stack trace help?

@RamenChef But what if a bot starts with 11? next = 11 and bid = 0, so next < bid + 5 will return false, even though it's an invalid bid of 11.

@NathanMerrill "For those looking to beat all of those reflection bots: Read your stack trace." But you already know your opponent in the newAuction method, so why would I check what my opponent is in the stack trace when I already know?

So is Darth Vader valid or not? I can't quite tell from the comments and I don't know Java

@KevinCruijssen Why should that be an invalid bid?

@DJMcMayhem it's technically valid, but it doesn't work as it was probably intended. (It gets mysterious SecurityExceptions)

So it simply has a score of 0?

Yes.

@RamenChef Your functions can be called at any time, by any other bot

which means that if I read my stack trace I know who is calling my functions

so, I can do different stuff based on my stack traces

the class passed into you is unreliable: It can be anything because you can't trust the source

@RamenChef Hmm ok. So you must bid at least 5 higher, not in increments of 5?

@RamenChef have you ran the controller with the bots?

@KevinCruijssen correct.

typically, it's rather useful to post scores, errors, etc while the challenge is going

@NathanMerrill Not yet.

I was going to do that tonight.

ok. Your post said you were going to do it on the 24th, and I wanted to make sure that wasn't the first time you will run it

Apparently when I test the runner with the example bots, GreedyBidder is on top.