Supporting multiple programming languages in an online judge

Abstract

Online judges are Web-based platforms where people can solve programming challenges and have their solutions automatically evaluated, in real time. They can be used for teaching, self study, or recruitment purposes. Online judges are a great resource for students in particular, as a means of practicing for algorithmic competitions, exams, and interviews. Numerous computer science departments from institutions around the world try to integrate online judges into their teaching systems, as a solution for automatic assessment. Some have even developed custom judges, and published papers which elaborate the implementation details and review the impact on students’ performance. Unfortunately, none of them clarifies the methods used to achieve language-agnostic judges. The aim of this paper is to fill in this gap, by surveying different approaches of designing a judge which supports multiple programming languages.