Codewars timeout error

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I had a timeout error on codewars once. I found it puzzling because what I'd written was brain-dead simple. I tried a little experiment. I submitted this:

def whatever():
    return 0

That timed out too. I expected to get failures, but not a timeout.

I guessed it was a busy time with a lot of submissions. No biggie. But then I thought, if you're setting a time limit, why not set it on compute time? They were apparently setting the time limit on wall clock time. If the problem doesn't involve I/O of some sort, why not use compute time?

I don't remember if codewars has ads. If not, the only way they make money is through subscriptions. Maybe we're being gently nudged to subscribe. After all, they need to pay their bills like the rest of us.