In the Czech version of the Bebras Challenge, programming tasks in which a programming code is built from blocks are used alongside traditional contest tasks. This paper deals with the comparison of these programming tasks with other informatics tasks in terms of the workload of their solvers. Programming tasks can strongly attract the contestants’ attention. The aim of the paper is to find out to what extent pupils pay attention to programming tasks at the expense of other tasks and how this differs for successful and unsuccessful contestants. We prepared national round tests in which there were typically two programming tasks and ten other tasks in each age category. We conducted quantitative research with a total of 184,949 respondents from the 2023 contest. We discovered that pupils spend more time on programming tasks than on the other tasks. When designing tests that include programming tasks, it is necessary to take this into account, and thus either limit the number of tasks, increase the test time, or include less challenging tasks. Our research on programming tasks revealed that, for most age categories, successful pupils ran different versions of their solution fewer times than unsuccessful ones. We also discovered that successful solvers spent more time on the task than unsuccessful solvers. The youngest pupils were the outliers in these findings. Our paper contributes to the understanding of the extent to which it is a good idea to include programming tasks in informatics contests like the Bebras Challenge.