Every year I start, and I never finish. Maybe this year I can finally complete every challenge! I typically use these as an opportunity to learn a new language, but I may just go with something in...
Every year I start, and I never finish. Maybe this year I can finally complete every challenge! I typically use these as an opportunity to learn a new language, but I may just go with something in familiar with this time around.
As a question for those who do the same thing, what’s your favorite language you started learning with advent of code? Maybe not started learning but using a language you weren’t as familiar with? Last year I did Rust which was super fun!
I use python at work every day but have used advent of code to try new languages like you. A couple years ago I wanted to finally learn a lisp so decided to do advent of code in Clojure and I...
I use python at work every day but have used advent of code to try new languages like you. A couple years ago I wanted to finally learn a lisp so decided to do advent of code in Clojure and I absolutely loved it. Really changed the way I think about programming. Used Clojure again last year and will likely do the puzzles in Clojure this year as well.
I've used it to sharpen one language's skill against another, like one year I did Python and a little Ruby, then Python amd C# I'm planning on bash and powershell this year, because they will...
I've used it to sharpen one language's skill against another, like one year I did Python and a little Ruby, then Python amd C#
I'm planning on bash and powershell this year, because they will provide interesting results. My goal is to use as much of the "standard library" as I can. It's in quotes because I don't think bash builtins are enough, but I won't use programs that, on their own, do it. And Powershell is kinda fun for me.
Advent of Code is a fun yearly set of programming puzzles. Each day a two part puzzle is released at midnight EST each day from Dec 1st (i.e. tonight) through the 25th. It's a ton of fun, the...
Advent of Code is a fun yearly set of programming puzzles. Each day a two part puzzle is released at midnight EST each day from Dec 1st (i.e. tonight) through the 25th.
It's a ton of fun, the puzzles are formulated in such a way that the answer is always a short number or text fragment, which means you can solve them in any language or environment you wish.
For more information about it, the author was recently on a podcast and gave an overview
The subreddit is quite active during the month and is a great community as well.
The leaderboards and competitiveness at my workplace ruin it for me. I totally freeze when people make it into a competition and talk about how fast they solve things. My brain just doesn’t work...
The leaderboards and competitiveness at my workplace ruin it for me. I totally freeze when people make it into a competition and talk about how fast they solve things. My brain just doesn’t work that way and I only enjoy programming if I can make things nice.
The leaderboards were already inapplicable to anyone who didn't live in the right part of the world, so I'm not particularly upset by it. I don't think there's any sort of prize for them either,...
The leaderboards were already inapplicable to anyone who didn't live in the right part of the world, so I'm not particularly upset by it. I don't think there's any sort of prize for them either, right?
Private leaderboards are where it's at though, very fun to compete with friends and colleagues.
I completed 2020 and 2021 back when I was in university, but now that I'm working full time and coding for most of my waking hours, I've been feeling less motivated to do AoC. I didn't finish...
I completed 2020 and 2021 back when I was in university, but now that I'm working full time and coding for most of my waking hours, I've been feeling less motivated to do AoC. I didn't finish 2022, and I don't think I'll join 2023. Maybe one day I'll go back and complete them when I want to learn new languages!
I've never participated, seems fun. The first two puzzles seemed straightforward enough, is this the difficulty they generally are? Or is there some non-obvious catch that i probably missed? E.g....
I've never participated, seems fun. The first two puzzles seemed straightforward enough, is this the difficulty they generally are? Or is there some non-obvious catch that i probably missed? E.g. too large datasets to brute force?
They vary a lot in difficulty over the course of the month. Though, they tend to increase in difficulty as time goes on and the weekends tend to be a bit of a jump up in difficulty. Some of the...
They vary a lot in difficulty over the course of the month. Though, they tend to increase in difficulty as time goes on and the weekends tend to be a bit of a jump up in difficulty. Some of the puzzles are quite notorious for their difficulty over the years.
One way to assess the relative difficulty of the puzzles is to look at https://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/scatterplot/?10800 which shows a scatterplot of the solve times on the leaderboard for each puzzle from each year.
Every year I start, and I never finish. Maybe this year I can finally complete every challenge! I typically use these as an opportunity to learn a new language, but I may just go with something in familiar with this time around.
As a question for those who do the same thing, what’s your favorite language you started learning with advent of code? Maybe not started learning but using a language you weren’t as familiar with? Last year I did Rust which was super fun!
I use python at work every day but have used advent of code to try new languages like you. A couple years ago I wanted to finally learn a lisp so decided to do advent of code in Clojure and I absolutely loved it. Really changed the way I think about programming. Used Clojure again last year and will likely do the puzzles in Clojure this year as well.
I've used it to sharpen one language's skill against another, like one year I did Python and a little Ruby, then Python amd C#
I'm planning on bash and powershell this year, because they will provide interesting results. My goal is to use as much of the "standard library" as I can. It's in quotes because I don't think bash builtins are enough, but I won't use programs that, on their own, do it. And Powershell is kinda fun for me.
Advent of Code is a fun yearly set of programming puzzles. Each day a two part puzzle is released at midnight EST each day from Dec 1st (i.e. tonight) through the 25th.
It's a ton of fun, the puzzles are formulated in such a way that the answer is always a short number or text fragment, which means you can solve them in any language or environment you wish.
For more information about it, the author was recently on a podcast and gave an overview
The subreddit is quite active during the month and is a great community as well.
Sadly this year it will be hard to trust the leaderboards due to GPT-4's performance in solving these kinds of puzzles.
I don't do AoC for the leaderboards though. It's just for me :)
The leaderboards and competitiveness at my workplace ruin it for me. I totally freeze when people make it into a competition and talk about how fast they solve things. My brain just doesn’t work that way and I only enjoy programming if I can make things nice.
The leaderboards were already inapplicable to anyone who didn't live in the right part of the world, so I'm not particularly upset by it. I don't think there's any sort of prize for them either, right?
Private leaderboards are where it's at though, very fun to compete with friends and colleagues.
But they said not to do that this year. Surely that will be enough!
In case you need it, here is your Advent of Code Fuck-Up Assessment Form.
I completed 2020 and 2021 back when I was in university, but now that I'm working full time and coding for most of my waking hours, I've been feeling less motivated to do AoC. I didn't finish 2022, and I don't think I'll join 2023. Maybe one day I'll go back and complete them when I want to learn new languages!
This is my first year doing it, lots of fun! So far I have 4 stars.
I've never participated, seems fun. The first two puzzles seemed straightforward enough, is this the difficulty they generally are? Or is there some non-obvious catch that i probably missed? E.g. too large datasets to brute force?
They vary a lot in difficulty over the course of the month. Though, they tend to increase in difficulty as time goes on and the weekends tend to be a bit of a jump up in difficulty. Some of the puzzles are quite notorious for their difficulty over the years.
One way to assess the relative difficulty of the puzzles is to look at https://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/scatterplot/?10800 which shows a scatterplot of the solve times on the leaderboard for each puzzle from each year.
Thanks!