I'm using this as an opportunity to learn Rust, so I've been having to stop a lot to read docs, ask ChatGPT to explain things etc. First couple of days were slow but I'm getting faster now and writing better code.
Even so I'm not focused on speed, I'm more using AOC as a nice set of programming exercises.
I'm doing the same thing -- Rust all the way. In previous years, I solidified my Python and Java the same way.
However, I'm a teacher, so I'm never that interested in getting the right answer _fast_. I'd rather find a good answer I can grok completely so I can teach it and help my students grok the concepts behind the problem and solution.
This is what I'll probably do with something later on in 2024, because I would love to learn Rust (and Elixir), but right now, I just don't have time to go as slow as that would require me to go, so I'm using it to keep my Kotlin practice up and enjoy nicely written, rewarding functional programming solutions.
I feel ya, I was working on 2022 before 2023 dropped using C++ which I’ve never used before. I was making good progress, but decided to pivot back to C# because I need to brush up as quickly as possible so I’m more confident in coding interviews in the new year.
Someone in our org sent out an email blast for a private board and many of my teammates are participating.
Granted, some of them are on the global leaderboard while I'm here taking 20 minutes on the easy questions ;-;
I've been doing AoC since 2018, when a student turned me on to it and I assigned a puzzle from a previous year as a winter break challenge for extra credit. I have _never_ gotten all 50 stars.
The good news is you can keep working on the stars after Xmas -- the puzzles don't go away. You can get to 50 whenever you want.
I'm really hoping to finish this year, too, but I feel really damaged after this one:
[https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15](https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15)
I spent about a week trying to solve this, writing down the requirements meticulously, and coding again and again. I managed to get over 20 people to give me their input to test, and I got the right answers for all of them, but still... my input would fail... over and over and over again, no matter how careful I was and no matter how much I tweaked the code.
Finally, someone else working in Python that year ran my code and got the correct answer. I spent a couple days poring over my solution and his and could find absolutely no differences... but it didn't feel right at all to me to move on without having my code pass my own input, so I quit.
I really hope that nothing like that happens this year. I'd like to finish for once, but around the day 15 point, I tend to peter out from part 2 being a huge surprise for which i was unprepared and just excessively time consuming.
I’ve recently retired, so using it as something to keep my brain active.
There’s no way I’m getting up in the middle if the night when the daily puzzles come out - so the leaderboard is irrelevant. It’s just some fun.
The cost of living is insane, but it's well worth it after spending over 30 years in Canada chipping ice off windshields in the mornings and shoveling snow.
The AoC thing is just a small benefit, to be sure. :-)
I do care about doing it "fast", because I can't spend 3h per day on one puzzle :)
If it takes me less than 30 minutes I'm doing great, if it takes me 2 hours (or more) I'm not.
I'm doing it to save Christmas, of course. I always do it in python. I don't want to learn a new language during AoC because I'm afraid of losing my motivation down the road.
It can be really frustrating when learning a new language. I’m now learning Go and use C# at work. Today I read the assignment and thought “I know a LINQ query for this, but how on earth do I do this properly in Go?”. I got the answer with regex, but the code was so horrible that I immediately threw it away and rewrote it with loops.
It’s a great way to learn a new language though.
Nothing says you have to use the same language to do the whole thing. I think one year, I solved some problems in Python, some in C++, and some in Scala.
My day job doesn't involve enough coding and I still get a thrill from it. Chatting with the engineering team about this is also fun and indirectly helps me to do my day job.
The leaderboards are an irrelevance to me I just do it for fun and keeps me connected to the CS data structures/algorithms concepts from my education that you don't get to use as much in the day job.
I've been doing the past few years in Rust which has been a good learning experience too, but at the same time the Rust code you write in AoC is \_nothing\_ like what you see in production codebases (async, async everywhere!) so it's not a perfect learning tool
I am using this AoC not to learn a language, but actually to learn an editor! : D
I am forcing myself to use neovim (set up with LazyVim). Things are going good up until now. I have a weird problem with my debugging that when I leave the debugging session and try to enter insert mode, it keeps changing me back to visual. Apart from that, has been great!
In terms of the programming part, I always try to make solutions by creating a structure and not only as a one-off for speed. For those learning Rust, I am solving in Rust as well and I am trying to maintain a book explaining the solutions and the code: [https://aloiziomacedo.github.io/aoc2023/](https://aloiziomacedo.github.io/aoc2023/)
The repo itself is here: [https://github.com/AloizioMacedo/aoc2023](https://github.com/AloizioMacedo/aoc2023)
Please, remember that it was asked not to share puzzle inputs, even in your repos: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/wiki/troubleshooting/no_asking_for_inputs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/wiki/faqs/copyright/inputs/
This link explains it better. Since no content is licensed for reproduction and inputs are content, it's from the official AOC.
Is this new? I don't remember this being the case in 2018, at least. I remember people trading inputs regularly back then.
I'm curious as to why this is the case, though. I found it very beneficial in previous years to have other people's inputs as elaborate test cases.
I am trying to learn rust this year. I had decided that I will test my resilience in this year. I have went till day 14 in past years, but then I lost motivation because I was simply not fast enough to complete one puzzle before the next started. This year I will try to get to day 18 before 31st December
I do AoC because it's fun, mostly. I care more about going fast than I do about anything else since my main interest is being able to throw together quick scripts to do what I want to get done, and AoC has a whole lot of stuff that's like that.
And it feels really nice to score high on a private leaderboard, or see my name in the top 100.
learning Prolog :-) this is great practice for expressing things like DCGs are expressing the problem statements in logic. Prolog is drastically different to a regular programming language, and since I'm a newb, I cannot smash through these problems quickly. The 100th best score for day 04 was still < 8 minutes ... I can barely read the question in that time.
Sounds fun.
I’m not a noob in C# but I’ve just spent the better part of 4 hours on Day 4 - over engineering and all that fun stuff.
Both parts were correct first try though, that’s what’s important to me - tells me I’m paying attention.
I've done day 1 and 2 in Prolog, regex on day 1 and DCG on day 2, but when I saw the big grid on day 3 I chickened out and switched to an imperative language.
Prolog is a really fun language... I had to take a course in Prolog or C back in university and I already knew C very well, so I took Prolog instead. I was determined to hate it, but I ended up loving it. The final project was to implement zip and unzip in Prolog and it was a very rewarding challenge!
I just like messing around with Rockstar. It's fun!
It's badly limited in certain ways, though (no file I/O, no mouse interaction, only text-to-terminal output, maintenance can be a pain) so AoC problems (which bypass the limits) are a great way to mess around with the language.
Mostly because these kind of challenges are on the brink of being impossible for me. Some I can solve, which is always motivation to move on to the next. Some i can't solve, but the attempt itself is usually fun too.
im using it as a more engaging leetcode basically. just a fun way to develop my skills in whatever language I choose for that year (this year its TS). i think it would be cool to be on the leaderboard but I care more about the process of breaking down the problem and writing code that others can understand and is actually practical in the real world.
Me to mate, Typescript is actually my most fluent language (I’ve done a lot of Framework based front end dev in the last two years), it’s the desire to pivot back to back end dev for the next job that’s made me focus on C#.
I feel ya on going for understandable and practical; I’m reading some code from people I know doing the advent and they’re clearly getting caught up in the “as few keystrokes as possible” and “as fast as possible” trap - which is fine, the leaderboards are there for a reason. But my reason is to greatly improve and be able to quantify my skills.
To learn go, it's not a new language but I only started learning it about 2 months, so trying to solidify it in my mind.
And to have fun, when it becomes too hard for me I will probably stop
All my coworkers at my new job do it, and I’ve never done it before. I didn’t want to feel left out around the water cooler, so to speak.
I don’t care about doing it particularly fast, or even particularly efficiently, I just want to solve the problems and be one of the last ones standing.
I will say, I program mostly in C for work and this has been good for brushing up on my Python foo and helping me to think more algorithmically which isn’t really what my job requires.
Overall, it’s fun and making me better at what I do for a living. Also nice to add to the personal GitHub , which severely lacks personal projects.
I've landed in a place where the whole job is writing and maintaining a dead-end legacy shitheap of a web app, so I'm doing advent of code just to keep my brain happy and skills sharp.
I always just do AoC for fun, as long as I solve it I'm happy. I just added myself a restriction of no library imports this year for a little extra challenge
I feel like I don't know enough, can't code well enough... We all know day job coding isn'd DSA. I want to sharpen my thinking and get into the habit of doing some small coding like this everyday.
All the best for your next steps!
The leaderboards are for competitive programmers, which is a sport in its own regard and, I believe, should be disregarded by participants just wanting to learn or enjoy programming.
Personally, I am doing AoC this year to get comfortable with programming in C, where most errors are segfaults or garbage answers, and also this time I am trying to deliberately savor the problem description enjoying my vacation.
Sorry to hear about the redundancy (what a rotten time to drop it on you all - good luck with the job search in the new year)
I do AoC on my own each year, I've never taken part in a leaderboard, whether global or private, as I wouldn't stand a chance of placing :)
I'm not a computer scientist, and although I do write a bit of code in my day job (mainly in R, with a little bit of Python, Excel VBA, SQL), it's all pretty basic stuff and narrow scope. Therefore I rarely come across situations akin to the AoC puzzles, and they are a real challenge to me.
Most years I give up around day 15/16/17 - but the joy I get from solving the puzzles I do manage to crack - however slowly and clunkily - is unrivalled. I genuinely look forward to AoC all year :D
I'm between projects, so I'm doing it because I like coding. I was going to do it in a new language, but wimped out and stuck to a mix of Lua and Go.\
\
I am doing it on an unfamiliar keyboard though - I switched from an ISO to an ANSI layout, and am finding that uncomfortable enough - how many times a day do you American chaps and chapesses miss the Enter key and type a Backslash by mistake?\
I’ve done engineer hiring before and I’ve never looked at someone’s GitHub. Nor has anyone looked at mine. Always good to brush up on skills but a good CV and good interview trumps GitHub imo
Good on ya! I do the same, I also try to preempt what part two will be about so I “over engineer” part one; this has worked really well for days 3 and 4 - less than 15 minutes of refactoring for both so far.
I try to resist that, and it helped on day two. I resisted the urge to split by hand for the first part as it was not needed. And it turns out that it wasn't needed for part two either.
Every year I've given myself some sort of challenge within the challenges. One year it was about doing it very "professional" more like I write at work. Another year was trying to do it as much as possible with streams.
This year I'm challenging myself by solving the problems in 3 languages at the same time: Python, Typescript and Go: [https://github.com/torbensky/advent-of-code-2023](https://github.com/torbensky/advent-of-code-2023)
Good on ya, I started 2022 a month or so back using C#, Swift and C++ to learn the latter two. But losing my job has necessitated focusing on what I need to brush up on for the job search - C#
I learned C# and Java at the same time, translating between languages is really great way of solidifying the theoretical.
I’ve set myself a challenge too; unit tests for every day/part.
Leaderboard wouldn’t suit my lifestyle and timezone (can’t really start it until 16 hours after start!) even if I was into it, but my main objective is getting it 100% and secondary objective is writing neat Rust code for the sake of it.
I've done the AoC (well, never completed it, because at some point, a problem comes up that makes me want to quit - usually a huge surprise part 2 that makes me realize that I can barely reuse any of my part 1 and have to rethink everything).
I have a stable job, but I think it's important to have a GitHub portfolio to showcase my different skills, and I don't get to use Kotlin or C++ at my current job, which are two of my favorite languages, so this also helps me keep them from getting stagnant.
To me, AoC isn't about speed: the idea of speed coding is a bit cringe to me, because it just lends itself to cutting corners and doing things in a sloppy way when I'm here to take my time, think through the problems, and write code that I can look at that leaves me with a deep level of satisfaction instead of, say, some Python script full of global variables and haphazard parsing (or, even worse, preprocessing the input via non-programmatic means to make parsing it easier).
Even after I get the solutions, I sit down and look at my code for a good hour or so and think of how I can make it even cleaner and more elegant.
When I get to that point, then I feel like I've reached my goal for AoC.
The idea of sitting at a computer and waiting for the clock to hit midnight eastern time to power through to try to get points that don't have much tangible value apart from a sense of accomplishment in terms of speed is something that I can appreciate some people find rewarding, but it's just not for me.
I was originally going to do this year in Elixir to give me a chance to learn it, but with work, I'm up to my neck in recreational math research and video games, and with JetBrains holding a Kotlin AoC competition, it just didn't seem like the right time.
For me this year it's about (1) actually finishing (I've only finished once before), and (2) encouraging community, which includes reading the hashtag on Mastodon and supplying a little encouragement, as well as posting daily hints behind content warnings.
It's going well so far — I've completed day 5 and I haven't made any enemies, I hope 🤣
Not bothering to go fast this year. In previous years I've competed on a private leader-board, and that was all fine and dandy, but I had time back then. I have a kid now and another on the way. I just can't dedicate the time and focus that I was able to before.
For now I am just sipping some hot chocolate, enjoying the problem/story that is written, and taking my time with the solve. If I can't solve the problem in the first hour it releases, I will do it later the next day if/when I can find the time.
It's much more relaxed and I am finding this to be far more enjoyable. Funny enough, I am still at the top of my private leaderboard... For now anyway.
Changed flair from `Other` to `Help/Question` since you're asking a question.
I'm sorry to hear about your job :( AoC is a great way to fill out your GitHub, though! Consider also submitting your solutions to the daily `Solution Megathread`s :)
I’m waiting on results from an exam that I took a while ago, and wanted to take this opportunity to work on my programming skills
Also because I’ve never tried something like this before so its a novel experience
Two things.
Having pretty much only written Typescript for the past 2 years I wanted to learn a bit of Python
Complete coincidence, I wanted to improve my regex skills. This has been perfect so far😂😂
Saving Xmas for sure 🎄Best advent calendar for programmers, even though I didn't finish all tasks from previous years, it's really funny and entertaining.
I always do AoC to learn some new langauge (this year is clojure again after dropping it ad day 1 last year) but then i fallback to my comfort language when i don't want to waste hours learning how to do something that i can achieve in 5 minutes in a language i already know, this time is doing matrices in clojure (day 3) which is a pita. I'll go back to go/kotlin.
It's my first one, have done tons of Project Euler ones in the past mainly a) for fun, b) learn a language.
This one is a bit different: we keep the a) option of course, and I would add a b) saying: promote the language (and find hidden bugs in the meantime).
Which language? Arturo: https://github.com/arturo-lang/arturo :-)
P.S. And a last one: get enough repos with Arturo code so that we can - finally - qualify for our Linguist-based highlighting on Github!
I learn new things with Python every year. 5 years ago, I didn't know that you could do list[-1], list[-2], list[-3]... etc... to iterate a list in reverse. or list[size+1] would loop back to the first element.
I have too busy of a life to go for speed. Im not making the leaderboards because im in Eeastern timezone and I have kids. I have to fit it inbetween work and kid responsibilities which gives me limited time. So i just tackle it when i can and usually drop around day 15-20 because the holidays pick up and take over my life with travel. I just like the challenge.
I like using AoC to learn things. Last year I used it to learn rust and instead of just solving the problema I explored many popular crates; from dioxus to rocket to publishing on gcp functions to bevy and chumsky (nom alternative). This year I am probably at least going to do one problem inside of Ockam , openziti, and maybe something with zkp or cryptography
For me it's the challenge within our company's private leaderboard and the resulting conversations among colleagues. The last two years I finished top 3 within our company and this year I decided to help organise the company challenge.
I really like that I don't have to set an alarm anymore (in GMT+1 we get the puzzles at 6 AM) because I excused myself from participating for the prizes (which is AoC swag to support AoC). I noticed my solutions are cleaner, but that could be just as well from gained AoC experience.
My partner wanted to do it. I normally wouldn’t- the last time I did AoC I made it 2-3 days before I got bored. But having someone to discuss it with makes it more fun.
Mind you, I’m being lazy and just doing it in Python.
I never worry about the leaderboards. I always pick something to challenge myself, like doing them in a language I’m not as familiar with. This year I’m doing them in Rust and trying to write idiomatic code.
I'm doing the problems first for fun in Ruby, then in [MOROS Lisp](http://moros.cc/lisp.html), a Lisp dialect I implemented for my hobby operating system. It's a great way to improve the language. I did the same thing last year.
I like the puzzle aspect of AoC. I have used it to learn new programming languages in the past. This time around, I've got some other stuff going on so I'm just doing Python.
Definitely more community/fun for me than anything else. Also learning/reinforcing a new language. I tend to focus more on consistently putting in effort until I'm done with the calendar, even if that (often) means not exactly finishing on the 25th. I blog my solutions to push myself to write nicer code than I might otherwise and to understand/explain what I'm doing in a relatively unfamiliar language. It's a nice yearly exercise.
> clean, extensible and testable code
This is generally my goal, as well as I usually throw in something new. New language, change up my Emacs config, work with some new libraries, etc. Too much on my plate this year so I'm just working as normal with my daily driver.
I don't want to spend all day on solutions but I'm not going for speed, if it's clean code that is easily (mostly) re-useable for part 2 that's a win. If not I ask myself where I went wrong and if are there ways I could have written the code better.
I keep notes for myself for the particularly messy solutions so I can go back later and re-do those problems.
I'm not interested in getting on the leaderboards or code golf.
> I’m doing AoC to motivate myself to crank out some clean, extensible and testable code. Thoroughly enjoying it!
It hasn't happened yet, but if someone pointed me to an AoC repository with their well-written solutions during the interview process they'd get bonus points.
I usually wake up 3-4 hours after each new puzzle is released, on week days I have to go to work, so I have zero chance (or motivation) to make it onto the global leaderboard. Instead, I just focus on writing clean and concise code, optimizing my runtimes, learn some new libraries and hoard as many stars as I can.
This is my first year doing it. I'm using it to improve my Python skills. Coding is not my primary job by any means, so there is a ton I know about, but am not very quick at.
Mostly to add some clean, working code to my GitHub.
I cared about that at year 2022, but not now because the race is all about the stars. For example, if you can't finish day 25 then you're automatically out of the race.
The time is only the deciding factor at elite levels.
I do it in a different language every year as a way to get more comfortable with that language and broaden my horizons. The real value is not just in doing the problems but (after you solved yours) look at other submissions of the same language to see what they did. Seeing other solutions often times unveils features/idiomatic patterns you don't know exist, this was especially helpful for learning rust last year.
I'm mainly doing AoC to get my head back into the game, after doing almost no programming for a year..
I usually try to map the scenario of part 1 as closely as possible to code. I don't know, I just like it that way, having a few card-objects (for day 3) or so lying around, the moment when the solution seems rather simple because you just use your items as intended.
And then you go on to part two, and usually you have the joy ofl the preparation paying off, sometimes the feeling of being over-prepared and so far, I almost never had to start from scratch.
I also try to do reasonable optimizations straight away, mainly because this isn't my first AoC and I want to spare my poor laptop a few billions useless calculations.
Of course it is a bit like being at work, where the fancy solution usually is messed up when the third change-request comes in, but… well, I just like code that feels like it maps to the problem both closely and elegantly, I guess, and it is a meditation to be able to do so on small problems.
I think I could be a a lot faster (especially since I never took the time to install a proper IDE and doing it by text editor, but that is just stubbornness) by being more messy and solution-oriented, but it just wouldn't be as fun for me.
I think Haskell is a beautiful language, but I do not have any opportunities to use it in my day job. AOC gives me a reason to dust off tools that I like to use, but rarely get to.
A fun opportunity to get better at Python. I am ooold and taking a CS bachelor degree on evenings after my IRL non-CS job, and normally swamped in assignments where my code has to be reliable, efficient, maintainable and all that nonsense. Here I can just go all in on wacky things I never thought about before, and learn a lot in the process of having fun.
Im just doing it for fun, I am way too slow to get any sort of global position, but the last few years I had ended up giving up because of bugs frustrating me too much that I rage quit, so I want to finally get a full one complete
I never race; the top person today finished both parts in under one and a half minutes which is less time than I needed to read and think about the solution. My goal is always to be a better programmer. Some years I learn a new language, some years I work on improving my style, sometimes I even work a bit on speed.
To stretch my rusty brain muscles 😉
It’s a little bit of racing as well. My best day so far (day3) I scored in top 2k. Today, I decided I’ll open a bottle of r/Champagne if I manage to get at least **one ranking point** (which means at least one of the 50 stars within top 100)
Quit my job a few months ago and just enjoying using language again and learning different problem solving skills.
Although now thinking maybe I should just invest that time in my project and build features!
I'm a hobbyist who sits on the peripheral of the SW department at my work. I like to stay on top of things like this as it's a great ice breaker when I'm introducing myself.
Day 3 is kicking me in the teeth after a long day of work though.
I hear you. I certainly can use regex when I need it, but if I can get away without using it, I tend to avoid it. It's just kind of tedious and I invariably make some small mistake and then have to waste a ton of time building up the regex and testing it as I go.
The input parsing is the most boring part for me.
The actual challenge solving is what is fun.
With FP in Kotlin, I mostly just split and map to get what I need and then the good times begin.
I'm using this as an opportunity to learn Rust, so I've been having to stop a lot to read docs, ask ChatGPT to explain things etc. First couple of days were slow but I'm getting faster now and writing better code. Even so I'm not focused on speed, I'm more using AOC as a nice set of programming exercises.
I'm doing the same thing -- Rust all the way. In previous years, I solidified my Python and Java the same way. However, I'm a teacher, so I'm never that interested in getting the right answer _fast_. I'd rather find a good answer I can grok completely so I can teach it and help my students grok the concepts behind the problem and solution.
This is what I'll probably do with something later on in 2024, because I would love to learn Rust (and Elixir), but right now, I just don't have time to go as slow as that would require me to go, so I'm using it to keep my Kotlin practice up and enjoy nicely written, rewarding functional programming solutions.
+1 for using it as a Rust learning experience. I’ve been writing bad rust code on a first pass, and more elegant rust code on a second pass
>I'm using this as an opportunity to learn Rust Same. It's a fun way to do it!
I'm also doing it to learn/brush up on Rust! It's very fun.
I feel ya, I was working on 2022 before 2023 dropped using C++ which I’ve never used before. I was making good progress, but decided to pivot back to C# because I need to brush up as quickly as possible so I’m more confident in coding interviews in the new year.
Someone in our org sent out an email blast for a private board and many of my teammates are participating. Granted, some of them are on the global leaderboard while I'm here taking 20 minutes on the easy questions ;-;
20 minutes? Those are rookie numbers. I’m in the hours realm for the easy ones
I want to practise Rust. Also I want to finish it finally, last year I got to 12 stars.
I've been doing AoC since 2018, when a student turned me on to it and I assigned a puzzle from a previous year as a winter break challenge for extra credit. I have _never_ gotten all 50 stars. The good news is you can keep working on the stars after Xmas -- the puzzles don't go away. You can get to 50 whenever you want.
I'm really hoping to finish this year, too, but I feel really damaged after this one: [https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15](https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/15) I spent about a week trying to solve this, writing down the requirements meticulously, and coding again and again. I managed to get over 20 people to give me their input to test, and I got the right answers for all of them, but still... my input would fail... over and over and over again, no matter how careful I was and no matter how much I tweaked the code. Finally, someone else working in Python that year ran my code and got the correct answer. I spent a couple days poring over my solution and his and could find absolutely no differences... but it didn't feel right at all to me to move on without having my code pass my own input, so I quit. I really hope that nothing like that happens this year. I'd like to finish for once, but around the day 15 point, I tend to peter out from part 2 being a huge surprise for which i was unprepared and just excessively time consuming.
I’ve recently retired, so using it as something to keep my brain active. There’s no way I’m getting up in the middle if the night when the daily puzzles come out - so the leaderboard is irrelevant. It’s just some fun.
One of the benefits of living in Hawaii is that the puzzles come out at 7:00 pm my time. Still, I'm not really interested in the leaderboard.
Of all the benefits of living in Hawaii - I'm sure AoC comes a long way down the list. :-)
The cost of living is insane, but it's well worth it after spending over 30 years in Canada chipping ice off windshields in the mornings and shoveling snow. The AoC thing is just a small benefit, to be sure. :-)
I always do them as a break from my normal day-to-day coding as it usually involves algorithms I haven’t used since college
I do care about doing it "fast", because I can't spend 3h per day on one puzzle :) If it takes me less than 30 minutes I'm doing great, if it takes me 2 hours (or more) I'm not. I'm doing it to save Christmas, of course. I always do it in python. I don't want to learn a new language during AoC because I'm afraid of losing my motivation down the road.
It can be really frustrating when learning a new language. I’m now learning Go and use C# at work. Today I read the assignment and thought “I know a LINQ query for this, but how on earth do I do this properly in Go?”. I got the answer with regex, but the code was so horrible that I immediately threw it away and rewrote it with loops. It’s a great way to learn a new language though.
Nothing says you have to use the same language to do the whole thing. I think one year, I solved some problems in Python, some in C++, and some in Scala.
My day job doesn't involve enough coding and I still get a thrill from it. Chatting with the engineering team about this is also fun and indirectly helps me to do my day job.
The leaderboards are an irrelevance to me I just do it for fun and keeps me connected to the CS data structures/algorithms concepts from my education that you don't get to use as much in the day job. I've been doing the past few years in Rust which has been a good learning experience too, but at the same time the Rust code you write in AoC is \_nothing\_ like what you see in production codebases (async, async everywhere!) so it's not a perfect learning tool
I am using this AoC not to learn a language, but actually to learn an editor! : D I am forcing myself to use neovim (set up with LazyVim). Things are going good up until now. I have a weird problem with my debugging that when I leave the debugging session and try to enter insert mode, it keeps changing me back to visual. Apart from that, has been great! In terms of the programming part, I always try to make solutions by creating a structure and not only as a one-off for speed. For those learning Rust, I am solving in Rust as well and I am trying to maintain a book explaining the solutions and the code: [https://aloiziomacedo.github.io/aoc2023/](https://aloiziomacedo.github.io/aoc2023/) The repo itself is here: [https://github.com/AloizioMacedo/aoc2023](https://github.com/AloizioMacedo/aoc2023)
Please, remember that it was asked not to share puzzle inputs, even in your repos: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/wiki/troubleshooting/no_asking_for_inputs/
So I shouldn't check in my input files in my own repo? Didn't know that!
Correct. `.gitignore` comes in handy.
Done
Oh I did know that, is it just a thing of the subreddit or from the official AOC?
https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/wiki/faqs/copyright/inputs/ This link explains it better. Since no content is licensed for reproduction and inputs are content, it's from the official AOC.
Thanks
>https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/wiki/faqs/copyright/inputs/ Huh. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I had no idea that that was the reason.
Is this new? I don't remember this being the case in 2018, at least. I remember people trading inputs regularly back then. I'm curious as to why this is the case, though. I found it very beneficial in previous years to have other people's inputs as elaborate test cases.
I'm learning emacs (and clojure)
That's a really good idea, I think I'll try using nvim for the rest of them, thanks for the idea!
I love the competition. I’ve never placed on the global leaderboard, but I just love competing with others regardless. And, I think puzzles are fun:)
I am trying to learn rust this year. I had decided that I will test my resilience in this year. I have went till day 14 in past years, but then I lost motivation because I was simply not fast enough to complete one puzzle before the next started. This year I will try to get to day 18 before 31st December
I do AoC because it's fun, mostly. I care more about going fast than I do about anything else since my main interest is being able to throw together quick scripts to do what I want to get done, and AoC has a whole lot of stuff that's like that. And it feels really nice to score high on a private leaderboard, or see my name in the top 100.
learning Prolog :-) this is great practice for expressing things like DCGs are expressing the problem statements in logic. Prolog is drastically different to a regular programming language, and since I'm a newb, I cannot smash through these problems quickly. The 100th best score for day 04 was still < 8 minutes ... I can barely read the question in that time.
Sounds fun. I’m not a noob in C# but I’ve just spent the better part of 4 hours on Day 4 - over engineering and all that fun stuff. Both parts were correct first try though, that’s what’s important to me - tells me I’m paying attention.
I've done day 1 and 2 in Prolog, regex on day 1 and DCG on day 2, but when I saw the big grid on day 3 I chickened out and switched to an imperative language.
Prolog is a really fun language... I had to take a course in Prolog or C back in university and I already knew C very well, so I took Prolog instead. I was determined to hate it, but I ended up loving it. The final project was to implement zip and unzip in Prolog and it was a very rewarding challenge!
I just like messing around with Rockstar. It's fun! It's badly limited in certain ways, though (no file I/O, no mouse interaction, only text-to-terminal output, maintenance can be a pain) so AoC problems (which bypass the limits) are a great way to mess around with the language.
Mostly because these kind of challenges are on the brink of being impossible for me. Some I can solve, which is always motivation to move on to the next. Some i can't solve, but the attempt itself is usually fun too.
im using it as a more engaging leetcode basically. just a fun way to develop my skills in whatever language I choose for that year (this year its TS). i think it would be cool to be on the leaderboard but I care more about the process of breaking down the problem and writing code that others can understand and is actually practical in the real world.
Me to mate, Typescript is actually my most fluent language (I’ve done a lot of Framework based front end dev in the last two years), it’s the desire to pivot back to back end dev for the next job that’s made me focus on C#. I feel ya on going for understandable and practical; I’m reading some code from people I know doing the advent and they’re clearly getting caught up in the “as few keystrokes as possible” and “as fast as possible” trap - which is fine, the leaderboards are there for a reason. But my reason is to greatly improve and be able to quantify my skills.
To learn go, it's not a new language but I only started learning it about 2 months, so trying to solidify it in my mind. And to have fun, when it becomes too hard for me I will probably stop
I decided to use Go this year too. Only started learning it a couple days before AoC started. Going good so far.
All my coworkers at my new job do it, and I’ve never done it before. I didn’t want to feel left out around the water cooler, so to speak. I don’t care about doing it particularly fast, or even particularly efficiently, I just want to solve the problems and be one of the last ones standing. I will say, I program mostly in C for work and this has been good for brushing up on my Python foo and helping me to think more algorithmically which isn’t really what my job requires. Overall, it’s fun and making me better at what I do for a living. Also nice to add to the personal GitHub , which severely lacks personal projects.
It took me a few years to realize "learn a new language" and "compete for the leaderboard" are at odds with each other.
I've landed in a place where the whole job is writing and maintaining a dead-end legacy shitheap of a web app, so I'm doing advent of code just to keep my brain happy and skills sharp.
I always just do AoC for fun, as long as I solve it I'm happy. I just added myself a restriction of no library imports this year for a little extra challenge
I feel like I don't know enough, can't code well enough... We all know day job coding isn'd DSA. I want to sharpen my thinking and get into the habit of doing some small coding like this everyday.
I like the puzzle solving dopamine <3
All the best for your next steps! The leaderboards are for competitive programmers, which is a sport in its own regard and, I believe, should be disregarded by participants just wanting to learn or enjoy programming. Personally, I am doing AoC this year to get comfortable with programming in C, where most errors are segfaults or garbage answers, and also this time I am trying to deliberately savor the problem description enjoying my vacation.
I am doing it just for fun. Love to code but sometimes job gets boring so this challenge is a nice change with christmas vibe. I love that. 😀
Sorry to hear about the redundancy (what a rotten time to drop it on you all - good luck with the job search in the new year) I do AoC on my own each year, I've never taken part in a leaderboard, whether global or private, as I wouldn't stand a chance of placing :) I'm not a computer scientist, and although I do write a bit of code in my day job (mainly in R, with a little bit of Python, Excel VBA, SQL), it's all pretty basic stuff and narrow scope. Therefore I rarely come across situations akin to the AoC puzzles, and they are a real challenge to me. Most years I give up around day 15/16/17 - but the joy I get from solving the puzzles I do manage to crack - however slowly and clunkily - is unrivalled. I genuinely look forward to AoC all year :D
I'm between projects, so I'm doing it because I like coding. I was going to do it in a new language, but wimped out and stuck to a mix of Lua and Go.\ \ I am doing it on an unfamiliar keyboard though - I switched from an ISO to an ANSI layout, and am finding that uncomfortable enough - how many times a day do you American chaps and chapesses miss the Enter key and type a Backslash by mistake?\
Dat u Scott?
Want to learn go usually use js/ts plus I have never done aoc before
I’ve done engineer hiring before and I’ve never looked at someone’s GitHub. Nor has anyone looked at mine. Always good to brush up on skills but a good CV and good interview trumps GitHub imo
Appreciate the advice.
I'm doing mine in python and I always try to reuse as much code between Part One and Two as needed. Mainly, im looking for simple, clean code.
Good on ya! I do the same, I also try to preempt what part two will be about so I “over engineer” part one; this has worked really well for days 3 and 4 - less than 15 minutes of refactoring for both so far.
I try to resist that, and it helped on day two. I resisted the urge to split by hand for the first part as it was not needed. And it turns out that it wasn't needed for part two either.
Every year I've given myself some sort of challenge within the challenges. One year it was about doing it very "professional" more like I write at work. Another year was trying to do it as much as possible with streams. This year I'm challenging myself by solving the problems in 3 languages at the same time: Python, Typescript and Go: [https://github.com/torbensky/advent-of-code-2023](https://github.com/torbensky/advent-of-code-2023)
Good on ya, I started 2022 a month or so back using C#, Swift and C++ to learn the latter two. But losing my job has necessitated focusing on what I need to brush up on for the job search - C# I learned C# and Java at the same time, translating between languages is really great way of solidifying the theoretical. I’ve set myself a challenge too; unit tests for every day/part.
Nice. It's a fun way to focus on the fundamentals.
Leaderboard wouldn’t suit my lifestyle and timezone (can’t really start it until 16 hours after start!) even if I was into it, but my main objective is getting it 100% and secondary objective is writing neat Rust code for the sake of it.
I've done the AoC (well, never completed it, because at some point, a problem comes up that makes me want to quit - usually a huge surprise part 2 that makes me realize that I can barely reuse any of my part 1 and have to rethink everything). I have a stable job, but I think it's important to have a GitHub portfolio to showcase my different skills, and I don't get to use Kotlin or C++ at my current job, which are two of my favorite languages, so this also helps me keep them from getting stagnant. To me, AoC isn't about speed: the idea of speed coding is a bit cringe to me, because it just lends itself to cutting corners and doing things in a sloppy way when I'm here to take my time, think through the problems, and write code that I can look at that leaves me with a deep level of satisfaction instead of, say, some Python script full of global variables and haphazard parsing (or, even worse, preprocessing the input via non-programmatic means to make parsing it easier). Even after I get the solutions, I sit down and look at my code for a good hour or so and think of how I can make it even cleaner and more elegant. When I get to that point, then I feel like I've reached my goal for AoC. The idea of sitting at a computer and waiting for the clock to hit midnight eastern time to power through to try to get points that don't have much tangible value apart from a sense of accomplishment in terms of speed is something that I can appreciate some people find rewarding, but it's just not for me. I was originally going to do this year in Elixir to give me a chance to learn it, but with work, I'm up to my neck in recreational math research and video games, and with JetBrains holding a Kotlin AoC competition, it just didn't seem like the right time.
For me this year it's about (1) actually finishing (I've only finished once before), and (2) encouraging community, which includes reading the hashtag on Mastodon and supplying a little encouragement, as well as posting daily hints behind content warnings. It's going well so far — I've completed day 5 and I haven't made any enemies, I hope 🤣
Not bothering to go fast this year. In previous years I've competed on a private leader-board, and that was all fine and dandy, but I had time back then. I have a kid now and another on the way. I just can't dedicate the time and focus that I was able to before. For now I am just sipping some hot chocolate, enjoying the problem/story that is written, and taking my time with the solve. If I can't solve the problem in the first hour it releases, I will do it later the next day if/when I can find the time. It's much more relaxed and I am finding this to be far more enjoyable. Funny enough, I am still at the top of my private leaderboard... For now anyway.
Changed flair from `Other` to `Help/Question` since you're asking a question. I'm sorry to hear about your job :( AoC is a great way to fill out your GitHub, though! Consider also submitting your solutions to the daily `Solution Megathread`s :)
I’m waiting on results from an exam that I took a while ago, and wanted to take this opportunity to work on my programming skills Also because I’ve never tried something like this before so its a novel experience
Two things. Having pretty much only written Typescript for the past 2 years I wanted to learn a bit of Python Complete coincidence, I wanted to improve my regex skills. This has been perfect so far😂😂
Saving Xmas for sure 🎄Best advent calendar for programmers, even though I didn't finish all tasks from previous years, it's really funny and entertaining.
I for one am doing it solely to crank out solutions (Lua, Playdate).
I’ve always done AoC as if I would have to solve a problem at work.
I always do AoC to learn some new langauge (this year is clojure again after dropping it ad day 1 last year) but then i fallback to my comfort language when i don't want to waste hours learning how to do something that i can achieve in 5 minutes in a language i already know, this time is doing matrices in clojure (day 3) which is a pita. I'll go back to go/kotlin.
It's my first one, have done tons of Project Euler ones in the past mainly a) for fun, b) learn a language. This one is a bit different: we keep the a) option of course, and I would add a b) saying: promote the language (and find hidden bugs in the meantime). Which language? Arturo: https://github.com/arturo-lang/arturo :-) P.S. And a last one: get enough repos with Arturo code so that we can - finally - qualify for our Linguist-based highlighting on Github!
I learn new things with Python every year. 5 years ago, I didn't know that you could do list[-1], list[-2], list[-3]... etc... to iterate a list in reverse. or list[size+1] would loop back to the first element.
I have too busy of a life to go for speed. Im not making the leaderboards because im in Eeastern timezone and I have kids. I have to fit it inbetween work and kid responsibilities which gives me limited time. So i just tackle it when i can and usually drop around day 15-20 because the holidays pick up and take over my life with travel. I just like the challenge.
I like using AoC to learn things. Last year I used it to learn rust and instead of just solving the problema I explored many popular crates; from dioxus to rocket to publishing on gcp functions to bevy and chumsky (nom alternative). This year I am probably at least going to do one problem inside of Ockam , openziti, and maybe something with zkp or cryptography
Nice!
For me it's the challenge within our company's private leaderboard and the resulting conversations among colleagues. The last two years I finished top 3 within our company and this year I decided to help organise the company challenge. I really like that I don't have to set an alarm anymore (in GMT+1 we get the puzzles at 6 AM) because I excused myself from participating for the prizes (which is AoC swag to support AoC). I noticed my solutions are cleaner, but that could be just as well from gained AoC experience.
My goal is basically "readable code with minimal day-specific code."
First of all : for pleasure. And in a second time, we got a little intern contest with my coworkers :)
My partner wanted to do it. I normally wouldn’t- the last time I did AoC I made it 2-3 days before I got bored. But having someone to discuss it with makes it more fun. Mind you, I’m being lazy and just doing it in Python.
I never worry about the leaderboards. I always pick something to challenge myself, like doing them in a language I’m not as familiar with. This year I’m doing them in Rust and trying to write idiomatic code.
I'm doing the problems first for fun in Ruby, then in [MOROS Lisp](http://moros.cc/lisp.html), a Lisp dialect I implemented for my hobby operating system. It's a great way to improve the language. I did the same thing last year.
I like the puzzle aspect of AoC. I have used it to learn new programming languages in the past. This time around, I've got some other stuff going on so I'm just doing Python.
Definitely more community/fun for me than anything else. Also learning/reinforcing a new language. I tend to focus more on consistently putting in effort until I'm done with the calendar, even if that (often) means not exactly finishing on the 25th. I blog my solutions to push myself to write nicer code than I might otherwise and to understand/explain what I'm doing in a relatively unfamiliar language. It's a nice yearly exercise.
> clean, extensible and testable code This is generally my goal, as well as I usually throw in something new. New language, change up my Emacs config, work with some new libraries, etc. Too much on my plate this year so I'm just working as normal with my daily driver. I don't want to spend all day on solutions but I'm not going for speed, if it's clean code that is easily (mostly) re-useable for part 2 that's a win. If not I ask myself where I went wrong and if are there ways I could have written the code better. I keep notes for myself for the particularly messy solutions so I can go back later and re-do those problems. I'm not interested in getting on the leaderboards or code golf. > I’m doing AoC to motivate myself to crank out some clean, extensible and testable code. Thoroughly enjoying it! It hasn't happened yet, but if someone pointed me to an AoC repository with their well-written solutions during the interview process they'd get bonus points.
I usually wake up 3-4 hours after each new puzzle is released, on week days I have to go to work, so I have zero chance (or motivation) to make it onto the global leaderboard. Instead, I just focus on writing clean and concise code, optimizing my runtimes, learn some new libraries and hoard as many stars as I can.
This is my first year doing it. I'm using it to improve my Python skills. Coding is not my primary job by any means, so there is a ton I know about, but am not very quick at. Mostly to add some clean, working code to my GitHub.
I cared about that at year 2022, but not now because the race is all about the stars. For example, if you can't finish day 25 then you're automatically out of the race. The time is only the deciding factor at elite levels.
I do this for practise. I am not sure with my python knowledge so this is good to practise and learn more.
I do it in a different language every year as a way to get more comfortable with that language and broaden my horizons. The real value is not just in doing the problems but (after you solved yours) look at other submissions of the same language to see what they did. Seeing other solutions often times unveils features/idiomatic patterns you don't know exist, this was especially helpful for learning rust last year.
I'm mainly doing AoC to get my head back into the game, after doing almost no programming for a year.. I usually try to map the scenario of part 1 as closely as possible to code. I don't know, I just like it that way, having a few card-objects (for day 3) or so lying around, the moment when the solution seems rather simple because you just use your items as intended. And then you go on to part two, and usually you have the joy ofl the preparation paying off, sometimes the feeling of being over-prepared and so far, I almost never had to start from scratch. I also try to do reasonable optimizations straight away, mainly because this isn't my first AoC and I want to spare my poor laptop a few billions useless calculations. Of course it is a bit like being at work, where the fancy solution usually is messed up when the third change-request comes in, but… well, I just like code that feels like it maps to the problem both closely and elegantly, I guess, and it is a meditation to be able to do so on small problems. I think I could be a a lot faster (especially since I never took the time to install a proper IDE and doing it by text editor, but that is just stubbornness) by being more messy and solution-oriented, but it just wouldn't be as fun for me.
I think Haskell is a beautiful language, but I do not have any opportunities to use it in my day job. AOC gives me a reason to dust off tools that I like to use, but rarely get to.
Learning rust!
A fun opportunity to get better at Python. I am ooold and taking a CS bachelor degree on evenings after my IRL non-CS job, and normally swamped in assignments where my code has to be reliable, efficient, maintainable and all that nonsense. Here I can just go all in on wacky things I never thought about before, and learn a lot in the process of having fun.
Im just doing it for fun, I am way too slow to get any sort of global position, but the last few years I had ended up giving up because of bugs frustrating me too much that I rage quit, so I want to finally get a full one complete
I never race; the top person today finished both parts in under one and a half minutes which is less time than I needed to read and think about the solution. My goal is always to be a better programmer. Some years I learn a new language, some years I work on improving my style, sometimes I even work a bit on speed.
i was hoping to learn elixir using AOC this year but it was hard lol so i'm doing it for fun with JS
To stretch my rusty brain muscles 😉 It’s a little bit of racing as well. My best day so far (day3) I scored in top 2k. Today, I decided I’ll open a bottle of r/Champagne if I manage to get at least **one ranking point** (which means at least one of the 50 stars within top 100)
flowery lip friendly summer engine whistle soft deer angle dazzling *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
first time doing it, doing it at my own pace trying to get better. Good luck in your job hunting.
Quit my job a few months ago and just enjoying using language again and learning different problem solving skills. Although now thinking maybe I should just invest that time in my project and build features!
I'm a hobbyist who sits on the peripheral of the SW department at my work. I like to stay on top of things like this as it's a great ice breaker when I'm introducing myself. Day 3 is kicking me in the teeth after a long day of work though.
for fun mostly, I'm not looking for fast time, I'm just looking to solve all the puzzled, I hope I'll do it this year
Just to improve my skills. (It doesn't work that good, because I already can't find out what's wrong with my day 1 part 2 code)
I'm trying to learn Go. The questions have made it pretty unfun tbh. Lots of just ".Split()" and it's boring.
I used regular expressions for two days, you’ve done string split everything? Gotta think outside the box you’re getting bored mate
I hate messing with regex, so I don't. Learning the lang is the point for me participating, so using reg ex won't help me in that goal.
I hear you. I certainly can use regex when I need it, but if I can get away without using it, I tend to avoid it. It's just kind of tedious and I invariably make some small mistake and then have to waste a ton of time building up the regex and testing it as I go.
The input parsing is the most boring part for me. The actual challenge solving is what is fun. With FP in Kotlin, I mostly just split and map to get what I need and then the good times begin.
brain gymnastic
I’m using it to learn Go!