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Advent of Code 2018

adventofcode.com

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Re: Advent of Code 2018

#61

Post by chrxr »

jawns wrote: post #60

Looks like a cool project. I'm just curious about why this is billed as an Advent calendar, when really the only thing it has in common with an Advent calendar is that it terminates on Christmas. Is there anything about it that has anything to do with Advent, i.e. the Christian liturgical season that precedes Christmas?

It's a pretty common thing to call something "Advent of x" or "x Advent calendar" nowadays, if it involves something happening once each day between 1st and 25th of December. For example: https://24ways.org/

More here: https://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/advent-calendars-des...

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#62

Post by j1elo »

If you participated in previous editions, how much time did you have to dedicate each day, on average?

I've joined similar initiatives in the past, but I always end up giving up because of not being able to keep up the pace of sitting down _every_ day.

Yeah one could just solve the problems with some offset delay, or just skip all missed problems, but then it's not fun any more, and I'd wager that the same could be done any other time of the year too...

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#63

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

j1elo wrote: post #62

If you participated in previous editions, how much time did you have to dedicate each day, on average? I've joined similar initiatives in the past, but I always end up giving up because of not being able to keep up the pace of sitting down _every_ day. Yeah one could just solve the problems with some offset delay, or just skip all missed problems, but then it's not fun any more, and I'd wager that the same could be d…

I have an hour-long train commute; I was able to solve most problems in that time.

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#64

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

jawns wrote: post #60

Looks like a cool project. I'm just curious about why this is billed as an Advent calendar, when really the only thing it has in common with an Advent calendar is that it terminates on Christmas. Is there anything about it that has anything to do with Advent, i.e. the Christian liturgical season that precedes Christmas?

With an Advent calendar, you open a surprise, tiny gift every day of December until Christmas. With Advent of Code, you open a surprise, tiny code puzzle every day of December until Christmas.

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#65

Post by nneonneo »

w4tson wrote: post #54
nneonneo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the people who solved problems very quickly (3rd overall last year). I'm somewhat competitive by nature, and I did ACM programming challenges in undergrad (although I was never good enough to make the local team, heh). Happy to answer any questions you might have about "competitive" AoC; it's fun in a very different way than learning new languages for the competition. I personally used Python for the last…

For day 3 in 2017, the spiral. Were you just aware of this concept before hand?

I was not particularly fast that day. If I recall correctly, I just bruteforced it (implemented the four-turn logic). Not elegant but it runs fast enough :)

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#66

Post by aleksei »

netcraft wrote: post #59

Would be cool if they asked for information after you completed a puzzle for the day - scale of 10 how hard did you consider the puzzle, did you learn something new, what language did you use to complete it - would be super interesting data I bet.

Can you expound on that? What would you wish to know?

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#67

Post by netcraft »

aleksei wrote: post #66
netcraft wrote: post #59

Would be cool if they asked for information after you completed a puzzle for the day - scale of 10 how hard did you consider the puzzle, did you learn something new, what language did you use to complete it - would be super interesting data I bet.

Can you expound on that? What would you wish to know?

I think the three I mentioned would be a great place to start.

- On a scale of 1-10, 1 being you could do it with your eyes closed, 10 being you thought it was nearly impossible, how difficult was this puzzle for you?

- Did you learn something new because of this puzzle? Could be something about your language or a library or a new algorithm that helped you solve it.

- What language(s) did you use to solve this puzzle?

It could let you compare yourself with other developers - if you thought it was hard and most others didn't then you would know you might need to practice something more. It might be something that would best be combined with some profile level questions - like their experience level and primary languages that they use day to day.

It could tell us that people who used python found this particular puzzle easy (maybe because of some built in function in the stdlib) but people using some other language didn't.

Year over year it would be awesome to compare the languages that people use. Nobody is doing this for their job supposedly so these are either languages that people enjoy or find practical. I bet you'd find some correlations though too between language and how many puzzles they complete in a year - ie people using language x tend to finish the whole year but language y tend to drop off after day 10.

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#68

Post by netcraft »

j1elo wrote: post #62

If you participated in previous editions, how much time did you have to dedicate each day, on average? I've joined similar initiatives in the past, but I always end up giving up because of not being able to keep up the pace of sitting down _every_ day. Yeah one could just solve the problems with some offset delay, or just skip all missed problems, but then it's not fun any more, and I'd wager that the same could be d…

It varied a lot for me. The early ones I was generally able to do in 10 minutes or less. The middle ones generally took me 30-60 minutes - or I was blocked and it took me a lot longer. The later ones generally took an hour.

But - I wasn't just trying to solve them, I was also trying to write tests and refactoring when I was done - so ymmv. I also wasn't ever attempting to compete for the leaderboard.

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#69

Post by w4tson »

nneonneo wrote: post #65
w4tson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For day 3 in 2017, the spiral. Were you just aware of this concept before hand?

I was not particularly fast that day. If I recall correctly, I just bruteforced it (implemented the four-turn logic). Not elegant but it runs fast enough :)

Me too, good to know ;)

Re: Advent of Code 2018

#70

Post by w4tson »

saagarjha wrote: post #56
w4tson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For day 3 in 2017, the spiral. Were you just aware of this concept before hand?

I’m not OP, but if I were solving this I’d just take the smallest square less than that number, figure out where it is (the top left or bottom right corner), and then “run” the algorithm from there, which should only require one “turn” at the most. You really don’t need to know anything about spirals in particular; just look for a pattern that you can take advantage of to reduce your work.

You make it sound so easy. Part 2 was the real gnarly bit.

Anyway I’m sure I won’t ever encounter that spiral as long as I live but if I do, I have code prepped for it :D

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