Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advent of Code 2025

adventofcode.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 416 posts

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#61

Post by WJW »

lkuty wrote: post #57
WJW wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to use Haskell, because parser combinators usually make the input parsing aspect of the puzzles extremely straightforward. In addition, the focus of the language on laziness and recursion can lead to some very concise yet idiomatic solutions. Example: find the first example for when this "game of life" variant has more than 1000 cells in the "alive" state. Solution: generate infinite list of all states and ite…

Do you plan to share your solutions on Github or something similar ?

I actually plan on doing this year in Gleam, because I did the last 5 years in Haskell and want to learn a new language this year. My solutions for last year are on github at https://github.com/WJWH/aoc2024 though, if you're interested.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#62

Post by Almondsetat »

Waterluvian wrote: post #47
squigz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By measuring it as a race, it becomes a race, and now the goal is the metric. It becomes a race when you start seeing it as a race :) One can just... ignore the leaderboard

That’s also completely true and something I often say about gaming. You don’t like achievements? Just don’t do them. Your enjoyment shouldn’t be a function of how others interact with the product.

"Just ignore it" doesn't work, psychologically.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#63

Post by nemo1618 »

fainpul wrote: post #20

Opinion poll: Python is extremely suitable for these kind of problems. C++ is also often used, especially by competitive programmers. Which "non-mainstream" or even obscure languages are also well suited for AoC? Please list your weapon of choice and a short statement why it's well suited (not why you like it, why it's good for AoC).

I made my own, with a Haskell+Bash flavor and a REPL that reloads with each keystroke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r99-nzGDapg

This year I've been working on a bytecode compiler for it, which has been a nice challenge. :)

When I want to get on the leaderboard, though, I use Go. I definitely felt a bit handicapped by the extra typing and lack of 'import solution' (compared to Python), but with an ever-growing 'utils' package and Go's fast compile times, you can still be competitive. I am very proud of my 1st place finish on Day 19 2022, and I credit it to Go's execution speed, which made my brute-force-with-heuristics approach just fast enough to be viable.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#65

Post by natrys »

fainpul wrote: post #20

Opinion poll: Python is extremely suitable for these kind of problems. C++ is also often used, especially by competitive programmers. Which "non-mainstream" or even obscure languages are also well suited for AoC? Please list your weapon of choice and a short statement why it's well suited (not why you like it, why it's good for AoC).

I am going to try and stick with Prolog as much as I can this year. Plenty of problems involve a lot of parsing and searching, both could be expressed declaratively in Prolog and it just works (though you do have to keep the execution model in mind).

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#66

Post by jlouis »

sunrunner wrote: post #48
jlouis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go is strong. You get something where writing a solution doesn't take too much time, you get a type system, you can brute-force problems, and the usual mind-numbing boring data-manipulation handling fits well into the standard tools. OCaml is strong too. Stellar type system, fast execution and sane semantics unlike like 99% of all programming languages. If you want to create elegant solutions to problems, it's a good…

> For both, I recommend coming prepared. Any recommendations for Go? Traditionally I've gone for Python or Clojure with an 'only builtins or things I add myself' approach (e.g. no NetworkX), but I've been keen to try doing a year in Go however was a bit put off by the verbosity of the parsing and not wanting to get caught spending more time futzing with input lines and err. Naturally later problems get more puzzle-he…

It's usually easy enough for Go you can just roll your own for the problems at hand. It won't be as elegant as having access to a combinator-parser, but all of the AoC problems aren't parsing problems.

Once you have something which can "load \n seperated numbers into array/slice" you are mostly set for the first few days. Go has verbosity. You can't really get around that.

The key thing in typed languages are to cook up the right data structures. In something without a type system, you can just wing things and work with a mess of dictionaries and lists. But trying to do the same in a typed language is just going to be uphill as you don't have the tools to manipulate the mess.

Historically, the problems has had some inter-linkage. If you built something day 3, then it's often used day 4-6 as well. Hence, you can win by spending a bit more time on elegance at day 3, and that makes the work at day 4-6 easier.

Mind you, if you just want to LLM your way through, then this doesn't matter since generating the same piece of code every day is easier. But obviously, this won't scale.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#67

Post by Jare »

ellisv wrote: post #15
d_watt wrote: post #6

Looks like after the AI automation rush last year, the leaderboard has been removed. Makes sense, a little sad that it was needed though.

I never liked the global leaderboard since I was usually asleep when the puzzles were released. I likely never would have had a competitive time anyway.

I never had any hope or interest to compete in the leaderboard, but I found it fun to check it out, see times, time differences ("omg 1 min for part 1 and 6 for part 2"), lookup the names of the leaders to check if they have something public about their solutions, etc. One time I even ran into the name of an old friend so it was a good excuse to say hi.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#68

Post by squigz »

Almondsetat wrote: post #62
Waterluvian wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s also completely true and something I often say about gaming. You don’t like achievements? Just don’t do them. Your enjoyment shouldn’t be a function of how others interact with the product.

"Just ignore it" doesn't work, psychologically.

Lots of people play games while ignoring the achievements.

Many people do - well, did - AoC while ignoring the leaderboard.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#69

Post by noirscape »

Taking out the public leaderboard makes sense imo. Even when you don't consider the LLM problem, the public Leaderboard's design was never really suited for anyone outside of the very specific short list of (US) timezones where competing for a quick solution was every feasible.

One thing I do think would be interesting is to see solution rate per hour block. It'd give an indication of how popular advent of code is across the world.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#70

Post by Arainach »

kylegalbraith wrote: post #37

Excited to see AOC back and I think it was a solid idea to get rid of the global leaderboard. We (Depot) are sponsoring this year and have a private leaderboard [0]. We’re donating $1k/each for the top five finishers to a charity of their choice. [0] https://depot.dev/events/advent-of-code-2025

Isn't a publicly advertised private leaderboard - especially with cash prizes - against the new guidance? Certainly the spirit of the guidance.

>What happened to the global leaderboard? The global leaderboard was one of the largest sources of stress for me, for the infrastructure, and for many users. People took things too seriously, going way outside the spirit of the contest; some people even resorted to things like DDoS attacks. Many people incorrectly concluded that they were somehow worse programmers because their own times didn't compare. What started as a fun feature in 2015 became an ever-growing problem, and so, after ten years of Advent of Code, I removed the global leaderboard. (However, I've made it so you can share a read-only view of your private leaderboard. *Please don't use this feature or data to create a "new" global leaderboard.*)

Post reply on HN