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Advent of Code 2025

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Re: Advent of Code 2025

#121

Post by jvanderbot »

letmetweakit wrote: post #112
quirino wrote: post #107

Small anecdote: In the IEEEXTREME university programming competition there are ~10k participating teams. Our university has a quite strong Competitive Programming program and the best teams usually rank in the top 100. Last year a team ranked 30 and it's wasn't even our strongest team (which didn't participate) This year none of our teams was able to get in the top 1000. I would estimate close to 99% of the teams in…

Man, those people using LLMs in competitive programming ... where's the fun in that? I don't get people for whom it's just about winning, I wish everyone would just have some basic form of dignity and respect.

Yeah, it's like bringing a ~bike~ motorcycle to your marathon. But if you can get away with it, there will always be people doing it.

Imagine the shitshow that gaming would be without any kind of anti-cheat measures, and that's the state of competitive programming.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#122

Post by herni »

georgehotz wrote: post #109
minitech wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was pretty boring trying to place against aggressive AI pipelines like yours throughout the explicit requests not to use them[1]. I’m sorry to hear it became boring for you too. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20241201070128/https://adventofc...

I mean, everyone else was using them too, how can you not? That was the name of the game if you wanted to be competitive in 2024. Not using them would be like trying to do competitive pro cycling without steroids, basically impossible.

Gotta love the classic "everyone else is cheating too"

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#123

Post by taolson »

nemo1618 wrote: post #63
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 'uti…

>I made my own, with a Haskell+Bash flavor and a REPL that reloads with each keystroke

That was impressive! Do you have a public repo with your language, anywhere?

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#125

Post by karel-3d »

georgehotz wrote: post #100

I support the no global leaderboard. I was in 7th place last year but quickly got bored maintaining the aggressive AI pipeline required to achieve that. If I wanted to maintain pipelines I'd just do work, and there will never be a good way to prevent people from using AI like this. Advent of Code should be fun, thank you for continuing to do it. I'm looking forward to casually playing this year!

"It was boring to run a cycling contest on a motorbike."

Although there are now rumours of hidden motors in Tour de France bicycles. So, I guess it's the same.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#127

Post by WJW »

jvuygbbkuurx wrote: post #90
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…

Does this solution copy the state on each iteration?

Haskell values are immutable, so it creates a new state on each iteration. Since most of these "game of life" type problems need to touch every cell in the simulation multiple times anyway, building a new value is not really that much more expensive than mutating in place. The Haskell GC is heavily optimized for quickly allocating and collecting short-lived objects anyway.

But yeah, if you're looking to solve the puzzle in under a microsecond you probably want something like Rust or C and keep all the data in L1 cache like some people do. If solving it in under a millisecond is still good enough, Haskell is fine.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#128

Post by HendrikHensen »

bitbasher wrote: post #106

I'd like to play, sadly you can't without logging in with google, github, etc.

The "etc" is pretty important here. You can log in using Reddit, and you can create a random throwaway Reddit account without filling in any other details (no email address or phone number required).

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#129

Post by bitbasher »

Jtsummers wrote: post #124
bitbasher wrote: post #106

I'd like to play, sadly you can't without logging in with google, github, etc.

You can always create a throwaway account on one of those services. It's not that hard.

You could, but you shouldn't have to. If you want to sign up for XYZ, you need to sign up for BigCorp, you need to add your phone number to verify your account, etc.

No thanks.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#130

Post by Ekaros »

letmetweakit wrote: post #112
quirino wrote: post #107

Small anecdote: In the IEEEXTREME university programming competition there are ~10k participating teams. Our university has a quite strong Competitive Programming program and the best teams usually rank in the top 100. Last year a team ranked 30 and it's wasn't even our strongest team (which didn't participate) This year none of our teams was able to get in the top 1000. I would estimate close to 99% of the teams in…

Man, those people using LLMs in competitive programming ... where's the fun in that? I don't get people for whom it's just about winning, I wish everyone would just have some basic form of dignity and respect.

Weirdly I feel lot more accepting of LLMs in this type of environment than in making actual products. Point is doing things fast and correct enough. So in someways LLM is just one more tool.

With products I want actual correctness. And not something thrown away.

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