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Advent of Code 2025

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Re: Advent of Code 2025

#171

Post by ewidar »

armchairhacker wrote: post #161
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…

In 1997, Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion. Today, chess grandmasters stand no chance against Stockfish, a chess engine that can run on a cheap phone. Yet chess remains super popular and competitive today, and while there are occasional scandals, cheating seems to be mostly prevented. I don’t see why competitive debate or programming would be different. (But I understand why a fair global leaderb…

Online chess competitions actually spend quite a lot on preventing cheating, and even then it's a common talking point.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#172

Post by mckn1ght »

qsort wrote: post #166
Aurornis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of the Slack/Discord groups I’m in do a local leaderboard with friends. It’s fun to do with a trusted group of people who are all in it for fun.

I'm also in a few local leaderboards, but I'm not "really" competing, it's more of a fun group thing. Premises: (i) I love Advent of Code and I'm grateful for its continuing existence in whatever form its creators feel like it's best for themselves and the community; (ii) none of what follows is a request, let alone a demand, for anything to change; (iii) what follows is just the opinion of some random guy on the Int…

I too like the simple nature. If you care about highly performant code, you can always challenge yourself (I got into measuring timing in the second season I participated). Personally I prefer a world like this. Not everyone should have to compete on every detail (I know you stated that your points aren’t demands, I’m just pointing out my own worldview). For any given thing, there will naturally be people that are OK with “good enough”, and people who are interested to take it as far as they can. It’s nice that we can all still participate in this.

One could probably build a separate service that provides a leaderboard for solution runtimes.

I agree that it’s more of a cozy activity than a hardcore competition, that’s what I appreciate about it most.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#173

Post by azkalam »

qsort wrote: post #166
Aurornis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of the Slack/Discord groups I’m in do a local leaderboard with friends. It’s fun to do with a trusted group of people who are all in it for fun.

I'm also in a few local leaderboards, but I'm not "really" competing, it's more of a fun group thing. Premises: (i) I love Advent of Code and I'm grateful for its continuing existence in whatever form its creators feel like it's best for themselves and the community; (ii) none of what follows is a request, let alone a demand, for anything to change; (iii) what follows is just the opinion of some random guy on the Int…

Do you know of anything like AoC but that feels less contrived? I often spend the most time understanding the problem requirements because they are so arbitrary - like the worst kind of boardgame! Maybe I should go pick up some OSS tickets...

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#174

Post by codr7 »

ahoka wrote: post #101
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

This kind of crap is the reason we can’t just enjoy an AoC anymore.

Agreed, reward participation, not results.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#175

Post by schaefer »

jjice wrote: post #117

I _love_ the Advent of Code. I actually (selfishly) love that it's only 12 days this year, because by about half way, I'm struggling to find the time to sit down and do the fantastic problems because of all the holiday activities IRL. Huge thanks to those involved!

I’m so excited for this year.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#176

Post by hoherd »

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. I was happy to see this called out in their /about

> Should I use AI to solve Advent of Code puzzles? No. If you send a friend to the gym on your behalf, would you expect to get stronger? Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be interesting for humans to solve - no consideration is made for whether AI can or cannot solve a puzzle. If you want practice prompting an AI, there are almost certainly better exercises elsewhere designed with that in mind.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#177

Post by Barrin92 »

marc_omorain wrote: post #39
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).

Clojure works really well for AOC. A lot of the problems involve manipulating sets and maps, which Clojure makes really straightforward.

I'll second Clojure not just for the data structures but also because of the high level functions the standard library ships with.

Things like `partition`, `cycle` or `repeat` have come in so handy when working with segments of lists or the Conway's Game-of-Life type puzzles.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#179

Post by scuff3d »

qsort wrote: post #16

I'm actually pleasantly surprised to see a 2025 edition, last year being the 10th anniversary and the LLM situation with the leaderboard were solid indications that it would have been a great time to wrap it up and let somebody else carry the torch. It's only going to be 12 problems rather than 24 this year and there isn't going to be a gloabl leaderboard, but I'm still glad we get to take part in this fun Christmas…

I know some folks were disappointed with their being 12 puzzles instead of 24 this year, but I never have time to finish anyway so it makes no difference to me lol

I'm just glad they're keeping this going.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#180

Post by Mountain_Skies »

azkalam wrote: post #173
qsort wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also in a few local leaderboards, but I'm not "really" competing, it's more of a fun group thing. Premises: (i) I love Advent of Code and I'm grateful for its continuing existence in whatever form its creators feel like it's best for themselves and the community; (ii) none of what follows is a request, let alone a demand, for anything to change; (iii) what follows is just the opinion of some random guy on the Int…

Do you know of anything like AoC but that feels less contrived? I often spend the most time understanding the problem requirements because they are so arbitrary - like the worst kind of boardgame! Maybe I should go pick up some OSS tickets...

Take a look at Everybody Codes. It occurs in November instead of December, so this year is wrapping up. Like AoC, it is story based but maybe you'll find the problem extraction more to your liking.

https://everybody.codes/events

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