It is quite odd to call this advent when it ends halfway into the month rather than on Christmas. But I will have fun doing them either way
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Advent of Code 2025
221–230 of 416 posts
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#222Opinion 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 have been learning lua to do a VR game in lovr, so I'll probably use that to get sharper with it.
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#223Advent of Code is one of the highlights of December for me. It's sad, but inevitable, that the global leaderboard had to be pulled. It's also understandable that this year is just 12 days, so takes some pressure off. If you've never done it before, I recommend it. Don't try and "win", just enjoy the problem solving and the whimsy.
While is „only“ 12 days, are like 24 challenges. As no leaderboard is there, and I do it for fun, i will do it in 24 days.
That sounds healthy! But I would note that there's been interesting community discussions on reddit in past years, and I've gotten caught up in the "finish faster so I can go join the reddit discussion without spoilers". It turns out you can have amazing in-jokes about software puzzles and ascii art - but it also taught me in a very visceral way that even for "little" problems, building a visualizer (or making sure your data structures are easy-to-visualize) is startlingly helpful... also that it's nice to have people to commiserate with who got stuck in the same garden path/rathole that you did.
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#224Going blind with uiua this year.
For those who think this is a typo, uiua [1] (pronounced "wee-wuh") is a stack-based array programming language. I solved a few problems with it last year, and it is amazing how compact the solutions are. It also messes with your head, and the community surrounding it is interesting. Highly recommended. [1] https://www.uiua.org/
Related:
Uiua – A stack-based array programming language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590483 - Jan 2025 (6 comments)
Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37673127 - Sept 2023 (104 comments)
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#225> You don't need a computer science background to participate - just a little programming knowledge and some problem solving skills will get you pretty far.
Every time I see this I wonder how many amateur/hobbyist programmers it sets up for disappointment. Unless your definition of “pretty far” is “a small number of the part ones”, it’s simply not true.
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#226Would love to know which exotic and niche languages are people going to use for this year. I am personally thinking of trying out Crystal or Elixir
I’m probably going to use rescript. Though I may do Gleam or Roc.
If you're feeling adventurous and would like to try Roc's new compiler, I put together a quick tutorial for it!
https://gist.github.com/rtfeldman/f46bcbfe5132d62c4095dfa687...
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#227> You don't need a computer science background to participate - just a little programming knowledge and some problem solving skills will get you pretty far. Every time I see this I wonder how many amateur/hobbyist programmers it sets up for disappointment. Unless your definition of “pretty far” is “a small number of the part ones”, it’s simply not true.
Got to agree. I'm even surprised at just how little progress many of my friends and ex-colleagues over the years make given that they hold down reasonable developer jobs.
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#228I love advent of code, and I look forward to it every year!
I've never stressed out about the leaderboard. Ive always taken it as an opportunity to learn a new language, or brush up on my skills.
In my day-to-day job, I rarely need to bootstrap a project from scratch, implement a depth first search of a graph, or experiment with new language features.
It's for reasons like these that I look forward to this every year. For me it's a great chance to sharpen the tools in my toolbox.
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
While is „only“ 12 days, are like 24 challenges. As no leaderboard is there, and I do it for fun, i will do it in 24 days.
That sounds healthy! But I would note that there's been interesting community discussions on reddit in past years, and I've gotten caught up in the "finish faster so I can go join the reddit discussion without spoilers". It turns out you can have amazing in-jokes about software puzzles and ascii art - but it also taught me in a very visceral way that even for "little" problems, building a visualizer (or making sure y…
any recommendations on how to do this?
Re: Advent of Code 2025
#230I love advent of code, and I look forward to it every year! I've never stressed out about the leaderboard. Ive always taken it as an opportunity to learn a new language, or brush up on my skills. In my day-to-day job, I rarely need to bootstrap a project from scratch, implement a depth first search of a graph, or experiment with new language features. It's for reasons like these that I look forward to this every year…
Some part of me would love a job that was effectively solving AoC type problems all the time, but then I'd probably burn out pretty quickly if that's all I ever had to do.
Sometimes it's nice to have a break by writing a load of error handling, system architecture documentation, test cases, etc.
> For me it's a great chance to sharpen the tools in my toolbox.
That's a good way of putting it.
My way of taking it a step further and honing my AoC solutions is to make them more efficient whilst ensuring they are still easy to follow, and to make sure they work on as many different inputs as possible (to ensure I'm not solving a specific instance based on my personal input). I keep improving and chipping away at the previous years problems in the 11 months between Decembers.