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Advent of Code 2025

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Re: Advent of Code 2025

#341

Post by Planktonne »

deergomoo wrote: post #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.

In general, the problems require less background knowledge than other coding puzzles. They're not always accessible without knowing a particular algorithm, but they're more 'can you think through a problem' than 'have you done this module'.

That's not the same as saying they're easy, but it's a different kind of barrier, and (in my opinion) more a test of 'can you think?' than 'did you do a CS degree?'

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#342

Post by tomjen3 »

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).

With AoC I think that its fine to pick a language that is not at all suited for the challenge. That can be half the fun.

I saw someone one Twitter use Excel.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#343

Post by talideon »

mhitza wrote: post #105
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect the effort going into making Advent of Code but with the very heavy emphasis on string parsing, I'm not convinced it's a good way to learn most languages. Most problems are 80%-90% massaging the input with a little data modeling which you might have to rethink for the second part and algorithms used to play a significant role only in the last few days. That heavily favours languages which make manipulating…

That's a hard agree and a reason why anyone trying to learn Haskell, OCaml, or other language with minimal/"batteries depleted" stdlib will suffer. Sure Haskell comes packaged with parser combinators, but a new user having to juggle immutability, IO and monads all at once at the same time will be almost certainly impossible.

I typically use OCaml myself for them and have never found the standard library to be particularly "depleted" for AoC, though I do have a couple hundred lines of shared library code built up over the years for parsing things, instrumenting things, and implementing a few algorithms and data structures that keep cropping up.

Also, dune makes pulling in build dependencies easy these days, and there's no shame in pulling in other support libraries. It's years since I've written anything in Haskell, but I'd guess the same goes for cabal, though OCaml is still more approachable than Haskell for most people, I'd say. A newbie is always going to be at some kind of disadvantage regardless.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#344

Post by talideon »

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).

OCaml. There's just enough in the standard library to cover what you need for everything, for any non-trivial parsing tasks, there's a parser generator and lexer generator bundled, and if you want to pull in extra support libraries so you're not looking to implement, say, a trie from scratch.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#345

Post by gh0stcat »

josephg wrote: post #299
duxup wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On sorta the same topic: In the programming world I feel like there's a lot of info "for beginners" and a lot of folks / activities for experts. But that middle ground world is strange... a lot of it is a combo of filling in "basics" and also touching more advanced topics at the same time and the amount of content and just activities filling that in seems very low. I get it though, the middle ground skilled audience…

This is also true of a lot of other disciplines. I’ve been learning filmmaking lately (and editing, colour science, etc). There’s functionally infinite beginner friendly videos online on anything you can imagine. But very little content that slowly teaches the fundamentals, or presents intermediate skills. It’s all “Here’s 5 pieces of gear you need!” “One trick that will make your lighting better”. But that’s mostly…

I've found the best route at that point is just... copying people who are really good. For my interest (3d modeling) if you want voice-over and directions, those are all pretty basic, but if you want to see how someone approaches a large, complex object, I will literally watch a timelapse of someone doing it and scrub the video in increments to see each modifier/action they took. It's slow but that's also how I built some intuition and muscle memory. That's just the way...

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#346

Post by saberience »

0xEF wrote: post #315
ab5tract wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics speak a far different story, I’m afraid.

Comparing previous years, they're exactly what I'd expect, to be honest. Only people serious about completion will...well...complete it. Even if they do not know any code, if you pick something well-documented like Python or whatever, it should not be a tremendous challenge so long as you have the drive to finish the event. Code isn't exactly magic, though it does require some problem-solving and dedication. Since th…

I have to say, I've read many out-of-touch comments on HN over the years but this is definitely among the most out there, borderline delusional comments I've ever seen!

The idea that anyone who doesn't know any code would:

1) Complete in Advent of Code at all.

2) Complete a single part of a single problem.

let alone, complete the whole thing without it being a "tremendous challenge"...

is so completely laughable it makes me question whether you live on the same planet as the rest of us here.

Getting a person who has never coded to write a basic sort algorithm (i.e. bubble sort) is already basically impossible. I work with highly talented non coder co-workers who all attended tier-1 universities (e.g. Oxford, Harvard, Stanford) but for finance/business related degrees, I cannot get them to write while/foreach loops in Python, and simply using Claude Code is way too much for them.

If you are even fully completing one Advent of Code problem, you are in the top 0.1% of coders, completing all of them puts you in the top 0.001%.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#347

Post by saberience »

deergomoo wrote: post #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.

Agreed. There is no "beginner" or amateur programmer who could complete even part of a single Advent of Code problem.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#348

Post by talideon »

roman_soldier wrote: post #312

Not a fan of these "Coding for fun" things. Code for a job to earn money, yes, a side project where there is an end goal, yes. This seems like a waste of time for working developer. Maybe it's useful for people trying to learn but also becoming pointless now as all Junior dev roles can be done with AI. I mean do plumbers have an advent of plumbing where they try and unblock shit filled toilets for fun?

> mean do plumbers have an advent of plumbing where they try and unblock shit filled toilets for fun?

You've obviously never watched "Drain Cleaning Australia" on YouTube!

Yes, some people find this stuff fun, because they find coding fun, and don't typically get to do the fun kind of coding on company time. Also, there'd be a hell of a lot less open source software in the world if people didn't code for fun.

Let people enjoy things. Just because you don't like that par of your job as much as them doesn't mean they're wrong.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#349

Post by saberience »

ryandv wrote: post #249
booleandilemma wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just bluffing, lying. People lie to make others think they're hot shit. It's like the guy in school who gets straight A's and says he never studies. Yeah I'll bet.

They... sort of are though? A year or two ago I just waited until the very last problem, which was min-cut. Anybody with a computer science education who has seen the prompt Proof. before should be able to tackle this one with some effort, guidance, and/or sufficient time. There are algorithms that don't even require all the high-falutin graph theory. I don't mean to say my solution was good, nor was it performant in…

"Anybody with a computer science education who has seen the prompt Proof. before should be able to tackle this one with some effort, guidance, and/or sufficient time."

I have a computer science education and I have no idea what you're talking about. The prompt "Proof." ?

Most people who study Comp Sci never use any of what they learned ever again, and most will have forgotten most of what they learned within one or two years. Most software engineers never use any comp sci theory at all, but especially not graph theory or shit like Dijkstras algorithms, DFS, BFS etc.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#350

Post by tgv »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #64

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

I think there's a problem every other day, so it's 1, 3, ..., 23.
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