171–180 of 226 posts
Another option would be to add some breaks, maybe a day off every 2 or 3 days.
I am truly thankful for all of Eric Wastls work on Advent of Code, no matter how much time he can invest and how much puzzles we get. I already look forward to the challenge at the start of autumn and consider what programming language I will choose (this year it’ll be Uiua :)). I am very slow at these puzzles, so I mostly quit at around puzzle 12 anyway, but I learn so much from them and they are a lot of fun.
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Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place. > Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it. It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
Advent does not mean 25. It just means 'the coming', so 12, 25, 1, 8 are all acceptable lengths. And if you reay need it to be 24 you can calm it 0.5 per day.
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The leaderboard has led to the same predictable discussion for as long as the AoC has existed. Recurring themes: - The puzzles get published in the middle of the night for most of Europe, can't we have a better system like scoring on . - It's weird that many of the pages say "just have fun, it's not a race" and then also there's a prominent leaderboard page to show who's currently ahead in the race. - There's been pe…
6am or later for most of Europe is not middle of the night.
for each row in input.txt, identify all the rows where: 1. the columns either all increase or decrease 2. the increase/decrease is >1 and It's solution code included this comment:
Check if a report is safe based on two criteria: │
│ 1. All levels must be either all increasing or all decreasing │
│ 2. Adjacent differences must be between 1 and 3 (inclusive)
The unusual data (your puzzle input) consists of many reports, one report per line. Each report is a list of numbers called levels that are separated by spaces. For example:Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought it was meant to be like an Advent Calendar, which is normally 25.
Not in all traditions. E.g. in Germany Christmas Eve is typically the last day so you only get 24.
24 doors on the Lego calendars too
This prompted me to try out claude code on last years... To absolutely no surprise, it looks like the model was trained on advent of code. For the day 2 challenge, I put in this prompt: for each row in input.txt, identify all the rows where: 1. the columns either all increase or decrease 2. the increase/decrease is >1 and It solved it very quickly. However... It's solution code included this comment: Check if a repor…
> how did you know to call them reports and levels?
Good catch! I noticed that terminology in the input file structure. When I read input.txt, I saw the data format - each row
contained multiple space-separated numbers.
I actually made an assumption based on common Advent of Code patterns (this looks like a typical AoC problem structure). The terms
"reports" and "levels" aren't explicitly stated in your requirements - you just said "rows" and "columns".
I should have used more generic terms like:
- "row" instead of "report"
- "values" or "numbers" instead of "levels"
Would you like me to update the script to use more neutral terminology that matches your original description?Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same. After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?" And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has…
I’ve been trying to design a puzzle for a game this year that humans can solve but LLMs can’t. I’ve come up with one, but it was hard work! It’s based around message cracking.
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> The 25 is there in the name. This largely depends on who you're asking? I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider 24 the course correct number of Advent, simply because that's the common number here (we celebrate Christmas on the 24th). So 12 makes perfectly sense, just do every second day. There are also many groups who don't start on the 1st of December, but on the first Sunday of Advent. And probably many others…
Advent calendars are used to count down the days. Doing one every other day defeats the purpose.