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Advent of Code 2025

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Re: Advent of Code 2025

#211

Post by jvanderbot »

integralid wrote: post #206
jvanderbot wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that strange? Competitive programming, as the name suggests, is about competing. If the rules allow that, not using LLM is actually more like running tour de France. If the rules don't allow that and yet people do then well, you need online qualifiers and then onsite finals to pick the real winners. Which was already necessary, because there are many other ways to cheat (like having more people than allowed in…

I'm a bit surprised you can honestly believe that a competition of humans isn't somehow different if allowed to use solution-generators. Like using a calculator in an arithmetic competition. Really?

It's not much different than outlawing performance enhancing drugs. Or aimbots in competitive gaming. The point is to see what the limits of human performance are.

If an alien race came along and said "you will all die unless you beat us in the IEEE programming competition", I would be all for LLM use. Like if they challenged us to Go, I think we'd probably / certainly use AI. Or chess - yeah, we'd be dumb to not use game solvers for this.

But that's not in the spirit of the competition if it's University of Michigan's use of Claude vs MIT's use of Claude vs ....

Imagine if the word "competition" meant "anything goes" automatically.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#212

Post by alexfoo »

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).

Perl is my starting point.

It has many of the required structures (hashes/maps, ad hoc structs, etc) and is great for knocking up a rough and ready prototype of something. It's also quick to write (but often unforgiving).

I can also produce a solution for pretty much every problem in AoC without needing to download a single separate Perl module.

On the negative side there are copious footguns available in Perl.

(Note that if I knew Python as well as I knew Perl I'd almost certainly use Python as a starting point.)

I also try and produce a Go and a C solution for each day too:

* The Go solution is generally a rewrite of the initial Perl solution but doing things "properly" and correcting a lot of the assumptions and hacks that I made in the Perl code. Plus some of those new fangled "test" things.

* The C solution is a useful reminder of how much "fun" things can be in a language that lacks built-in structures like hashes/maps, etc.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#213

Post by hollasch »

tclancy wrote: post #168
f1shy wrote: post #23

Earlier 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.

Same. I usually try to use it as the "real-world problem" I need for learning a new language. Is there anywhere that people have starter advice/ templates for various languages? I'd love to know - install like this - initialize a directory with this command - here are the VSCode extensions (or whatever IDE) that are the bare minimum for the language - here's the command for running tests

This is an area where LLMs can really help out: getting started with an unfamiliar language/IDE/ framework.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#214

Post by fn-mote »

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…

> The AoC guy loves recursive descent parsers way too much.

LOL!!

I agreed with a lot of what you wrote, but also a lot of us strive for beautiful solutions regardless of time/memory bounds.

In fact, I’m (kind of) tired of leetcode flagging me for one ultra special worst-case scenario. I enjoy writing something that looks good and enjoying the success.

(Not that it’s bad to find out I missed an optimization in the implementation, but… it feels like a lot of details sometimes.)

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#215

Post by Jtsummers »

integralid wrote: post #204
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…

>It's probably an unpopular stance, but I've never done Advent of Code for the competitive aspect Is this an unpopular stance? Out of a dozen people I know that did/do AoC every year, only one was trying to compete. Everyone else did it for fun, to learn new languages or concepts, to practice coding, etc. Maybe it helps that, because of timezones, in Europe you need to be really dedicated to play for a win.

>Is this an unpopular stance?

No, it's not. At most 200 people could end up on the global leaderboard, and there are tens of thousands of people who participate most days (though it drops off by the end, it's over 100k reliably for the first day). The vast majority of participants are not there for the leaderboard. If you care about being competing, there are always private leaderboards.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#216

Post by chucksmash »

HendrikHensen wrote: post #128
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).

I believe they no longer allow new accounts without an email address.

It used to be that reddit had a user creation screen that looked like you needed to input an email address, but you could actually just click "Next" to skip it.

The last time I had cause to make a reddit account, they no longer allowed this.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#217

Post by Snacklive »

d--b wrote: post #186

Personally, I never understood the grind of the advent of code. This is exactly the kind of stuff I am grateful to be able to delegate to a LLM.

why would delegate to an LLM something that is supposed to be fun. THIS specifically is the kind of stuff you shouldn't delegate to an LLM

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#218

Post by yifanl »

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 believe Eric has said he always makes his first solutions with Perl.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#219

Post by jbv027 »

scuff3d wrote: post #179
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.

Exactly. I have always taken AoC as fun and time to learn. But there is so much going on during December and I do not enjoy doing more than one puzzle a day (it feels like hard work instead of fun). I usually spend time on weekends with kids and family and I am not willing to solve more puzzles during week days so I am falling behind all the time. My plan was always to finish last year puzzles to enjoy more interesting ones but it always felt wrong. So I hope I will have time to finish everything this year :-) But I feel pain from people with enough free time to go full on. I would love to be one of them but there is so much going on everywhere that I have to split my time. Sorry programming world and especially computers :-D

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#220

Post by Jtsummers »

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…

> - The AoC guy loves recursive descent parsers way too much.

The vast majority (though not all) of the inputs can be parsed with regex or no real parsing at all. I actually can't think of a day that needed anything like recursive descent parsing.

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