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Advent of Code 2024

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Re: Advent of Code 2024

#241

Post by xdavidliu »

amw-zero wrote: post #183
tmtvl wrote: post #176

I still haven't made my way through all of the 2015 problems yet. But I don't play the game correctly any way: instead of trying to solve the problems as fast as I can, I try to write well-documented easily maintained code which runs fast. Balancing 'easily maintained' and 'runs fast' takes a little more time than 'just solve it' _and_ I'm planning on working my way through the problems chronologically, so I doubt I'…

[flagged]

my guess is that the creator would almost certainly disagree with you

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#242

Post by nikanj »

sokoloff wrote: post #191
amw-zero wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is there really a wrong way to do it?

Yes, with ChatGPT or similar: " Can I use AI to get on the global leaderboard? Please don't use AI / LLMs (like GPT) to automatically solve a day's puzzles until that day's global leaderboards are full."

https://adventofcode.com/about

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#243

Post by sebtron »

the_duke wrote: post #185

This years challenge for me: write it in C without the standard library or an allocator. Has to be runnable on an STM32 with 32kb of SRAM. I tried doing it in Assembly two years ago, ended up spending hours and hours writing an Assembly standard library, then gave up and switched to Rust...

Your restrictions sound quite challenging, good luck!

Last year I solved all the problems in C without external libraries [1] and I enjoyed it a lot. It forced me implement some low-level stuff that I had forgotten how to do (e.g. a heap) and to write some numerical routines myself (easier than you'd think!).

[1] https://github.com/sebastianotronto/aoc/tree/master/2023

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#244

Post by nikanj »

SleepyMyroslav wrote: post #105

Am I alone in thinking that measuring time to get answer is the worst possible metric? I have not participated because of that (yet). If there is a community for those who use other rules to compare actual solutions instead of answers I would be interested to hear about it. I am coming from low level C++ gamedev side so I understand that most people here use different tools to solve different problems.

That's like saying you don't want to go for a run, because professional marathon runners are so focused on time

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#245

Post by sebtron »

SleepyMyroslav wrote: post #105

Am I alone in thinking that measuring time to get answer is the worst possible metric? I have not participated because of that (yet). If there is a community for those who use other rules to compare actual solutions instead of answers I would be interested to hear about it. I am coming from low level C++ gamedev side so I understand that most people here use different tools to solve different problems.

I also don't like it, last year we had a private leaderboard at work and I realized being crazy enough to wake up at 5:50 every and solve at least part 1 would give me an edge. But the "wake up at 5:50" part is what I enjoyed the least.

However, there are other ways to rank yourself against others. You can order your private leaderboard by number of stars, or make your own leaderboard using their APIs.

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#247

Post by [deleted] »

Jtsummers wrote: post #186
wenderen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote to support your comment: The Chinese Remainder Theorem has featured in Advent of Code at least twice IIRC. Not an algorithm the average programmer (average is a very fuzzy term, yeah) would know.

> The Chinese Remainder Theorem has featured in Advent of Code at least twice IIRC Fortunately it's never been needed. Every time it's come up the problem has been solvable with high school algebra level math skills (you need to know what the lcm is and that's covered in middle school in many places). If you knew the CRT you could jump straight to a solution, but a solution was easily derived using algebra and a coup…

[deleted]

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#248

Post by cjauvin »

Because we can assume that these problems necessarily cannot be in the training set of any current LLM (and are hard enough, i.e. they should be more than mere variations on existing problems), I'm wondering if they can be a good benchmark to get a better sense of how good they really are at problem solving?

Re: Advent of Code 2024

#249

Post by eddsolves »

wodenokoto wrote: post #232

People here are doing it in Common Lisp and C standard library, meanwhile I’m just sitting here trying to get a curl call to download the data file.

I just copy and paste into a local text file, but I bet there’s a tool if you want to do it programmatically already (unless curl’ing is your idea of fun!)
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