Advent of Code 2025 • Hacker News Board

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#281

Post by mattbillenstein » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 4:27 AM UTC

macintux wrote: post #239

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.

Someone else in the thread lamented the problems as "too easy" and I wondered what world I was living in.

Realize in anything, there are people who are much better than even the very best. The people doing official collegiate level competitive programming would find AoC problems pretty easy.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#282

Post by mattbillenstein » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 4:29 AM UTC

forty wrote: post #197

PaulRobinson wrote: post #14

Advent 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.

The "only" 12 days might be disappointing (but totally understandable), however I won't mourn the global leaderboard which always felt pointless to me (even without the llm, the fact that it depends on what time you did solved problems really made it impractical for most people to actually compete). Private leaderboards with people on your timezone are much nicer.

The global leaderboard was a great way to find really crazy good people and solutions however - I picked through a couple of these guys solutions and learned a few things. One guy had even written his own special purpose language mainly to make AoC problems fast - he was of course a compilers guy.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#283

Post by mattbillenstein » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 4:34 AM UTC

I've done all the years and all the problems.

The part I enjoy the most is after figuring out a solution for myself is seeing what others did on Reddit or among a small group of friends who also does it. We often have slightly different solutions or realize one of our solutions worked "by accident" ignoring some side case that didn't appear in our particular input. That's really the fun of it imho.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#284

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 4:56 AM UTC

mattbillenstein wrote: post #281

macintux wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else in the thread lamented the problems as "too easy" and I wondered what world I was living in.

Realize in anything, there are people who are much better than even the very best. The people doing official collegiate level competitive programming would find AoC problems pretty easy.

>The people doing official collegiate level competitive programming would find AoC problems pretty easy.

I used to program competitively and while that's the case for a lot of the early day problems, usually a few on the later days are pretty tough even by those standards. Don't take it from me, you can look at the finishing times over the years. I just looked at some today because I was going through the earlier years for fun and on Day 21/2023, 1 hour 20 minutes got you into the top 100. A lot of competitive programmers have streamed the challenges over the years and you see plenty of them struggle on occasion.

People just love to BS and brag, and it's quite harmful honestly because it makes beginner programmers feel much worse than they should.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#285

Post by duxup » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

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.

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 is a great mix of what they do or do not know / can or can not solve.

I don't know if that made any sense.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#286

Post by d--b » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

Snacklive wrote: post #217

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

Well, my point, if it wasn’t clear, was that I simply don’t find those problems fun.

I enjoy programming a lot, but most of it comes from things like designing APIs that work well and that people enjoy using, or finding things that allow me to delete on ton of legacy code.

I did try to do the advent of code many times. Usually I get bored half way through reading the first problem. and then when I finally get through I realize that these usually involve tradeoffs that are annoying to make in terms of memory/cpu usage and also several edge cases to deal with.

it really feels more like work than play.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#287

Post by zootboy » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 6:12 AM UTC

fud101 wrote: post #259

I've never done this before but honestly I am just turned off by the website and font being hard to read. I get that's the geek aesthetic or whatever, but it's a huge turn off for me.

There's a relevant FAQ with a solution for you:

https://adventofcode.com/2025/about#faq_highcontrast

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#288

Post by onion2k » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 6:29 AM UTC

alexfoo wrote: post #227

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.

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.

In order to complete AoC you need more than just the ability to write code and solve problems. You need to find abstract problem-solving motivating. A lot of people don't see the point in competing for social capital (internet points) or expending time and energy on problems that won't live on after they've completed them.

I have no evidence to say this, but I'd guess a lot more people give up on AoC because they don't want to put in the time needed than give up because they're not capable of progressing.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#289

Post by onion2k » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 6:32 AM UTC

doublerabbit wrote: post #190

PaulRobinson wrote: post #14

Advent 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.

And this is how I know I am not a developer/programmer. I have no urge or interest in such event.

Your logic is flawed. You can be a developer and not be interested in AoC. Not being interested in AoC only shows you're not interested in AoC.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#290

Post by llmthrow0827 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 6:39 AM UTC

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.

It's totally true. I was doing Advent of Code before I had any training or work in programming at all, and a lot of it can be done with just thinking through the problem logically and using basic problem solving. If you can reason a word problem into what it's asking, then break it down into steps, you're 90% of the way there.