Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advent of Code 2025

adventofcode.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 416 posts

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#371

Post by saberience »

0xEF wrote: post #369
saberience wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I can't begin to describe how valuable your input has been through this whole thread about something you're quite possessive and passionate about, which surely places you in a position to aggressively dismiss any other possible way of looking at it! Wow, love learning about new perspectives on HN! Wishing you best of luck in AoC, Life and Love but I imagine someone like you doesn't need it, being a complete toolbox a…

I think you totally misunderstood my comment...

You're the person saying Advent of Code is "so easy" that anyone even people with no coding ability at all should find it do-able, which is totally diminishing the difficulty of the problems, and asserting your own genius, i.e. that you found it totally trivial.

I am the person saying that actually, stuff like Advent of Code is incredibly difficult and 99% of active programmers aren't able to complete it, let alone people who don't code.

I am not an elitist at all, unlike yourself, I don't find completing "Advent of Code" easy, in fact, it would take me a long time to complete it, more time than I have available in my busy life in the average December. And I doubt I would be able to complete it 100% without looking up help, getting hints, or using LLMs to help.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#372

Post by baud147258 »

well, I tried to do the first day and I think it's an indictment of my own capabilities that I spent most of my day on the second part and still failed to get the correct result. That sort of programming is not something I've been doing at my current position, but still as programmer that has been working for a decade, that smarts a little.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#373

Post by alexfoo »

volkadav wrote: post #337
alexfoo wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The group of people for which the problems are "too easy" is probably quite small. According to Eric last year ( https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1hly9dw/2024_... ) there were 559 people that had obtained all 500 stars. I'm happy to be one of them. The actual number is going to be higher as more people will have finished the puzzles since then, and many people may have finished all of the puzzles but sp…

Sorry to focus on just one aspect of your (excellent) post, but do you have recommendations for reading up on A*/SAT beyond wikipedia? I'm mostly self-taught (did about a minor's worth of post-bacc comp sci after getting a chemistry degree) and those just hasn't come up much, e.g. I don't see A* mentioned at a first glance through CLRS and only in passing in Skiena's algorithms book. Thank you!

Not sure. I covered them during my Comp Sci degree in the mid/late 90s. I'm probably not even implementing them properly but whatever I do implement tends to work.

Just checked my copy of TAOCP (Vol 3 - Sorting and Searching) and it doesn't mention A* or SAT.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programmin...

A quick google shows that the newer volumes (Volume 4 fascicles 6 and 7) seem to cover SAT. Links to downloads are on the Wikipedia page above.

Maybe the planned 4C Chapter 7 "Combinatorial searching (continued)" might cover A* searching. Ironically googling "A* search" is tricky.

Hopefully someone else will chip in with a better reference that is somewhere in the middle of Wikipedia's brevity and TAOCP's depth.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#374

Post by mhitza »

talideon wrote: post #343
mhitza wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I do have a couple hundred lines of shared library code built up over the years for parsing things

I think that's the best example of anemic built-in utilities. Tried AoC two years ago with OCaml; string splitting, character matching and string slicing were very cumbersome coming from Haskell. Whereas the convenient mutation and for-loops in OCaml provide an overall better experience.

Given you're already well-versed in the ecosystem you'll probably have no issues working with dune, but for someone picking up OCaml/Haskell and having to also delve in the package management part of the system is not a productive or pleasant experience.

Bonus points for those trying out Haskell, successfully, than in later challenges having to completely rewrite their solution due to spaceleaks, whereas Go, Rust (and probably OCaml) solutions just bruteforce the work.

I'm probably just that bad at programming.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#375

Post by 0xEF »

saberience wrote: post #371
0xEF wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't begin to describe how valuable your input has been through this whole thread about something you're quite possessive and passionate about, which surely places you in a position to aggressively dismiss any other possible way of looking at it! Wow, love learning about new perspectives on HN! Wishing you best of luck in AoC, Life and Love but I imagine someone like you doesn't need it, being a complete toolbox a…

I think you totally misunderstood my comment... You're the person saying Advent of Code is "so easy" that anyone even people with no coding ability at all should find it do-able, which is totally diminishing the difficulty of the problems, and asserting your own genius, i.e. that you found it totally trivial. I am the person saying that actually, stuff like Advent of Code is incredibly difficult and 99% of active pro…

You clearly didn't read my whole original comment before mouthing off. Go back and do that, you'll find that I pointed out most do not complete it, that it is supposed to be challenging and I never called it "easy" as you imply ("not tremendously difficult" =/= "easy")

Heck, I even talked about having to be serious about completion, and you could not bother to read the whole comment, then proceed to call me delusional? FFS, I am now praying for your co-workers and I'm not even religious.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#377

Post by saberience »

0xEF wrote: post #375
saberience wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you totally misunderstood my comment... You're the person saying Advent of Code is "so easy" that anyone even people with no coding ability at all should find it do-able, which is totally diminishing the difficulty of the problems, and asserting your own genius, i.e. that you found it totally trivial. I am the person saying that actually, stuff like Advent of Code is incredibly difficult and 99% of active pro…

You clearly didn't read my whole original comment before mouthing off. Go back and do that, you'll find that I pointed out most do not complete it, that it is supposed to be challenging and I never called it "easy" as you imply ("not tremendously difficult" =/= "easy") Heck, I even talked about having to be serious about completion, and you could not bother to read the whole comment, then proceed to call me delusiona…

Did YOU even read your original comment? You asserted that people who have never coded could complete the event!

Did you realize only roughly 500 people of the > 1M who are registered for advent of code even complete it?

You said "it should not be a tremendous challenge", i.e. not that big of a deal even if you don't know how to code. Which is absolutely diminishing the difficulty of the event, I mean, come on man...

This is why I'm asserting you are quietly oblivious to the abilities of most people. I am asserting that most people who CAN code, cannot complete the event, yet alone non-coders. I am a very active coder (for fun mostly these days, but also sometimes for work), but I could not complete Advent of Code. Maybe if I took all of December off work to dedicate serious time, but even then I wonder if it's possible without looking at hints/LLM-help etc.

I often try and help my co-workers who are working on AI based side-projects for fun, so I have a strong insight into the abilities of non-coding smart people, and the reality is that yes, they get very turned off as soon as you get anything more complex than for-loops and if-statements. This isn't me being mean to co-workers, this is the reality of things I have experienced. It's not a brains thing, they can understand more complex stuff, but they don't want to, they find it annoying, boring, not worth the time/effort etc. So the idea of them learning dynamic programming, DFS/BFS, more complex data structures etc, is well, just not going to happen.

My point is that you are effectively saying, "oh just about anyone can do Advent of Code if they want to", is totally not grounded in any sort of reality.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#378

Post by 0xEF »

saberience wrote: post #377
0xEF wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly didn't read my whole original comment before mouthing off. Go back and do that, you'll find that I pointed out most do not complete it, that it is supposed to be challenging and I never called it "easy" as you imply ("not tremendously difficult" =/= "easy") Heck, I even talked about having to be serious about completion, and you could not bother to read the whole comment, then proceed to call me delusiona…

Did YOU even read your original comment? You asserted that people who have never coded could complete the event! Did you realize only roughly 500 people of the > 1M who are registered for advent of code even complete it? You said "it should not be a tremendous challenge", i.e. not that big of a deal even if you don't know how to code. Which is absolutely diminishing the difficulty of the event, I mean, come on man...…

The amount of injected implication you are imposing on everything I said...this is some seriously unhinged gaslighting in effort to obfuscate the fact that you came out of the gate calling someone delusional over a comment you barely understood. We're wasting each other's time, so I'm out.

Try to have a better day.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#379

Post by tgv »

infamousclyde wrote: post #32
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’ve always used AoC as my jump-off point for new languages. I was thinking about using Gleam this year! I wish I had more profound reasons, but the pipeline syntax is intriguing and I just want to give it a whirl.

I started only last year, to learn a bit of Ada. Doing SPARK this year. That has been on my TOLEARN list for a long time. Should be interesting.

Re: Advent of Code 2025

#380

Post by tgv »

rootnod3 wrote: post #367
ngrislain wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this year I'm going for Lean 4: https://github.com/ngrislain/lean-adventofcode-2025 It's a great language. It's dependent-types / theorem-proving-oriented type-system combined with AI assistants makes it the language of the future IMO.

Isn't the whole point of AoC to NOT use AI? Even says so in the FAQ

Like with the leader board. People do it to score points, not to learn. Hence, cheating.
Post reply on HN