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Time for my yearly tradition of making it to day 4 in Haskell and feeling very smart before completely giving up on the first hard problem that needs regular arrays :)
Day 8... Screw it... Python onwards...
I did several of these last year and found them deeply unpleasant. I like puzzles but some puzzles are just...bad. Like the ones that require you to just brute force a solution, or write lots of detailed code to capture the requirements...that shouldn't be what this is. Just my opinion, of course, but like I said I found last year an unpleasant chore that felt more like work. Hope it's not like that this year.
I recently went through the 2021 puzzles and I don't recall having this experience. I also think the choice of language matters a lot. I did it in prolog a few years ago and it was super concise because you just dealt with pure logic at that point. I can see it be more verbose in Java :) but seriously I find these puzzles hard but not in a chore kind of way.
I did several of these last year and found them deeply unpleasant. I like puzzles but some puzzles are just...bad. Like the ones that require you to just brute force a solution, or write lots of detailed code to capture the requirements...that shouldn't be what this is. Just my opinion, of course, but like I said I found last year an unpleasant chore that felt more like work. Hope it's not like that this year.
I felt similar last year. I was trying to do them in Zig and Rust, and it felt like most of the challenge was just writing custom data parsers for poorly formatted data which felt too much like my day job.
I felt I was quite fast in being done with part1 after 3 minutes and part2 in 4 minutes (rank ~1000). I even tried to skimread the explanation to be fast, have a script to download the input and run it etc., but still no match!
Time for my yearly tradition of making it to day 4 in Haskell and feeling very smart before completely giving up on the first hard problem that needs regular arrays :)
I couldn't find anything on the About page that clarifies this.
Edit: I see anonymous users in the leaderboard, so it seems like it might be possible.
Is there any way to play without logging in (for previous years, if necessary)? I couldn't find anything on the About page that clarifies this. Edit: I see anonymous users in the leaderboard, so it seems like it might be possible.
AoC is one of my favorite events of the year! I find the puzzles generally approachable, but interesting enough to spend time on. I also like that there's a definitively right answer, which motivates me in an interesting way. I've developed a base class over the years that handles input parsing, so I can focus more on the solutions themselves. Additionally I've been solving for a number of years, but for the past 2 y…
I wonder how the persons on the leader board manages it? First person today solved part1 after 39 seoncds, and was done with part2 after 53 seconds! I felt I was quite fast in being done with part1 after 3 minutes and part2 in 4 minutes (rank ~1000). I even tried to skimread the explanation to be fast, have a script to download the input and run it etc., but still no match!
2. Use a language that makes the edit/run cycle short.
3. Be very familiar with that language and how to process input in it.
4. Have solved many similar problems in the past so you can parse these problem statements quickly.
5. Have solved many similar problems in the past so you know exactly what code to write or use (if you have a utility library).
Is there any way to play without logging in (for previous years, if necessary)? I couldn't find anything on the About page that clarifies this. Edit: I see anonymous users in the leaderboard, so it seems like it might be possible.