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

Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

adventofcode.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 150 posts

Re: Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

#51

Post by jiggawatts »

Every time I do the AoC puzzles I wish for two things:

1) The site should ask for the language used to solve the problem and then use this as semi-scientific data for comparing "time-to-solution" for various languages. The sheer volume of data and the relatively high difficulty of cheating on novel problems would make this data set interesting and maybe even useful.

2) I wish all the puzzles had a "hardcore" mode where a naive approach would take a million years of compute, or exabytes of memory. Have multi-gigabyte inputs[1] such that the time-to-solution isn't just how fast you can bang out some simple parsers and loops, but the runtime performance would materially affect your time score.

[1] A method for this would be to use an input-file-generator that is small to download but can generate huge puzzle inputs.

Re: Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

#53

Post by matsemann »

jiggawatts wrote: post #51

Every time I do the AoC puzzles I wish for two things: 1) The site should ask for the language used to solve the problem and then use this as semi-scientific data for comparing "time-to-solution" for various languages. The sheer volume of data and the relatively high difficulty of cheating on novel problems would make this data set interesting and maybe even useful. 2) I wish all the puzzles had a "hardcore" mode whe…

Part2 is quite often what you wish for in 2), isn't it? At least for the later puzzles, part1 is often something that can be solved naively, while part2 needs some cleverness to not blow up.

Re: Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

#55

Post by LegionMammal978 »

schemescape wrote: post #46

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.

No, there is no way to submit answers without logging in. The "anonymous" feature is just a setting to hide your username from the leaderboards.

Re: Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

#58

Post by pedrosorio »

Jtsummers wrote: post #49
matsemann wrote: post #44

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!

1. Have everything in place at the start (a script to grab the inputs helps). 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 utilit…

“Have solved many similar problems in the past so you can parse these problem statements quickly”

This sounds like an advent of code specific thing. The problem itself is trivial, no need to have solved anything similar in the past, but the description is so verbose (because it’s a cute Santa-related story) that it becomes hard to parse the problem we’re trying to solve, quickly.

I don’t think this is common in any other competitive programming environment.

Re: Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

#59

Post by xyzelement »

bmitc wrote: post #42
xyzelement wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are your Prolog solutions public? I would love to take a look!

I'd love to but alas I don't have it public. Googling, I found a few other folks like this one:

https://github.com/Limmen/Advent-Of-Code16-Prolog

Don't know if this is "beautiful" prolog but the programs seem pretty short compared to what a typical AoC question is.

Re: Advent of Code 2022 is nigh

#60

Post by [deleted] »

pedrosorio wrote: post #58
Jtsummers wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Have everything in place at the start (a script to grab the inputs helps). 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 utilit…

“Have solved many similar problems in the past so you can parse these problem statements quickly” This sounds like an advent of code specific thing. The problem itself is trivial, no need to have solved anything similar in the past, but the description is so verbose (because it’s a cute Santa-related story) that it becomes hard to parse the problem we’re trying to solve, quickly. I don’t think this is common in any o…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN