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Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

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Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#81

Post by fjfaase »

0x264 wrote: post #45
fjfaase wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The temptation to start a competative private leader board will be great, just for the mentioned reason. I have a reference my scores in my CV. The competative part of AoC is one of the things that I find attractive and also has taught me some valuable lessons about coding, like taking some time to review the code the first time before submitting. I experienced several times that I spend of time to debug a small bug…

On your CV ? Has any recruiter or hiring manager ever commented on it, or said the mention gave you an advantage ?

No, but I don't care. I guess that most hiring managers do not know what AoC is.

Next week, I will be 64, and I am no longer searching for a full time job. In the past decade I only worked for 24 or 30 hours per week. I am financial independent and plan to only work freelance if there is some opportunity. Currently, I am not actively searching for a job.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#82

Post by WJW »

lexicality wrote: post #11

I see the leaderboard is gone too. Unfortunate but entirely predictable given how the last 2 years went. That being said, I was worried he'd cancel the entire thing, so this is still good news!

The leaderboard has led to the same predictable discussion for as long as the AoC has existed. Recurring themes:

- The puzzles get published in the middle of the night for most of Europe, can't we have a better system like scoring on .

- It's weird that many of the pages say "just have fun, it's not a race" and then also there's a prominent leaderboard page to show who's currently ahead in the race.

- There's been people taking the whole thing way too seriously from basically year 1, trying to load their puzzle input as fast as possible by polling every 10 ms and putting too much load on the servers.

- Whether AI is allowed is always a super toxic discussion with no real outcome because you can't enforce it.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#83

Post by SJMG »

kleiba wrote: post #74
TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you working out the math above! :). (I never could wrap my head around all this. I had enough problems with Easter events, where the math makes a detour through a Lunar calendar.) EDIT: And my memory of the Tradition is wrong too, it's supposed to be 24 - as confirmed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710618 , and corroborated the two "Paw Patrol" themed Advent Calendars I just found still stashe…

The Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st (first day of spring) - what could possibly be confusing about that?! j/k ;-)

Since we're all being exacting here… =p

> (first day of spring)

It's actually the March equinox. "Spring" is true only in the northern hemisphere. What's more it's the ecclesiastical equinox, not the astronomical equinox, whose date actually varies depending on the year.

Never mind that all this is descriptive of dating in countries that grew up with Western Christianity. Countries where Eastern traditions dominate often date it differently.

All good will to you both = )

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#84

Post by bigstrat2003 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46
thomascountz wrote: post #4

Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same. After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?" And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has…

Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place. > Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it. It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).

Technically the event needs to go for a certain number of days, but Advent doesn't mean puzzles must come every day. They can do puzzles every 2-3 days if they want to.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#85

Post by bigstrat2003 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #19
thomascountz wrote: post #4

Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same. After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?" And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has…

> And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles Really? The name of the event is "Advent of Code". Having 25 puzzles is easily its most strongly-determined aspect. You could argue for 23-29 puzzles, or perhaps for 5, but at 12 what's the name supposed to refer to?

No, Advent means that it goes for the four weeks prior to Christmas. It doesn't mean "one thing each day" during that duration.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#86

Post by zrobotics »

mid-kid wrote: post #56
shrx wrote: post #3

One of the reasons I stopped participating was that as the second half of december was approaching I had less and less free time for solving the puzzles. So to me it is also a welcome change, I will try to finish it again this year.

This. The best I've ever achieved is maybe 15 puzzles on one year, with gaps for the days I missed. And this was when the puzzles were incrementally building upon implementing a bytecode interpreter, which was relatively little work per day. Once I miss my first day, playing catch up is an effort in vain, as the puzzles start taking 4+ hours to solve each, solving multiple in one day is a full-time commitment. Most a…

Most years, I end up finishing the puzzles in January. Same reason- I end up missing a day due to schedule issues. Since it's just a 'for fun' challenge, it isn't the end of the world if you fall behind a bit. That said, this doesn't work if you are doing this as part of a group.

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#87

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

fud101 wrote: post #42
gf000 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, wasn't pretty much the second half of all AoC exercises beyond LLM capabilities? I remember there being multiple accounts trying to one-shot AoC and all ended on day 10 or so.

[flagged]

We all have our writing quirks, like how some people use shorthand for words where there is only a marginal difference (like "people" => "ppl"), or even people who capitalize the start of sentences, but not the start of their whole text.

Some thoughts maybe should remain internal :)

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#88

Post by Trasmatta »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46
thomascountz wrote: post #4

Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same. After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?" And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has…

Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place. > Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it. It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).

> The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).

You're overly attached to the meaning of Advent, but you aren't even aware of the meaning. It doesn't mean exactly 25. This year Advent Sunday is November 30th.

And the creator of Advent of Code can do whatever they want with it, despite the name. They've put an immense amount of effort into this for so long - if that had been me, I would have been incredibly disheartened to see people saying "the whole point is just 25".

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#89

Post by pfortuny »

akho wrote: post #29
thaumasiotes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles Really? The name of the event is "Advent of Code". Having 25 puzzles is easily its most strongly-determined aspect. You could argue for 23-29 puzzles, or perhaps for 5, but at 12 what's the name supposed to refer to?

Twelve nights of Christmas. Would also work better for me, calendar-wise :)

This referes to the feast of the Epiphany, though, which is 12 nights after Christmas...

Re: Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time

#90

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Udo wrote: post #48
nikanj wrote: post #5

Tryhards ruin everything, part n Make a fun little christmas calendar to bring joy to the people, get turned into a gamified warzone where people use AI and bots to try to get onto the global leaderboards - possibly because getting on them might net you a job at FAANG

I know this is an outsider position, but I always felt that the AoC leaderboard was a mistake. Very few people had the time, the commitment, and the capability of making it on there in a meaningful fashion, and it put an emphasis on something that didn't match the vibe of the event at all. If speedrunning the problem solving was the point, then why package every episode into an enjoyable little story? This also ties…

> In a few years at most, all programming will be purely recreational.

That's a bold prediction given how much LLMs suck at programming today (and haven't really improved, either). I'm willing to believe that we will someday invent an AI that can program better than humans. I don't believe it'll be within a few years, because the current architecture shows no signs that it'll ever be able to get the job done.

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