I had thought last year that they could peak the difficulty around the middle of the month and bring it down a bit leading up to the 25th. But just finishing it earlier is probably better IMO.
I would have liked if a puzzle was released every 2 days though so it still spanned the whole month. Would be more aligned with the advent calendar concept. In fact in previous years the puzzles have always had two parts so if that format is still being retained there will still effectively be 24 puzzles.
But hey I didn't have the time to do it. Kids...
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 advents of code I've fallen off sharply after day 7-10, if not sooner, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. I think this is a welcome change.
I would normally tap out around the same place on the first dynamic programming puzzle which just takes me so long to wrap my head around each time (tips anyone? :)).
I welcome these new changes, and what ever the format are very greatful for all his hard work!
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 nothing to do with it.
And aren't we so lucky that it isn't! Aren't we lucky to have had the prior 500+ challenges given as gifts over the years! Aren't we lucky to have a great demonstration of humility and care! Aren't we lucky to have 12 new gifts to look forward to this year!
Thank you!
I remember there being multiple accounts trying to one-shot AoC and all ended on day 10 or so.
They have hundreds of challenges that humans can solve in under a minute which LLMs can not. Seems the general trend is figuring out the rules or patterns of the challenge when there are few examples and no instructions.
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?
Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago.
The four week advent period goes back to the 7th century and was introduced by pope Gregory I..
That would be 24.
Although I don't think anyone really knows what the 12 days of Christmas are anymore.
> 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 :).
Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent.
If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only three weeks earlier.
(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.)
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 will search for a pure C private group to join that only allows a small library for things like reading the input as an array of strings.
This also ties into the comments that AoC has become moot or was "ruined by LLMs". If you enjoy solving the problems, nothing should have changed for you. What's the difference if a given problem was already solved by an LLM, or a group of IQ 200 superhumans from MIT for that matter?
As time marches on, there will eventually be absolutely nothing left where an unaugmented human outperforms a machine. That doesn't mean you have to stop enjoying things. In a few years at most, all programming will be purely recreational.
That being said, I was worried he'd cancel the entire thing, so this is still good news!
QRD? Was it AI?
I personally also didn't like when part II of a question felt like a completely new question, instead of a neat extension of the previous one.
I am very happy that this is something that's available to do, for free though. I see advent of code as a good excuse to dabble with a new language, usually with a few people from work.
While I've usually been able to do the first half of the month's puzzles in the day before breakfast, over lunch and in the evening, the increasing difficulty does mean that later puzzles can really eat into a day, particularly if you happen to go down a bad path for your solution.
Having said that, having done a few years now I think the following things end up feeling consistent across years:
The first 10-ish (give or take) days were always simple enough that experienced programmers can likely spit them out during their daily standup. This isn't bad, as I think they're great for newer programmers to get a bit of algorithmic and data structure thinking practice, but they can definitely feel a bit same-y once you've done a few years. This isn't a critique of how AoC was structured, just an observation of how it can feel after you've seen a few years. Having said this, I'm sure I'll miss the gentle warm-up this year.
I wonder what this means for the difficulty curve i.e. the almost-inevitable path-finding question will appear on Day 5 and not Day 15?
I'm sure Eric has thought this through but I wonder if an every-other-day approach (perhaps with a 'softer' puzzle for Christmas day itself) would be popular, as I imagine people balancing a job and/or family while wanting to do this might appreciate having two days for the more challenging later puzzles.
On the other hand, free time for this generally does get more tight as you get closer to the end of the month and the puzzles get more challenging, so this approach does just make a chunk of space for people later in the month, and individuals can choose to keep up with the puzzles on release day if they can or just not worry about it and let things roll over.
Unfortunately, I guess I'll have to actually go and see my family this Christmas instead of ignoring the mandatory visits, which seemed like a fair sacrifice to keep up with calendar ;)
> It takes a ton of my free time every year to run Advent of Code, and building the puzzles accounts for the majority of that time. After keeping a consistent schedule for ten years(!), I needed a change.
Completely fair. As Eric says in some of his presentations on this it takes him about three or four months of his spare time, so this is more than understandable. Props to him for keeping this up consistently with his day job for the last ten years.
> The global leaderboard was one of the largest sources of stress for me, for the infrastructure, and for many users.
I don't mind this so much personally (outside of a morbid curiosity in the really fast participants) although I know people that were really invested in it, but there were some genuine points of contention for people that were interested in the leaderboard:
- The global puzzle unlock time, while explained by Eric himself in his presentations, does make being on the leaderboard impractical for people outside of time zones where the actual release time is friendly for that. For me it's 5am, and the only time I ever came even close (while also being nowhere near...) was when I happened to be up at that time due to insomnia (not caused by AoC).
- It sounded like an infrastructural point of pain as the single global release time coupled with submissions-by-country-size and how keen some of the puzzle solvers are makes for a great initial traffic burst with a long tail (also mentioned on the behind-the-scenes videos).
- It naturally favoured people with an interest in these kinds of puzzles, so the selection bias in the leaderboard is inherently skewed towards a) the subset of people that are choosing to do this out of genuine personal interest and then b) the subset of those that are likely to also be interested in competitive programming-type challenges. This is natural, but I think it does make the leaderboard less relevant for the majority of participants.
- The inevitable contention of the use of 'AI' just to be on the leaderboard
Anyway, I'll just end this with a thank-you to Eric himself for designing and running this consistently for the last ten years as it's something I've come to really enjoy, the community is very lucky to have this, and I hope these changes make it possible for him to continue doing this with lower physical costs to him personally and perhaps lower stress for the participants that just enjoy the puzzles for learning and the rare opportunity to write simple programs to solve problems.
For interested watchers:
- 'Eric Wastl – Advent of Code: Behind the Scenes' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oNOTknRTSU
- 'Keynote: Advent of Code, Behind the Scenes - Eric Wastl' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ8DcbhojOw
Edit: Typos
I once tried participating, but gave up halfway through because one puzzle per day was just too much time. If it was one puzzle every two days it would be more manageable.
If the were released every other day, people who wanted to do them for 12 straight days could not.
If they instead waited 12 days, they could start with the 6 puzzles already released, and then have enough puzzles to solve once a day for the next 12 days.
These look like positive changes, a 2x longer event isn't 2x more fun or 2x more satisfying to participate in.
After skipping the past couple of years, I feel like I'm more likely to give it a go again this year.
And removing the global leaderboard is good, rather than trying to police how people solve the puzzles just let people have fun on their own boards with people they know.
This year I'm going to combine it also with mine noaidecember challenge to get a little more dopamine from problem solving.
Also after day three I fell hopelessly behind. 12 might be fine.
Yy usual 5-to-7-day output scramble will now look vastly more competent, ah, well, complete. Not actually be smarter, mind you, but radiate the comforting glow of effort by someone who has their temporal ducks in a suspiciously photogenic row.
Improvement? No. But the illusion of improvement? Practically Nobel-worthy. I'm already enjoying this change.
vismit2000•4h ago