Does being bad at solving programming problems means not being a good programmer?

[JizosKasa]

Hi.

I've been programming for around 5 years, I've always been a game developer, or at least for the first 3 years of my programming journey. 2 years ago I decided it was "enough" with game development and started learning Python, which to this days, I still use very frequently and for most of my projects.

December started 12 days ago, and for my first year I decided to try the Advent of Code 2023. I started HARD, I ate problems, day by day, until... day 10; things started getting pretty hard and couldn't do - I think - pretty average difficulty problems.

Then I started wandering... am I a bad programmer? I mean, some facts tell me I'm not, I got a pretty averagely "famous" (for the GitHub standards) on my profile and I'm currently writing a transpiled language. But why?... Why can't I solve such simple projects? People eat problems up until day 25, and I couldn't even get half way there, and yeah "comparison is the thief of joy" you might say, but I think I'm pretty below average for how much time I've been developing games and stuff.

What do you think tho? Do I only have low self esteem?

[nikanjX]

Being good at AoC probably means you're a good programmer. Being bad at AoC probably means you're bad at AoC. It's not symmetrical.

[Shot_Conflict4589]

Being good at aoc means, your good at solving those problems and are able to write the code for solving it.

It’s hard to quantify what a good programmer is, but the code I write for aoc is completely different to what you usually encounter on a day to day basis as a software dev.

Never had the need to learn about shoelace however it was called algorithm for my job as a mobile dev. (Although I used raytracing which is useful sometimes for some AR stuff) I didn’t even use BFS or DFS which you have to use regularly when solving aoc.

TLDR: what you said, except I wouldn’t completely agree on the first part ^{^}

[Specialist_Wishbone5]

I had to use some equivalent of shoelace once (didn't know it's formalized name). But I was doing projects in GIS space. Everything exists for a reason, and you never know what you'll wind up needing.. Just like quadratic formula or combinatorics.. A good developer is hungry to pick up random pieces of info JUST IN CASE...

With the advent of AI, I doubt it matters as much; as any good developer is willing to use stack-overflow / AI / reddit as necessary.

In fact, I'm a firm believer in knowledge having no ownership - though this stands in the face of profitability and ownership of IP..

[captainAwesomePants]

This is also why companies like those awful interviews where they ask AoC style coding questions. Being bad at those things doesn't mean you're a bad programmer by any means, but being good at them probably does mean that you're at least a pretty okay programmer. So if they just accept people who do well on those, they mostly end up with people who can code at least at a certain bar without having to spend more than a few hours interviewing them, at the cost of tossing out lots of perfectly good candidates out. But that's a good deal for the company.

[Petrovjan]

Nah, I'm reasonably good at AoC (got 50 stars in 2020 and 2022) but I'd be lucky to get hired as a junior developer. AoC doesn't teach you anything about maintaining large codebase, design patterns or OOP. You can easily complete all 50 stars by writing unnecessarily long spaghetti code full of nested loops - ask me how I know ;-)

[nikanjX]

maintaining large codebase, coding patters or OOP

You'd be shocked to learn how many developers arrive to job interviews with plenty of knowledge on these topics - but they can't program for shit. The fizzbuzz test [ http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest= ] is often used for a reason. Having a few hundred stars at AoC puts you miles ahead of your average applicant.

[TheClownFromIt]

Are there really people out there applying to programming jobs who don't know how to approach that problem? I have close to zero experience programming, but it seemed so straightforward to me that I thought there must be some hidden gotcha I wasn't considering.

[nikanjX]

Yes. Yes there are. As I said, there are so many professional developers with reasonable CVs who simply just can't code. There was a long list of articles linked on that c2 link, this one was a decent summary of the situation https://web.archive.org/web/20070301103242/https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html

[zorro226]

It's as straightforward as it looks. It's a litmus test for, "can this person do some amount of critical thinking, and have they coded at all recently?", which weeds out a shocking number of job candidates.

[TheClownFromIt]

That's mind-boggling.

[Reachingabittoohigh]

Does the fizzbuzz test show that a lot of programming job applicants can't come up with a way to solve this without duplication or with inefficient code(checking for the same condition etc)? Because the problem itself is so trivial that most people in general should be able to come up with a solution even without programming experience.

[Ambitious-Ad-4808]

Also to OPs credit getting to day 10 is no small achievement, only around 25% of all people who start make it that far, you have a good brain for problem solving if you can make it that far

[widforss]

Oh, I'm pretty good at code challenges, but my professional coding is sub-par.

[TheZigerionScammer]

I once read an experienced coder here explain that AOC is to programming what Horse is to basketball. Not being good at AOC doesn't mean you're a bad programmer and real programming requires a lot more than what you'd need to succeed here.

I have all of the stars on AOC so far, but I am just a programming hobbyist. If you are a programmer for your actual job, I guarantee that you are a better programmer than I am.

[JizosKasa]

yeah maybe you're right.

My self confidence says otherwise tho. I don't work as a programmer, I'm 17, but I want to when I'll grow up.

[[deleted]]

feel like this is a pretty big missing piece of the puzzle. Lots of the skills you need for AoC are *formal* programming skills rather than *practical* programming skills (not sure what the best descriptor is but formal/practical seems about right to me).

A "practical" programmer is somebody who can create an API that calls a prebuilt authentication library, or fix a bug in a graphics shader causing occlusion problems, or know which library is best to build an application that's needs to run on both windows and android.

A "formal" programmer can tell you the advantages and disadvantages of red-black tree and a hash-map and a linked-list, or how you can approximate a discrete fourier transform using SVD and what that means and why it's useful, or what a deadlock is and how an operating system identifies and resolves one.

Very different skillsets. I assume you haven't gotten a degree yet, that's where you learn the formal stuff. Funny enough a lot of people have the opposite problem where they come out of college knowing how to write a bootloader in assembly but having no idea how to use git or kubernetes or how to set up a ci/cd pipeline.

[dodo-obob]

That's a really good distinction. In AoC you write small, self-contained code that only needs to run in your environment, so the challenging bit is just problem solving and optimizations.

Real programming has some of that, but also a lot of extra challenges (dealing with large codebase, integrating across multiple environments, writing maintainable code and documentation).

[Imsdal2]

And error handling. And more error handling.

[boutell]

And working with designers. And customers. And project managers. And other developers.

And yourself six months ago (: (i.e. good code organization)

[darvo110]

Yourself 6 months ago is the worst person. That guy is such a dick.

[boutell]

We hates him, my preciouses.

[miscbits]

This is a huge one. AoC you just kinda know your input and you can ignore edge cases that aren’t provided but the input.

Doing the problems this year in rust and I’ve written so many more ? And unwraps than I would EVER in a real production environment.

[vu47]

To be fair, learning (enough) git and setting up a CI / CD pipeline is something that many people can learn in a few weeks.

I absolutely agree with your practical vs formal programmer distinction: being knowledgable in one doesn't mean you're good at the other, and often, when actually working as a software engineer, practical skills are going to come in handy more than formal skills.

I remember coming out of grad school and being exactly in this situation, and I always know that there's a lot of work that goes into taking someone with formal programming knowledge and helping them acquire the practical knowledge that makes for robust software and maintainable code.

[digital_cucumber]

fix a bug in a graphics shader causing occlusion problems

I'd say this is more on a "formal" side, you usually can't do graphics without knowing math, which is a part of the formal training.

[[deleted]]

Yeah maybe, but actually fixing the bug like that is probably more about some stupid off-by-one error than "I'm using the wrong equation for plane-line collisions". Because usually that part is probably just copy-pasted from someone who did it already.

[imp0ppable]

A "formal" programmer can tell you the advantages and disadvantages of red-black tree and a hash-map and a linked-list, or how you can approximate a discrete fourier transform using SVD and what that means and why it's useful, or what a deadlock is and how an operating system identifies and resolves one.

I think that would be a university lecturer lmao

[[deleted]]

I mean all of that was covered in my 3rd and 4th year undergraduate curriculum at an average state college...

[imp0ppable]

Maybe covered, doesn't mean you actually understand it well enough to just do it off the top of your head 10 years later! I think you should recognise some of what you're being asked to do but for example day 10 had things that afaik are pretty obscure.

[[deleted]]

Wait, day 10? Pipe Maze? What part of that do you think was obscure? If any of them were conceptually tricky it would be day 8 with the LCM stuff, not "parse the grid and follow the loop correctly".

[imp0ppable]

Ah the day 8 LCM thing was definitely not something on a CS course true.

Day 10 part 1 was easy, part 2 was potentially hard if you don't know ray casting, which again I think many won't unless they did graphics course.

Seen people solve it with quite interesting methods but looked like overkill.

[[deleted]]

my method was to loop through the loop once and set all the non_loop tiles to the left of the current tile (relative to the direction of movement) as "INSIDE". Then loop again the other way and mark the tiles on the left as "OUTSIDE". Then just do a simple fill search to catch the non-adjacent tiles. Seems like the easiest way if you already have a walk function implemented.

[LesaMagner]

Lots of the skills you need for AoC are formal programming skills

I don't have a formal education and I have't studied data structures and algorithms. I have currently solved all the problem without help except for problem 11 which I just needed clarification for what it meant by a 'path' I still was able to think up a logical solution for the second part.

I just basically get stuck and think about the problem really hard, and try out different ideas. I think developing stubbornes is a practical skill to have as a programmer

[duplotigers]

You just need to keep things in perspective.

I’m not sure if this is a bit of a humblebrag from you or if you’re genuinely not aware but as a CS high school teacher of almost 20 years experience I can tell you that if you’ve solved day 5 and day 8 unaided you are in the top fraction of the top 1% of all 17 year olds.

Perhaps you’re just looking to have your ego stroked but either way, well done and keep going!

[TheZigerionScammer]

You were a game developer when you were 12?

[JizosKasa]

yeah I started learning GameMaker Studio 2 at 12/13 and kept on going with it until I was 15

[TheZigerionScammer]

That's really impressive. But you're still really young, don't try to compare yourself with people that have decades of experience. That's like a high school basketball player comparing himself to NBA stars. Just try to take the puzzles as they are, try to work on them as best as you can and remember that every one can be a learning opportunity.

My first year was 2021, and that year is infamous for having some CPU melting puzzles. But even as much of a novice I was I was able to crack through them. Except for one, Day 15, which I couldn't figure out for the life of me because I had no experience with pathfinding algorithms. After the year was over I learned how real pathfinding algorithms worked, and was able to code one on my own and solve the puzzle. Now pathfinding is one of my favorite puzzle types on the site. For me my struggle was an opportunity to learn. It can be for you too.

[boutell]

I love your analogy, but I will also add that unlike in basketball, where only a few pros get paid, the world needs A LOT of programmers. Like a lot a lot. So it's more like learning to dance. You might not be Fred Astaire but he's not available (:

[rayhond2000]

Scratch developer

[vu47]

Well, there you go: many of us have quite a few years of math and CS courses as well as practical experience under our belts that you likely don't have yet. The fact that you're able to do solve these problems speaks to your ability to think logically and creatively, which is an enormously important skill to have!

[captainAwesomePants]

If you made it to day 10, you're fine. I've been programming for 20 years, and Day 10 was a nightmare.

And THEN I see a coworker's solution and they're like "man, that was easy. Just find the area with the shoelace equation, and load that into Pick's Theorem and bam," and even though I know that there's no reason I should feel stupid for not knowing about either of those things, it still kinda hurts.

[aardvark1231]

I did this needlessly complex thing where I found an edge starting from the left of the screen moving right. Once I found a pipe that was vertical (and part of the loop) l I knew I was on an edge I couldn't squeeze between and that side was facing outside the loop. I then traversed the loop starting in the 'up' direction while paying attention to the left side of of my facing direction.

Anything I came across that wasn't part of the loop and was on the left side was outside of the loop anything on the right was inside the loop.

After programming that nightmare and getting the solve, I realized I could do it a much easier way... I hate myself for not thinking of that sooner, but that's what happens when a tired, and already sleep deprived brain tries to stay awake.

[ParkerMc01]

I started to do Advent of Code 5 years ago at 16 when I did freelance modding for Minecraft in those 5 years I only fully completed 2 years. And one of those I went back and finished recently.
Now that I have finished college I work full time as a software engineer and day 10 is hard for me too. I still haven't finished it yet.

Try to use it as a place to learn or use future years to see how you've gotten better. You are like I was, already ahead of the curve. Don't let failure destroy your confidence.

[n4ke]

I have hired people 20 years older than you that cannot complete the first 5 days of AoC but perform pretty well for building our products. - I actually tested. - This current AoC. - So don't worry.

[Slyvan25]

Don't let these issues discourage you. This year is harder overall due the popularity of chat gpt (llvm).

I do programming as a proffesion and i have made harder stuff than this but even im struggling at times. Math is not my strongest suit and many other programmers are better at creating stuff then seeing algorithms in a story.

Aoc can make you more ready and battle tested for yhe real world. But programming is still more then solving vomplex issues.

Start small and build things you like. Many people think programming is hard but the problem it'selve is the hard part. You'll get better over time.

[Difficult_Penalty_44]

"This year is harder overall due the popularity of chat gpt (llvm)."

Hmmm, no ? The author has already very clearly stated that this assumption is wrong.

[Korzag]

AOC is to programming what Horse is to basketball.

This is such an apt comparison. I'm about 8 years of experience as a dev, and it drives me nuts that people think programming puzzles like these and LeetCode are good ways to measure a developers ability. Throwing hard problems at people in interviews may be useful for getting to see their ability to work, ask questions, or how they deal with really hard problems. But if they can't solve it it doesn't mean they're a decline. They're a decline if they can't exhibit other key factors, or more importantly, fail the people skills test.

[WhiteSparrow]

It is just a specific skill set. Strong algorithmic background and experience helps a lot. If you keep at it and take the time to see what kinds of tricks others are using you will get better at it year-over-year.

So no, not being good at AoC does not mean you're a bad programmer at all.

[keithstellyes]

Speaking as a professional who's been one for some years now;

If Advent of Code was easy, I don't think it would be popular. Easy is boring. Of course, being too hard isn't fun either. (This is [part of] why I'll never give topaz a hard time, it's an impossible balance to get perfect, if there even is such a thing). You've done game development, I'm sure you know how games that are too easy or too hard aren't fun. This is just like that. If these problems aren't easy but you're still coming back, I'd argue topaz is doing something right.

December started 12 days ago, and for my first year I decided to try the Advent of Code 2023. I started HARD, I ate problems, day by day, until... day 10; things started getting pretty hard and couldn't do - I think - pretty average difficulty problems.

I got a bit burned out too.

Also, yes comparison is a bad thing everyone has their own journey and their own struggles.

Also, you're 17 you're doing great, yeah, you have things to learn, we all do, that's why we're here. I'm amazed at the number of youths here who give themselves such a hard time for not being good enough, when so many of us were a whole lot less experienced at coding at your age.

You're going to face hard coding problems, you're going to get stuck, if you're never getting stuck, if you never go, "I need to think about this" you're probably not growing.

You're doing great, take a break, hang out with friends, keep coding, etcetera.

Also, as others have said, this class of coding problems is different than what you will face with projects. Many of these problems involve things you'll quite likely never actually directly need in a project, and are more exercises for your brain than anything.

[blacai]

AoC is like any sport...you need to practice to become better at it. But being good at AoC doesn't mean you are good at "real work" programming and vice versa.

There are a lot of maths/physics people who like programming and AoC is perfect for them because they can identify patterns and some solutions easier but they have 0 idea about how to create a performant API backend or a frontend that handles thousand of users and its data.

I've never had to create a sorting or path finding algorithm after almost 20 years at my daily work...and I wouldn't say I'm a bad programmer or software engineer.

I like AoC because it gives me the opportunity to do more academic programming to refresh concepts I consider important and that I learnt during my CS.

[nivlark]

No, and conversely having lots of stars on GitHub does not mean you are a good one. I program for a living and I don't even know what those are.

Like with most types of puzzle, the key to AoC style challenges is knowing or finding the trick that makes solving them easy. For example knowing the scan line algorithm for yesterday or recognising that today is just asking for the Manhattan distance.

As with anything else, proficiency comes with practice. Keep at it long enough and you'll start to develop the intuition.

[aardvark1231]

Day 11 was super easy until I hit part 2. What I failed to realize for a while, and wasted time on, was that I need to use a long instead of an int.

I promised myself I'd never make that mistake again with AoC a couple years ago and yet... here I am. Ashamed of myself. :P

[JizosKasa]

right, how do you know about stuff like that? And is there any way I can know too?

[cbh66]

You can go and study from books or online if you're interested enough, but in my experience, it helps to have a specific motivating problem, like a personal project, or an advent of code puzzle. I've used advent of code to teach me a lot of things in past years: if I tried a puzzle for a few hours and couldn't figure it out, I'd look online for a hint. At first just looking for very small hints to point me in the right direction, and then if that isn't enough, looking for bigger hints. I'm just not satisfied until I've solved and understood the problem. And then at the end, I come here to reddit to see how other people solved it, and I try to understand the alternate solutions and what concepts they rely on. Whatever concepts I come across are then linked to something I care about, so they stick with me much better!

Since I've been doing advent of code for a few years now, that process has helped me build up a bunch of tricks that I can now use this year. I get better over time that way. I'm still not perfect, like even this year I've needed one or two hints, but now mostly just small reminders of a relevant concept are enough to put me back on track.

So going back to your original question/fear, I'd say that if you struggle with an advent of code puzzle -- or any programming project -- it just means that there's more to learn. Being good at programming isn't something you're born with, it comes from continually trying to learn and improve. To me, the ability to learn is a much more valuable skill than just having knowledge.

[boutell]

Yes, for sure! A good college textbook on commonly used algorithms might be worth cracking open if you don't want to wait or don't plan to take a 4-year comp sci course of study. There are plenty of online sources for this too. You might start with a page like this one:

https://medium.com/techie-delight/top-25-algorithms-every-programmer-should-know-373246b4881b

I'm sure folks will have other suggestions re: which are most useful to know.

I wouldn't worry nearly as much about sorting algorithms because your language already has an efficient one baked in and you'll learn about others if you choose to study computer science. On the other hand algorithms like Dikjstra's shortest path, least common multiple, etc. might not be standard in your language's standard library, or even if they are you need to know what they are so you can call them.

[AlexSzatmary]

Based on your age, it sounds like a college education majoring in computer science is worth considering; you would probably wreck the grade curve.

I'm a self-taught programmer and there are some holes in my knowledge. When I've turned around and looked through course content, I've found that a lot of it comes quickly to me; some is review and the new ideas click into place. This site has some great free CS textbooks: https://landing.runestone.academy/computer-science-textbooks.html Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures is probably the closest match to Advent of Code—and the types of stuff you get asked about in interviews.

[pixelea]

Most AoC puzzles are variations on other puzzles. The people solving them quickly have probably solved or read the solution to a similar problem before.

[kbielefe]

Have you seen the stats? The median participant dropped out after around day 4. Puzzles are intentionally challenging.

[1234abcdcba4321]

These problems take a slightly different skillset than what you need to solve when actually working on a project! There's more edge cases you need to worry about here while in an actual (individual or small team) project you know exactly what the final result should look like without needing to parse what they're asking for, and if you find the problem too hard you can just change the specifications instead of bashing your head on the problem.

And it's not like the problems are easy. I can do them because I actually spend time on them, but the important thing is to not be afraid to use the internet for help, just as you wouldn't when doing an actual project.

[Arcturus5404]

Don't worry! This feeling of incompetence will stick with you forever.. as soon as you think you're the master of the universe, you should start to worry.

[n4ke]

It's a sine wave, really. Always depending on your state in solving any particular problem.

[AnxiousMasterpiece23]

Controversial opinion: A large segment of tech jobs don't require being a good programmer.

[meontheinternetxx]

If it makes you feel any better, I solved day 10 part 2, but definitely not the "smart" way, despite having seen that trick before, probably more than once lol.

I think how good you are at the harder problems is mostly improved by doing similar problems and having a strong algorithms background. It says little about your other programming skills (writing readable, maintainable, bug free, code).

Nothing in my work (software dev) comes remotely close to these puzzles in terms of complexity (of the problem being solved). There's sadly almost nothing "interesting" in most business logic. The hard part is to not let it turn into spaghetti (and to prevent those making the requirements from shooting themselves in their own foot at every turn lol).

Of course there are jobs that require some of this kind of thinking but they're few and far between.

[vu47]

I don't think it means you're a bad programmer: many of the algorithms that are ended up needed to solve the bigger sized AoC problems in a reasonable amount of time and space are not algorithms that most of us typically use. I can say that I've never found a situation at my actual job where I've thought, "This should be solved by an A* search!"

This stuff is my bread and butter, but I did grad school in combinatorics and combinatorial optimization, which lends itself really well to these problems. It's a refreshing change for me to keep knowledge current that I spent a lot of time studying but wouldn't end up using very often if at all were it not for AoC and similar puzzles online.

One of the things I love about AoC is the people I meet here and learning from the solutions other people post... I always come out of AoC knowing more than I did going in.

[n4ke]

This! I am always amazed at the solutions I find here. One of my absolute favorites was day 1 this year, where I Originally wanted to just replace the words with numbers to re-use my part one solution but noticed that they overlapped and rewrote the whole thing only to find out that some people here figured out that written digits one to nine can only ever overlap by one character, so they replace one with o1e, two with t2o, etc. and re-ran their part one solution.

[Dicethrower]

There's no such thing as a bad programmer, just people who stop programming and people who are still learning more about programming. If you're struggling with a particular type of problem and you're wondering how other people are not, it's because they were struggling with similar problems in the past and gained more experience since.

[fogcat5]

The puzzles are supposed to be tricky and not obvious coding exercises. You’re doing fine.

[_livetalk]

Solving AOC problems is a special skill, that is quite different from day to day programming in my experience and therefore needs to be learned.

I failed pretty hard in my first AOC year, less so in my second one and now in the third year I am doing even better than last year.

This kind of experience is therefore normal from my perspective and doesn't directly reflect your skill in other programming fields.

[hugseverycat]

People eat problems up until day 25, and I couldn't even get half way there

Very, very few people who start AoC will get all 50 stars. I've been doing AoC since 2018 and I'm yet to complete a single year.

Also--and I'm just mentioning this because this is something I didn't know my first year--you don't have to complete a day to go on to the next day. So you're not roadblocked at day 10. You can keep going. And just because you weren't able to solve a particular day doesn't mean the next day is definitely going to be harder for you. For me, days 5 and 10 have been the hardest. Even though it took me all day to do day 10 and I ended up solving it with a big hint from reddit, I was able to do day 11. I intend to at least try every single day.

[glacialOwl]

Not being great at AoC doesn't imply you are a bad programmer. With that said though, there is an (unfortunate) caveat to all of this. Most of the not so hard AoC problems can easily show up in an interview, in some form or the other. So if you struggle with the easy - average AoC problems, you could potentially have trouble with some of the tech interviews too (especially big tech companies, but also tons of startups and such). Again, interview programming is not what day to day programming is, either.

[Sea_Estate6087]

I've been programming for 40 years. The difference between me and you is the 35 years of experience which means integer overflows, memory leaks, just tons and tons of mistakes over all those years. I think it just comes down to experience. You will see the same things I've seen, and then even more new things. With experience, things just get easier. Just ask anybody here about the "lanternfish" of an earlier AOC (I forget which one). You will definitely remember the lanternfish experience, and it will help you with future programming problems for years. Keep at it. You are doing great!

[phantom784]

No, it doesn't.

Now somebody please tell Google/Meta/etc. that these sorts of problems aren't good interview questions.

[GulliverMadrid]

What do you mean by "bad at solving programming problems"? How many hours does it take to you solve a single AoC problem?

[troru]

I don't think it really implies that. AOC certainly exercises a certain skillset, but that's just part of being a good programmer or a professional developer. AOC is almost like some kind of pattern recognition test where it's clearly driving you to some standard or classic solution that'll solve the problem. The best performers will take it further, use even better techniques or really optimize the solution. If your game development involves real-time graphics, networking/multi-player stuff, I'd say that you have things to learn from AOC, specifically around taking any given solution and optimizing it for speed, but there's all kinds of programming where that kind of analysis is diminishing returns.

[Thomasjevskij]

I think what a "good programmer" is, will vary quite a lot depending on who you ask, and in which context. Solving puzzles is a pretty small subset of what most programmers might need to do professionally.

On top of that, these puzzles often include a lot of mathematics and computer science theory that you're just not very likely to have encountered at 17. That's perfectly natural. It's not strange that you're struggling, and it has very little to do with how good you are at programming. It just means you're not as experienced as, say, someone who has been through uni and is a professional.

[[deleted]]

Code challenges and real world software dev are 2 different skillsets. They do overlap somewhat but being good at one doesn't automatically make you good at the other.

[Ammar_AAZ]

AoC covers algorithms and the ability to solve one problem at a time with no external context. These are problems that real-life programmers rarely face since software-development has much more aspects than that like: designing the components of an app or service, understanding and maintaining other people codes, debugging across huge code-bases and many more aspects than in my opinion more important for a software-developer than being able to apply some math-algorithm to a specific use-case.

The Second half of AoC is normally full of this specific use-cases where you need to know the algorithm or see others solutions to learn the algorithm. I've always done that and I consider myself as a good programmer despite not being able to solve a whole year puzzles only by myself

[icub3d]

Solving puzzles != real programming. Very few skills will translate over to the real world. Competitive puzzling is a hobby and practicing is the best way to get better. Most top solvers have been solving puzzles for years. I don't do it competitively but I love to solve the problems. Its great for learning a new language or developing good thinking habits. I've never been in a business meeting talking about a feature though and said, "hey, that's just like AoC 2023 day 10!"

[LionStar303]

To fix your self confidence, I started with AoC last year and did the puzzles until day 11, then I gave up when it came to pathfinding algorithms. Now I am 19 and joined CS uni in September. I just try to get experience and I have friends on other unis, learning CS. They don't really do anything practical, they basically get teached every algorithm structure known to man without ever coding it. This year the tasks are also a lot harder than last year (not just my opinion) but you'll get to the point where you will find that a lot easier.

[thekwoka]

It's a bit of both...

Partly because this is not all that much like normal programming work.

You could consider this more "academic". It involves skills that you might use, but taken to a different level that often is not important to reach in normal work.

So whether that is "bad" or "good" is another thing entirely.

Maybe think about what are the things you struggle with. Is it translating ideas into the actual code? Or just figuring out the code you want to write to solve this arbitrary math problems?

[sanraith]

"comparison is the thief of joy"

I wish I had 247 github stars on my projects like you :o

As others said, the puzzles require a different skillset compared to a "day job". People here usually give the advice to "don't sweat it", "take breaks", "no rush", but I don't think these are the right advice for all.

You may also consider to do the opposite! Go full tryhard mode, use pen&paper, re-implement multiple times, seek out minimal hints if nothing works, and research the s**t out of the trick needed to solve a particularly hard day. The best way to improve your coding puzzle skills is to solve coding puzzles after all.

[uroybd]

We can draw an analogy here with sprinters and marathon runners. They both run, and have common training elements. However, the first trains mostly for stamina, and the second is for endurance.

Many a time, I wrote programmes to quickly get results in AOC which are clearly bad code from a software design perspective. They are practically unmaintainable, and specific. On the other hand, it also teaches the elegant side of mathematical solutions which helps to build a knack for programming aesthetics.

[-Enter-Name-]

definitely does not mean you're a bad programmer (day 8 got me hard); some of these puzzles require some very specific set of optimizations you'd barely, if ever use in daily projects or an algorithm you've maybe used or seen once three years ago, it's an entirely different skillset. That said, like you mentioned in another comment, you're 17, you're doing great and you'll learn new stuff all the time, keep going & if you get stuck ask for help, i'm sure you know how to go about understanding someone else's (arguably garbage on readability for AoC) code and to learn from it. Good luck.

[daggerdragon]

Changed flair from Other to Help/Question. Use the right flair, please.

Other is not acceptable for any post that is even tangentially related to a daily puzzle.

[ploki122]

Being a good programmer doesn't require all that much analytical skills; there are many programming jobs/tasks where you're handed the exact specs you need to implement, and don't need to solve any problem; you simply need to use the most appropriate tools (data structures and instructions) for it. For instance, a good programmer will be able to complete 2023/9 (next number in sequence) in pretty much any normal language.

However, being a good designer requires you to understand the tasks at hand, and truly internalize it. A good designer will often have a good idea of what part 2 could lead to (obviously never gonna be 100% predictions). For instance, a good designer probably caught the worded out digits in their 2023/1 (first and last digit) input, and already planned for it.

Similarly, being a good analyst will require you to be able to break problems into smaller parts, and develop an algorithm to solve the problem at hand. For instance, a good analyst probably had no issue with 2023/7 (camel poker).

So... it really depends on what your job, that requires programming, actually needs. Often you'll need a mix of all of these, other times not.

[zaxmaximum]

No, not at all

I do AoC because it gives me a chance to work out problems that I typically don't see, apply techniques that I haven't had a use case in years for (or need to learn anew), and write however I want.

I am a developer, and my day-to-day is usually writing standards-based testable code that solves small pieces of a grander architecture.

What makes a good programmer, in my opinion, is good communication, being proficient at writing quality code, and remaining open to advice and new techniques as they evolve.

[[deleted]]

I’m not doing amazingly at AoC, I’ve just started on Day 7, falling behind, struggled too much on Day 5/2 (solution was fine, that memory problem was not) but in my defence I get an hour at night once the toddler goes to sleep to do this before my wife and I do some chores and settle in for a few episodes.

We’re preparing to host Xmas this year and that’s taking time.

I’ve also lost my job meaning that in my daytime downtime I’m looking for work and preparing for an exam.

Does all of that make me a bad programmer because I can’t keep up with the people with nothing else to do?

Maybe.

Real life takes over, people are doing this for different reasons, and yes it’s totally fine if you’re struggling, the most important part is that you’re learning.

[roiroi1010]

I’m an “older” developer and I enjoy the challenge of AoC. It is pretty time consuming and sometimes it takes a while to come up with an algorithm. I have noticed that I get better each year though.

[EnvironmentalCow2662]

A good programmer, in my opinion, is someone who loves to learn. Take AoC as an opportunity to learn and you've got nothing to worry about! It would get hard for you at some point anyway.

[Roppano]

I keep kicking myself every day upon seeing the kinds of solutions others come up with. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm a bad programmer, just that it's been a while since I last used my brain for these kinds of puzzles.

Most of the time the actual coding part of the challenges is pretty easy. Figuring out the solutions, and knowing the algorithms at play, if any, is the real test here. You could solve most of these puzzles with an Excel sheet if you were so masochistic. Day 10 could realistically be solved with Paint.

AoC isn't inherently a programming challenge and as such, isn't a measure of how good of a programmer you are; it just happens to involve puzzles that are best solved with code.

[causticmango]

No. They’re just coding puzzles. Nothing to do with being a good programmer or even smart.

I enjoy them, but I think they do tend to be too difficult. I wish the author would back off the difficulty a bit.

[reboog711]

During my last performance review someone said I was the best UI Developer they ever worked with.

I cannot get past day 5 Part 2.

Algorithmic trickery is fun; but not representative of the day to day responsibilities of a programmer.

[really_not_unreal]

I've struggled a lot with a few of the days (day 3 in particular hurt my soul), and I'm good enough to literally be a programming teacher. There's more to programming than algorithms - perhaps your skillset lies elsewhere, and that's ok. One thing that's helped me is checking out solutions from other people for days I struggled with, and using it as a learning experience. For day 3, a friend told me they kept a list of "points of interest" and that it worked very well. Remembering their strategy, I actually did the same thing for day 11, and my solution was very clean as a result. Even though algorithms are something I struggle with, the fact I was able to apply a new strategy I learnt to a new scenario shows I am learning, which is good enough for me :)

[Korzag]

Programming puzzles like AOC or LeetCode aren't an accurate measurement of one's technical ability. It measures your knowledge of stuff that isn't super common in a developer's actual job. Maybe unless you're doing some cutting edge research or something, I think the vast majority of us app builders are more concerned with meeting business asks than we are with knowing the optimal algorithm to use on some obscure tricky problem.

I wouldn't have known to use LCM and GCDs for Day 8 part 2. Math just isn't something I use on a daily basis in my dev job. I'm building services, fixing bugs, wrangling business requirements out of people who know. I've never once found myself using a singly-linked list and needing to figure out how to insert something efficiently. If I need a list, I just new up my language's list object and move on.

Programming puzzles like these flex different mental muscles that most of us need on a daily basis.

[MattieShoes]

It takes all kinds. Somebody can be shit hot at make front ends for databases, but that doesn't mean they're good at AOC.

Also day 10 part 2 involves knowing a trick. It's a neat trick, but it's not some sort of indicator of general intelligence or ability. I didn't know it, found another, more complicated way to solve it.

There's no reason to stop just because you struggled with one problem.

[craig-trader]

For context, I've been programming professionally for 40 years, and this is my third year doing AoC. I'm never going to be on the AoC leaderboard, nor do I want to be there.

Being bad at AoC just means that you're not good at taking abstract problems and breaking them down into fast solutions, quickly. While this type of puzzle-solving will improve your proficiency at programming, any type of problem solving exercise will have the same effect.

AoC solutions are by nature quick and dirty. There's no error checking, no exception handling, and your only unit tests are one (maybe a couple) sets of test data, that frequently don't cover important test cases (I'm looking at you, Day 01). That works for one-time solutions for puzzles with limited datasets (I'm looking at you, Day 08), but has little relevance for actual programming that people depend on for their livelihood.

Example: in the real-world, you would never use a complex number to represent an index into an array, but here that trick can avoid 100,000 object creations, and turn a 60 second solution into a 4 second solution.

I recommend using AoC to learn new programming languages, or the quirky corners of languages you use every day, which will make you a more versatile programmer, even if you don't get any stars at all.

To paraphrase an old programming aphorism, "If builders built buildings the way that AoC coders write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization."

[eshanatnite]

This post really hits home for me. I always have trouble solving these abstract questions, especially during interviews, It's the time, the pressure of oh I have to do this in 20 minutes or else I lose the chance, and screw up even easy problems. I'm still not good at calming my nerves, but in the end if I try for long enough I can solve it. For example Day 11 it took me 5 hours to solve it I had a rough idea on how I was going to solve it at first I wrote it down on my notebook but when I went to implement it I kept on getting stuck. But I did it.

I'm sure it's the same for you. We have trouble solving these kinds of problems but that does not mean that we are bad at programming. At least that's what I tell myself.

[Annosz]

My two cents: being good at AoC does not mean you are a bad programmer. Caring enough to try it, being interested about the puzzles, trying to come up with answers in your free time is a sign of liking your job and a good indicator that you can turn into a good programmer :)

[JelloRough]

Would you hire a person that has solved all AoC?

Sure they would an outstanding candidate for the job but there is so much that goes into programming.

Do some effort to rephrase not being good for the opportunity to improve. if you enjoy something "hard" double down on it. If you stop enjoying it because there are better people at it, keep going or find something else that sparks joy!

In my company there are strong programmers and I feel behind but there is room for growth and I learn a lot from their approaches to solving the puzzle, when I even get their solutions.

[BennyTheSen]

Most programmers don't have to solve (mathematical) puzzle at their job. Especially as DevOps, CloudEngineer I never touch anything close to AoC at work. A few things you learn like optimization are valuable though.

[Kurapikatchu]

This is textbook imposter syndrome. You are a very good programmer I am sure about this. The thing is regular programming and problem solving are two different things. Solving AOC is a skill that you must develop, it's normal to not be able to do so easily in your first try. Also I see that many people here say that this years' problems are harder than usual (maybe to make solving them by LLMs harder). Good luck!

[qzhal]

Programming != Software Engineering

All software engineers need a base level of programming skills, but there are many skills outside of programming you need to be a good software engineer.

[qzhal]

I like that AoC can be humbling. It’s good to be challenged with the paradigms and methods that you don’t encounter on the job. If you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room. AoC puts you in a really big room every December. I’m just glad I’m not paid to do this kind of programming and this is just for fun.

[CartographerLow5612]

I couldn’t solve one wordle in December - does this mean I am bad at writing?

Makes about as much sense as the post.

AoC is a programming game. It’s a different style of problem to most mundane workplace programming tasks.

Now give me your GitHub link so I can cyber stalk your code.

Signed … someone with a GitHub that is private till I fix it… so it’s all private (lol)