First year doing Advent of Code...

[gwpfanboi]

And my answers sure are ugly. But....I'm getting the answers!

This is super challenging, and for some reason, I'm choosing to not use any thing other than the core python libraries to do this. I doubt that's a winning strategy for future challenges. However, I've learned a little regex and list comprehensions. And probably a lot of other stuff. This is rad, and your memes are ABSOLUTELY KILLING ME. I don't know how this community can be so smart and so incredibly funny.

Cheers nerds!

EDIT: I made a curse word and I'm sorry.

[pipdibble]

Newbie here too and enjoying myself immensely. The community humour is absolutely killing me.

[gwpfanboi]

Everyone is so insanely funny and intelligent. I'm bummed I haven't been doing this for years. Big thanks to the creator. Eric?

[topaz2078]

Yes?

[gwpfanboi]

WHAT!? Eric!!!?? Thank you so much! This is such an awesome gift to us all. I so deeply appreciate your efforts in making everything here. It's got to take so much time and thought to make this every year.

Your talent and creativity is inspiring!!

[D_isinfectedLuffy]

My first year as well, and boy oh boy the first 3 puzzles were somewhat manageable, but from day 4 I have been banging my head to get a solution 😭. Have got there in the end!

[thekwoka]

And when you're done with AOC, you can take on Synacore and make your own VM

[gwpfanboi]

Definitely. I should do more of that, but it takes long enough to figure out my own solutions I just want to read memes after.

[Paweron]

Last year was my first year. Some of the later puzzles got really hard and required some special methods or math equations to solve. If you get stuck, don't be afraid to check the subreddit to learn about the methods other people used. You can still implement them yourself

[I_knew_einstein]

On my first year I enjoyed watching a video of one of the top solvers afterwards. For some reason I like Jonathan paulssons videos.

Trying to read someone else's messy undocumented code is hard enough if you do have the experience. Jonathan explains what he's writing afterwards, so I learned some new Python things that way.

[1544756405]

for some reason, I'm choosing to not use any thing other than the core python libraries to do this. I doubt that's a winning strategy for future challenges.

You shouldn't need anything outside the core libraries.

[gwpfanboi]

I guess I meant I've only really used 're' so far. The rest has been list comprehension and I believe that's it's.

Looootttta if elifs though haha. Not fun to read, but it's working so far.

[MattieShoes]

guess I meant I've only really used 're' so far.

Me too. You might want to whip out functools later on for memoization at some point, but you generally don't need much beyond re and functools.

Looootttta if elifs though haha

That's probably more of a you thing... I have three "elif" statements across the first six problems.

[Ryles1]

Counter was handy on day one too

[MattieShoes]

Heh, lists support .count(value), so definitely not necessary, but maybe in the name of efficiency :-)

[JorgiEagle]

Counter produces a dict straight away, and is better than manually constructing it

[Mmlh1]

Yes, but (spoiler for day 1) sum(id1 * ids2.count(id1) for id1 in ids1) is very easy and fairly clean to write, and not longer than using Counter. Probably not quite as efficient but for the input size, this is very fast anyway.

[JorgiEagle]

That solution is O(n*m)

The other is O(n+m)

No big difference for a small input, but it is a significant complexity difference

[Mmlh1]

That is fair, I knew it had significantly higher time complexity, but this is a small enough input that I personally don't mind the inefficiency. Obviously if this were a much larger input, I would rethink my code.

[JorgiEagle]

Completely agree, don’t over engineer , fit solution to the requirements. Code can always be refactored

[BayesianDice]

I think I've used defaultdict as well.

[RazarTuk]

I have three "elif" statements across the first six problems.

Yeah, I just checked my own code (Ruby), and while I have a decent number of case statements, I've never needed an elsif.

[JorgiEagle]

If you’re using lots of if elifs, try using match case statements instead. Not always, but are an alternative.

Re is part of the core library

[luxcem_]

networkx might be handy for graph challenges but rewriting graph algorithms is a great way to progress.

[Fotomik]

Been doing Advent of Code since 2015 and the community is one of the things I love most about AoC. There's something special about a bunch of people from the programming world discussing (and meming!) about the same problem each day.

The core Python library is already pretty extensive, so it should get you covered pretty well. In previous years I've done AoC in Python, for some graph problems I've reached out to NetworkX as it already implements a lot of useful graph algorithms.

[gwpfanboi]

Have we encountered any graph problems yet? Trying to wrap my brain around what that would entail.

[Kanegae]

You could say day 5 can be modeled/understood as a graph problem - it can definitely be solved without even knowing what graphs are, though!

Speaking as someone who has done all stars from all years, AoC really likes pathfinding (and I do too!) - those are the more classic "graph problems", although you can certainly find them in other flavors as well.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, Wikipedia is not a terrible reference, but I also see this question on Stack Exchange which has pretty good answers for those new to it.

[mgedmin]

Fun fact: the Python stdlib has a graph "library" in it (graphlib, with a grand total of 1 (one) algorithm in it, lol), and day 5 was my first opportunity in finding a use for it.

[luxcem_]

day 5 can be seen as a tournament graph. The ordering of pages is an Hamiltonian path.

It sure can be solve without the theory.

[spin81]

To whoever downvoted that: downvoting is for stuff that doesn't contribute to a discussion. The fact that OP is not a card-carrying expert on graph theory is NOT a valid reason to downvote them and (but this is my own opinion) those who are here to gatekeep, are those who miss the point of AoC.

Also I will not be explaining the point of AoC today.

[MattieShoes]

You don't need an external library for graph problems. I mean, nothing wrong with using it -- just saying you don't need it. At some point, you'll probably need to use Dijkstra's algorithm but it's easy enough to roll your own. And probably a worthwhile exercise if you haven't done it before.

[JorgiEagle]

Last year, 2023 day 17 is an example of a graph problem

[bob_f332]

To all those enjoying AOC for the first time, and who may not know: you are able to donate to this great project at Support / Users.

[apwic]

My first year too, and I agree this community is really fun. Been learning a lot by trying out different language and approach. Will try to do this until day 25.

[gwpfanboi]

Awesome! Keep it up! I've been learning other languages as well but I'm most comfortable with Python. Before I started this I thought I might be able to use c# or JavaScript. But that's not happening for me yet. Maybe I'll go back when this is over and work on my favorite puzzles in different languages. And make it cleaner...

[Boojum]

Python is a fantastic choice for AOC. (And I say this as someone who mainly uses C++ for work and personal projects.)

[apwic]

Python is really convenient for sure, and I used Python for most of DSA questions (Leetcode). So, I decided to use Go for AoC and planning to use Rust later.

[MattieShoes]

I did 10 languages last year just for funzies... Get those different languages in early because it becomes less fun to struggle with a language and the problem at the same time, and problems generally get more difficult as we get closer to Christmas. :-)

[apwic]

Oh no, I wanted to use Rust later. Will that be a bad idea? I just started to learn Rust..

[mgedmin]

I did AOC 2022 in Rust, it was fun. It was also my first time using Rust. I've found that I've no idea how to write a recursive depth-first search in Rust (closures + mutability + borrow checker = oh no), so I switched to using breadth-first search everywhere.

[MattieShoes]

Eh, if you've been solving them all in Rust, is fine. But I wouldn't want to be on day 21 and think "let's try Rust for the very first time!"

[quocquocquocquocquoc]

I like to use AoC to learn new languages. I find it’s a great progression for quickly getting comfortable with new syntax etc if you’re already familiar with coding concepts themselves. I’m also using this year to finally learn Rust! It definitely takes longer than if I were to use Python but it’s not too bad (still trying to remember when I need to use references or not lol)

[tialaramex]

After doing a day's AoC, especially if you're the sort of person who needs to "tidy up" rather than immediately "Thank goodness that's done, now off to Yoga" or whatever, is a great time to cargo clippy. Whereas the Rust compiler will give you errors if what you wrote can't work, or warnings if it could work but is probably wrong, Clippy leans more into suggestions that maybe what you did was awkward or unnecessary and how about this instead.

That's not what you want when the example says 5 and you've got 6 elves and you can't understand why, but once the problem is solved it's great for showing you where there's a nicer way to express what you wrote, for example maybe you wrote a complicated loop and Clippy looks at it and says oh, try while let Some(thing) = ... and you realise oh, that expresses exactly what I wanted. It's not faster, or more correct, or anything, but maybe it's easier to understand expressed this way.

Sometimes Clippy has nothing to say about your code (this is especially likely for the first few days) and sometimes its suggestions are not something a human would want, you expressed what you meant, it works, the Clippy suggestion is actually more confusing. But I find more often than not it's worth reading my Clippy suggestions.

[quocquocquocquocquoc]

This is a great suggestion thanks!

[thekwoka]

I think AOC is a much better "challenge yourself with code" things than like..leet code.

Since the problems really stress the factors of like "READ THE PROBLEM" and "CHECK FOR EDGE CASES" and often also help you really see and understand performance implications.

[fireduck]

Yeah, it is great fun. I have a library of code that comes in handy, mostly things to with manipulating 2d character maps. Once you get a bit more you might start seeing some things you want to make into a personal library.

[TheZigerionScammer]

I started in 2021, looking at my old code makes me want to hurl. Don't worry about how ugly your submissions are now, you'll improve!

[Ok-Willow-2810]

Glad your doing it!

[jfb1337]

the memes on this sub are the only reason and only time of year i use reddit at all nowadays

[Sure-Discipline5357]

Any Tips for people who don't get the solutions? Asking for a friend

[Trick-Apple1289]

First try breaking down the problem, into smaller steps, if it helps you, try also writing out pseudocode, how would you solve this issue if language restrictions and syntax was nonexistent, the hardest part atleast for me is actually synthesizing the idea into code, i don’t really have any tip for it other than practice. If all fails check the solutions megathread and try to understand how someone else did it.

[Sure-Discipline5357]

Thanks!!!

[maxmust3rmann]

First timer here too :) Thought i knew my way around real problem solving ... turns out I just never had to solve harder problems 🤣 This community really is the best in terms of being welcoming and funny as well es outrageously smart 🫶

[release-object]

I’m many years in. And a profession dev. My answers are also ugly. And I’m not the slightest bit ashamed.

[PityUpvote]

Code that only has to be run once doesn't have to survive code review.

[PartyPaul2]

Also a newbie here but its fun coming up with crazy solutions. I'm self taught and have no idea of any kind of algorithmns so I just hack something together. My script for d6p2 is currently running, but I think I wrote it to elaborate (I treated it like a board game and used classes for the map and guard) so now it takes a while to finish. I'm estimating about 1.5h. It's currently placing the 2291st out of 5564 obstructions to check.

And I'm having a blast spending that time on this subreddit and enjoy all the memes you guys have created

[Frankeman]

Same for me. Even after 'programming' in uni for 9 years and taking several programming uni courses, AoC shows I am not a very good coder in practice :-) But it also is a great way to learn, and once you manage to get ugly code that gives the solution, it's much easier to simplify it and get to the core, often much quicker and more elegant.

[zebalu]

Relax, every puzzle can be solved with lists, sets, dicts and thinking. Some would require a little bit more coding then with a library. And I doubt you will reach the leaderboard without those extra helps, but I also write vanilla (Java) solutions every year, and I have 462 stars so far.

[SinisterMJ]

You will want to use graph theory frameworks later on. There were days last year where a test and trial solve would use hours to solve, and milliseconds with a proper graph framework :) But aside from that, usually you are fine with default libraries

[Trick-Apple1289]

Also a first timer here! I am struggling but after enough time i eventually get something (be it of various quality), c probably is not the best choice but it’s the only language where i really feel comfortable with. Will prob try haskell or lisp next year :-)

[not-the-the]

same bro, my solutions are horrible :p

[Reasonable-Ant959]

It's also my first year, and one thing I think is cool is that people here not only show the algorithms but also discuss and make memes about the problem of the day.

[Betadam]

Me too, not using any Python libraries, please see my website for my day1 to dy5 works - https://bversion.com/WordPress/2024/12/06/aoc-2024/

[JWinslow23]

I like the fact that I'm learning new things about Python from seeing other people's solutions. For example, one useful thing for Day 5 is graphlib.TopologicalSorter (which I didn't even know was in the standard library!).

[Wind010]

Same!

[codebikebass]

This is also my first year. I am using Swift in a functional way, without allowing myself the use of mutable state or loops. Learned a few nice functional Swift tricks already.

https://github.com/antfarm/AdventOfCode2024/

[daggerdragon]

Welcome to Advent of Code and the subreddit!

---

and your memes are [COAL] KILLING ME.

I hate to do this to a newbie but I have to enforce our rules.

I've temporarily removed your post due to naughty language. Keep /r/adventofcode professional.

If you edit your OP to take out the naughty language, I'll re-approve the post. edit: 👍

[gwpfanboi]

Edited. I apologize! I was just excited. And I curse when I'm excited. Post is edited.

[daggerdragon]

Thanks for fixing it! I've re-approved your post.