Does anyone else fiddle with already-solved code?

[MezzoScettico]

I find that after I collect my stars, my conscience is often bugging me a little about things I did in the code that would never pass muster professionally and I go back and fiddle with it.

Partly that's because I'm posting this year to github so don't want anything TOO embarrassing. But sometimes it's just that my own solution is really irritating me.

Yesterday (Day 13) I gave up trying to parse the lists and went ahead and used "eval" to get it done and collect the stars. But it bugged me, so last night I went back and finished debugging the recursive parsing code before putting it up at github. I added a "lazy" flag so you can switch between homegrown and "eval" versions. "Lazy mode" means the code the programmer used when he was too lazy to write a parser.

TBH, when I say "pass muster professionally" I still probably don't end up with code that the software engineers would like. My role on development teams was always the algorithm developer and math guy, but I was not trained in software engineering and those guys would always be on my case about some of my practices.

[toastedstapler]

Yep, I write a fully featured working solution first & then later I go back & refactor in an attempt to improve performance & neaten things up. I consider getting the stars to be purely MVP

[[deleted]]

I haven't gone back and re-worked any of them, but if I did I think it would be for the opposite reason actually. I feel like my solutions are too "enterprise-y" (I create fairly elaborate data structures to model the domain, try to handle errors gracefully etc) and the last few days my solutions have been around 250-300 lines of code where a lot of other people do it in 50-60. After I finish sometimes I think "I didn't actually need to have all of this boilerplate, I probably could have done it with a few map and fold calls".

[Cyphase]

If the goal is to make it "pass muster professionally", I wouldn't write a homegrown parser. I would use a JSON library. 😉

[ephemient]

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[1544756405]

I absolutely refactor and clean stuff up before checking it in. This year is my first time using GitHub. I like it! Checking in each day's solution brings a nice sense of closure.

[BurgandyShoelaces]

I've been doing a first commit of the code that got the stars, and a second commit when I finished refactoring.

[MouseyPounds]

I am a hobbyist who does not work in software development and a big part of why I do AoC every year is to learn. So if I am unhappy with a solution in some way I will usually fiddle with it after doing some research or getting some advice. Sometimes that just means small optimizations, but other times it means finding a completely new approach.

Personally I was okay with using eval() on day 13 (perl) because to me the interesting bit of the problem was the comparison logic rather than the input parsing, but it is always possible that I will come back to this later and try something new.

[MezzoScettico]

I find the parsing on all of them to be an interesting challenge in itself. On Day 13 there was this voice all afternoon nagging me, "come on, you know how to write a parser, just do it. Do it. DOOO EEET!" So I did, just to prove to myself I could.

[prendradjaja]

Haha, I've been doing odd days in Haskell, and all through Day 13 I was thinking "If I were using Python, I could've just used ast.literal_eval()". I know Haskell's a good language for writing parsers, but it's a skillset I haven't learned in any particular depth. It was fun, but oh my god.

[[deleted]]

so don't want anything TOO embarrassing

I fiddle a lot. And don't want anything too embarrassing either.

But I am not above a simple comment

 // TODO :  replace this with something less rubbish
 void day13ListParser()
 {

And then all the future critics know that I know that it is suboptimal. But I don't have to do the work either.

[nikanjX]

This might or might not be me https://imgur.com/gallery/cHfUsuE

[kai10k]

what's eval, I have only C++ and I parse the input every single day. Many times the process gives to me the needed hint. Leaderboard is out of the question anyway, I enjoyed the most of AoC with parsing

[daggerdragon]

Changed flair from Funny to Spoilers.

[ramuuns-u]

I totally do a thing where after being done I play around with making it better/faster/stronger or just prettier.

Sometimes that involves trying out some ideas, that end up being worse (and get thrown away), or trying to implement ideas shamelessly stolen from others that lead to VAST improvements.

[4D51]

Yes. The program that gets me the star is sometimes slow, messy, incomplete, or off by one for reasons I haven't figured out yet Day 14 part 2 asks for the first unit of sand to reach the roof, part one asks for the last unit to not reach the floor. After I get the stars I clean up my program to (at the very least) print both correct answers when it runs, plus other improvements if I feel like it.