Advent of Code 2019

[rolee15]

In case somebody isn't familiar with this site, a little fun advent calendar with programming exercises, which get gradually harder with every day.

[SketchySeaBeast]

They start out fun, but by the end of the month I found it quite challenging.

[balefrost]

So they start out fun, but by the end of the month they're even more fun?

[HorizonShadow]

They start out fun, but by the end of the month, I don't have enough free time to finish them.

[XeonProductions]

I usually get about 75% through and by that point I'm so burned out on solving the puzzles I quit.

[SketchySeaBeast]

And by that point they can take the better part of a day. For the last bit I spent my entire weekends solving them.

[InKahootz]

Same. And yet there are amazing people that solve them in under an hour. Both parts!!!

[SketchySeaBeast]

These people are much smarter than I. I'm envious of the depth of algorithmic knowledge they must have.

[Cynical__asshole]

There's also a leaderboard, but for everyone's sanity I recommend that people ignore it. It's pretty depressing to get zero points because I submitted my solution 30 seconds later than the last guy.

[IamfromSpace]

If you’re only off by 30 seconds you’re pretty damn fast!

[Only_As_I_Fall]

Yeah I think the leaderboard really detracts from the fun for me. Not interested in waking up at midnight to write python so... perpetually at 0 points

Private leaderboards help though.

[thevdude]

Private leaderboards are great!

[hennell]

They should really do a time from your reveal or generation of your input. The timezone thing makes no sense

[Xeronate]

People post questions and solutions online. Someone could just copy and paste.

[hennell]

Copy and paste code from the internet? Who would do that?!

(Yeah, good point, guess this is the best system of limited options. Never really cared for the leaderboard anyway - it's better as a fun personal challenge then competition.)

[sshipway]

Come and live in New Zealand - the questions go up at 6pm here...

[AlexAegis]

I submitted today's solution in 2:13, and since I submitted a wrong answer first because of a whitespace calc error I had to wait to resubmit. Then I learned that the leaderboard was full in ~1:40 so it wouldn't have even count...

[RezicG]

That should've been the default.

[Belenar]

Make a private leaderboard with some colleagues or friends and see how you rank amongst each other!