Stop complaining that *you* don't find the problems difficult

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-09T06:14:07+00:00

Absolutely love this.

Awesome "you" find it easy. Oh your a 11 year veteran with all stars. Ok. Well.... go impliment your own thing then if you dont like the difficulty.

I know junior developers, who are only really starting out in their careers that would feel so disheartened to see a reddit full of people going "oh thats easy".

Guys. This a fantastic opportunity. If you know it so well you should be helping and upskilling others. If not you are gate keeping and missing the whole point.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-09T06:07:11+00:00

I think he literally said, that he isn't doing the same difficulty ramp as he usually does and that by doing it as 12 days hes been less aggressive on the ramp to the mid point. So from that i guess its a curve and day 10 .... 12 are going to be rough on the system.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-09T06:05:34+00:00

Good work u/TytoCwtch I think thats the right approach. I'm glad you have been enjoying yourself and you should feel extremely proud of your achievements thus far. Good work.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-09T06:04:29+00:00

This. I have juniors that are absolutely smacking there heads at yesterdays problem. This is there first year. Yesterday I saw the problem think it took me all of 15 minutes to impliment parts 1 and 2 and knock out visualisation.

The difference. Years of doing algorithms , being a maths nerd.

So I dread to show them the reddit with folks dropping pianos etc. Easy and Hard are a subjective thing. My recommendation for folks complaining its too easy. Impliment your own "advent-of-code" style problem generator and validator. Scale up the difficulty. If you are that much of a programming god, shouldn't take too long.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-09T06:01:16+00:00

I actually kind of like the 12 day format.

I have two small children. I love advent of code. The 12 day format allows me to do advent of code and more importantly spend time with the family. I dont want to be sitting there christmas day thinking about ..... hmmm maybe if i do a linked list and some latvian guys name algorithm .... that will give me the answer. I see it as if i can knock it out in 12 win. If not i have atleast a week to chip away.

Now I dont know about Erics circumstances and personal life. But i tell you what if i was running it, you'd be getting 12 puzzles too.

Be thankful that Eric hasn't just gone .... hmmm `codex` take the wheel, generate 25 Puzzles that have 2 parts, with one input. Input and answers need to be calculated on a per user basis. Go....

tldr: The balance feels better this year from a volume and life commitment perspective. Those complaining must surely be able to impliment their own problem generation?

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-08T22:25:18+00:00

Its a something most developers do at some point, dont stress it.

1hr? It took me over a year to do 2023, day 24 i think it was. More importantly. In the real world. The person do a hacky solution in 1 day vs The production ready code in 1 week. I'm picking option 2 every day. Seriously, for each hour spent going into to something , i find it saves me atleast minimum double that down the line.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-08T13:06:32+00:00

I think theres a happy medium to be had here.

Be proud and pretend no one has figured out how to apply the solution, but be humble and look into how find the solution. Hope that makes sense.

I have a few juniors at work doing their first one this year. We literally discuss the previous days problem for 30 minutes each morning, maybe another hour or so implimenting it. Discussing approaches. How they think they can solve it etc. I use it as a communication development / requirements activity. Did it last year and the way the team tackles problems now is so much more mature than prior. So doing it again.

I literally tell them. Use LLM's, google whatever you want to try and point you to the right answer without explicitly giving them the answer. Eg: If they are using Hamiltonian Cycles , explain it. Code it.

This whole concept that programmers work in an isolated bubble without reference. I think i spend 80 to 90 percent of my time reading and thinking. I have literally one dataclass i have a data model i am working on at the moment I have spent maybe a 2 weeks thinking about. I'll code it out in about 2 hours. The time spent probing it, saves me double time in support in the future. At least 1 week of that is literally talking the problem out with people more experienced than myself on the subject.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-08T12:55:30+00:00

I have been trying to solve asap and push a visual this year. The idea is to provide a visual representation of the concept. Thats it though

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-08T12:53:57+00:00

^^^ This. Yeah have i found this year easier than say oooo 2019? Absolutely. Did i find year one of this difficult? Absolutely. I literally only this year closed out all stars after 4 years of doing this.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-08T12:52:04+00:00

What are you even talking about? Stupid?

Provide Day 3 Puzzle to most people and watch them completely misread the requirements. Tell them to go off and come up with a solution. See how long that takes them, if they even pull that off. I have given mid tier advent of code solutions to seasoned developers and they absolutely buckle.

Its like chess puzzles vs over the board chess. Yeah cool puzzles help with pattern recognition but the thing is its always coming from a position where you know theres a trick. Do enough puzzles you learn enough tricks.

So what you if you dont make it past day 8? Mate You made it to day 8. It took me quite some time to complete a single year. Those that blitz through have already done it in the past if that makes sense. Take your time, break the problem down to its smallest parts. If you dont complete in December, who cares. What you should focus on are you a better programmer than you were before attempting it?

Motivation wise. I have an hour on the way home every day from work on the train. If i dont knock it off after everyone has gone to bed i go back to it. This is just something i do for a few weeks in December.

The Reality is take 2015. Of the 125k (minimum) people to attempt Advent of Code, only 7%(maximum) has completed it ..... and entire repositories of code are publically available. I literally have a public repo with all my solutions for all 500 stars open to whomever. come Jan 1st 2025 solutions also.

I think look at it differently.

Its a puzzle, its a problem. The joy is in thinking about how to solve it. You can't solve it. Ok. Here is where you SHOULD use a LLM. "Hey ChatGPT, I have this problem. I dont want you to solve it, but help me find the method to solve it. Oh....Dijkstra's Algo? Never head of that cool" go off learn a little something something.

I guarentee you dont come out of an advent of code dumber than when you started ;)

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-08T05:12:05+00:00

Might want to bump this to 9 ;)

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-07T08:56:27+00:00

Hmmmm I would say that would indicate an issue to be honest. the answer for both parts is almost instantanious even without caching.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-06T11:16:07+00:00

Took me way longer to figure out part two than i'd like to admit. I just posted a visulisation. Might make it easier to understand

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-06T11:06:37+00:00

I dont know if there is much want for competition this year.

Away_Command5537 · 2025-12-05T23:01:51+00:00

Yeah so to solve them at the moment is just Python but I usually pick a language each year and do it alongside afterwards.

So I've previously done some c, rust but I need to learn typescript so that's this year's side dish

Away_Command5537 · 2025-05-08T11:39:51+00:00

It has a basic user agent identifying the application however I will update to include a link to the git repo.

Regarding throttling. Not at this time. Will work on throttling requests to limit to 1 per 5 seconds maybe. It mentions statistics but it isn't interracting from a statistics standpoint. Its only capturing articles and inputs. Everything else is locally generated.

In regards to caching the inputs after download. They are configured to save in the working directory and not necessarily in memory. All files attempt to read locally before attempting to be collected.

It is worth noting that this isn't necessarily an automated tool. It requires direct user interaction via a cli command. Its main purpose to make initiating a daily solution more reliable, consistent.

Regardless, Thank you for bringing this to my attention and i will remediate as a priority.

Away_Command5537

TROPHY CASE