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Advent of Code – solve a puzzle every day
- such_a_casual 11y agoIt's not acceptable to force the use of a twitter/github/google/reddit login.
- lauritz 11y agoGiven that everyone gets a different 'input' string for every problem to prevent the simplest form of cheating and to enable such a thing as a leaderboard, I think this is a very reasonable measure, better than having yet another e-mail login for a service that is by definition seasonal. Also, when you connect it to GitHub, it does only ask for a very limited amount of data. What solution would you have proposed?
- such_a_casual 11y agoA reply I made to another user in this thread: "You're joking right? The site could just use cookies like every flash game ever made. The site could generate a registration for the user. The site could take manual registration from the user. This trend of linking accounts between sites is completely inappropriate from people who are well aware of the privacy and security issues the internet faces today."
- maxerickson 11y agoWhat are the privacy implications of having your github account provide an oath token to some rando site that you input a few numbers and strings into? I guess they could collect wrong attempts and use them to try to shame people?
- such_a_casual 11y agoThere is no implication whatsoever. It's explicit. This website has no need for your irl identity (or even just your identity as a programmer).
- maxerickson 11y agoOkay, what are the dire problems that arise from sharing an identity with some rando site that you also put some numbers into?
- aaronem 11y agoUtterly nonexistent, which is why I'm surprised to see people making such a big damn deal over it. The privacy implications of having an identifiable account on any of the services used for AoC login are enormous by comparison, but I guess there's always some folks who'll "strain out gnats, yet swallow camels".
- justifier 11y agoi agree with your original post, but i'm assuming the login with other services bit was to reduce effort expelled in making the project having reddit on the list of options means the barrier to entry can be counted in keypresses you can make as many reddit accounts as you want, much like hn, where the only requirements are username and password make one and just treat it like an advent login
- such_a_casual 11y agoThat's a fair point. I'll take your advice and use a reddit account. Thank you.
- lauritz 11y agoWhile I agree that having one account to rule them all is generally a pretty bad idea if you're talking about projects that deal with sensitive data, I still think it's not that big a deal here. A cookie would tie you to one device, and I really think it is preferable to have this site (which is not dealing with any sensitive information about me whatsoever) not handle an e-mail/password combination, but let GitHub etc handle security. From a UX standpoint, I think this is a good solution that doesn't add too much complexity. If the app dealt with more private data, I would be screaming for a manual login myself.
- tln 11y agoIt's totally acceptable to a lot of people. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if adding email registration reduced the conversion rate. This adventofcode is a gem, you are really missing out if you let the registration system deter you.
- such_a_casual 11y agoEmail registration is the same thing. There's no reason that anyone should be forced to connect an account from another site to this one. However, at least with email addresses, it's trivial to use a temporary one.
- maxerickson 11y agoForce is the wrong word, the site has ~0 leverage over visitors.
- kryptiskt 11y agoIt's also trivial to get a throwaway reddit account.
- tremendo 11y agoOK, but of course no-one is forcing anyone to anything. You are completely free to not partake in the silly programming exercises, as there are plenty of alternatives out there for your enjoyment. You could even buy a book, in cash, disconnect your computer from the Internet and satisfy your programming desires in absolute privacy and anonymity. I, for one, have no problem with the site's requirements, and find it quite enjoyable. Happy Holidays.
- ant6n 11y agoWhich problem is solved by this (in Python)? ;-) try:input() except Exception as e: print e.offset
- catwell 11y agoI solved most of the 6 first days in Bash. I used Lua for days 4 and 6 for performance reasons (I have working solutions in Bash too, but they are way too slow).
- jschulenklopper 11y ago26 points, but no discussion here... I guess many were lured into the challenges, trying to solve the currently available puzzles instead of commenting. #nerd-sniping
- detaro 11y agoI'd say it is interesting, so the votes indicate "hey, more people should see this", but it is pretty straightforward what it is and means, so not much to discuss?
- riffraff 11y agonah, I would expect people to complain about puzzles being too easy, too hard, ugly graphics, nice retro style etc. I am with grandparent in guessing people are mostly playing :)
- ubernostrum 11y agoIt appears to require me to authenticate to it with a social network just to even try out the first puzzle. So that's a "close tab and move on" from me.
- aaronem 11y agoThere's a reason: it generates unique input data for each user, presumably to prevent a given user's answers from being reused. If you have a Github account, it's trivial to authenticate and doesn't request undue privileges with your account. (That's what I used.) Up to you whether that's too high a bar, but IMO it's really not asking a whole lot.
- such_a_casual 11y agoYou're joking right? The site could just use cookies like every flash game ever made. The site could generate a registration for the user. The site could take manual registration from the user. This trend of linking accounts between sites is completely inappropriate from people who are well aware of the privacy and security issues the internet faces today.
- darkknight3141 11y agoNice ! Would be a good idea to throw in a some bitcoins as a treasure at some stage ...Or maybe there already is ?
- rhaps0dy 11y agoI don't think it would be a good idea. The author already went through the work to make the website, to require him to pay you for having fun would be a bit too much.
- homarp 11y agohttp://adventofcode.com/about http://adventofcode.com/about says "If you'd like to support Advent of Code, you can do so indirectly by helping to Share it with others, or directly via Paypal or bitcoin. " so I guess you are welcome to throw in some bitcoins...
- rhaps0dy 11y agoThose are some happy little puzzles. Delightful! I suppose the problems get harder the closer we are to christmas?
- volent 11y agoThe problems are fresh & fun. I loved the day 4, almost felt like mining bitcoins :) Looking forward for the next puzzles !
- famousactress 11y ago"The first character in the instructions has position 1, the second character has position 2" This project seems awesome but playful -1 for non-zero-based-indexing :) [Edit:] another note (obviously I'm hooked).. This instruction isn't 100% parseable. It's not clear whether the desire is for three unique vowels need to appear or if three positions in the string need to be vowels. For instance, would 'aaa' qualify? "It contains at least three vowels (aeiou only), like aei, xazegov, or aeiouaeiouaeiou" [Edit Again: Nevermind... the test example 'aaa' clears it up]
- SanderMak 11y agoIt played pretty nicely with using map followed by a scanLeft (which prepends its starting element) on the input. Happy accident...
- kenrick95 11y agoNice site! I've completed till Day 5 and enjoyed the puzzles. I solved them mainly in JS on browser console, although for the Day 4 challenge I had to run it on node js so my browser won't hang; and also Day 2 challenge in C++ to take advantage of the scanf function in parsing the input.
- Beltiras 11y agoLovely puzzles. Solved day 5 without resorting to regexes (which was kinda fun). Only gripe I have is that I can't use requests to get at the data.
- jschulenklopper 11y ago> Only gripe I have is that I can't use requests to get at the data. The input.txt files, or the code to be used as input/starting point? I just download the file (or save the code) instead of re-downloading it over and over. (Is also handy if you're coding in the train or another place without internet connection.)
- aaronem 11y agoI'm having the same problem. Getting the session token from a request made via browser, and using that token in my programmatic requests, does work, but that feels like cheating. What I really want to do is authenticate to Advent of Code programmatically via Github, but I haven't found a way to get my code to authenticate to Github itself; I keep getting redirects to github.com/login.
- maxerickson 11y agoAnybody have a Python 3 approach to problem 4 that doesn't end up with the delightful: secret+str(n).encode() In it? That's plenty fast enough for the problem at hand, but it's somehow annoying.
- tremendo 11y agoLove this. I did the first couple of days within irb (Ruby REPL) before deciding to actually write scripts, seeing the second exercise for a given day builds on the first. Found it interesting there's a "Leader board" since well, there's no "points" to accumulate other than completing two puzzles per day, so whomever is listed there is just those 100 who came to see the puzzles first. So far they're not very hard, but still fun.