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This will be my first year. Can you explain what your toolkit is? I don’t have anything prepared and if people are going in with a toolkit it seems like I might

This will be my first year. Can you explain what your toolkit is? I don’t have anything prepared and if people are going in with a toolkit it seems like I might not be prepared?

matttb 7y ago
Really just for the people who go for leaderboard slots. You don't need to do any preparing.
gerikson 7y ago
Previous year’s contests are still up. I suggest doing day 1 to 3 of all of them to get a feel for how it all works. The problems start out easy! My “toolkit” is Perl and an Emacs expansion that adds some boilerplate reading text files and stuffing them into a list. Edit here's what's expanded when I type "aocinit" an empty buffer: https://gist.github.com/gustafe/27be34b3c57728f40101a93a95cec4fa https://gist.github.com/gustafe/27be34b3c57728f40101a93a95ce...
Fellshard 7y ago
Pretty much what others have said. In this case, a language and library I'm comfortable with, and some specific tools for handling the types of input and logic that tend to recur in each year's problems. Since it's your first year, none of that's needed - just enjoy the puzzles, and search for any useful patterns or tools as you go along. Eric's recommendation is to make the puzzles work for whatever goal you're aiming for - speed isn't necessarily one he recommends, instead recommending it as a tool to learn new languages, or to try new skills, such as visualization.
jodrellblank 7y ago
The puzzles are released each day at the same time - 5am UK time (I think it's midnight Eastern Standard Time but don't hold me to that) - and people race for the first correct answers. Check last year's leaderboards and look how fast people answer: https://adventofcode.com/2018/leaderboard/day/1 https://adventofcode.com/2018/leaderboard/day/1 You don't have to race, it isn't required, but the people who do race are very very quick off the draw - they have scripts which login and download their data file as soon as it's available, then templated code ready to read it in as if it were numbers, as if it were a CSV, and load up some counter variables and arrays to save a few seconds typing, and they skim read ignoring the story, trying to jump to the calculation, code it in moments, run it, get an answer, paste into the site, and verify it. Then download the datafile for part two, skim read the story for part two, modify their code to handle it, run it, get an answer paste that in. First person did both those, all that, in 1 min 48 sec. (!) Toolkit is mostly "I've done this last year, know what held me up, or what patterns came up several times", you don't need one at all if you're not racing for the first 100 answers. btw. you can sign up now and do previous year's puzzles if you want to see what it's like.
- gonzus 7y ago
  All of that is very well and I am glad those people find that approach enticing, but I would hate it myself. I participate for the pure joy of solving a puzzle and learning more idiomatic ways of doing that with my language of choice. If that takes me 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day or 1 week, that's totally fine with me.
z3t4 7y ago
I use the REPL in the browser dev tools. But when the puzzles get too hard for small pure functions I usually give up and focus on real problems instead :P

This will be my first year. Can you explain what your toolkit is? I don’t have anything prepared and if people are going in with a toolkit it seems like I might not be prepared?

matttb 7y ago

Really just for the people who go for leaderboard slots. You don't need to do any preparing.

gerikson 7y ago

Previous year’s contests are still up. I suggest doing day 1 to 3 of all of them to get a feel for how it all works. The problems start out easy! My “toolkit” is Perl and an Emacs expansion that adds some boilerplate reading text files and stuffing them into a list. Edit here's what's expanded when I type "aocinit" an empty buffer: https://gist.github.com/gustafe/27be34b3c57728f40101a93a95cec4fa https://gist.github.com/gustafe/27be34b3c57728f40101a93a95ce...

Fellshard 7y ago

Pretty much what others have said. In this case, a language and library I'm comfortable with, and some specific tools for handling the types of input and logic that tend to recur in each year's problems. Since it's your first year, none of that's needed - just enjoy the puzzles, and search for any useful patterns or tools as you go along. Eric's recommendation is to make the puzzles work for whatever goal you're aiming for - speed isn't necessarily one he recommends, instead recommending it as a tool to learn new languages, or to try new skills, such as visualization.

jodrellblank 7y ago

The puzzles are released each day at the same time - 5am UK time (I think it's midnight Eastern Standard Time but don't hold me to that) - and people race for the first correct answers. Check last year's leaderboards and look how fast people answer: https://adventofcode.com/2018/leaderboard/day/1 https://adventofcode.com/2018/leaderboard/day/1 You don't have to race, it isn't required, but the people who do race are very very quick off the draw - they have scripts which login and download their data file as soon as it's available, then templated code ready to read it in as if it were numbers, as if it were a CSV, and load up some counter variables and arrays to save a few seconds typing, and they skim read ignoring the story, trying to jump to the calculation, code it in moments, run it, get an answer, paste into the site, and verify it. Then download the datafile for part two, skim read the story for part two, modify their code to handle it, run it, get an answer paste that in. First person did both those, all that, in 1 min 48 sec. (!) Toolkit is mostly "I've done this last year, know what held me up, or what patterns came up several times", you don't need one at all if you're not racing for the first 100 answers. btw. you can sign up now and do previous year's puzzles if you want to see what it's like.

gonzus 7y ago
All of that is very well and I am glad those people find that approach enticing, but I would hate it myself. I participate for the pure joy of solving a puzzle and learning more idiomatic ways of doing that with my language of choice. If that takes me 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day or 1 week, that's totally fine with me.

z3t4 7y ago

I use the REPL in the browser dev tools. But when the puzzles get too hard for small pure functions I usually give up and focus on real problems instead :P