3 ms·

What are you guys "using" the AoC for? Highscore hunting in your most favorite environment? Learning something new, or unusual? For me, this year, I'll give it

by harco 7y ago

What are you guys "using" the AoC for? Highscore hunting in your most favorite environment? Learning something new, or unusual? For me, this year, I'll give it another try to get into rust a bit more. Or maybe finally golang, after all these years of enterprisey java.

Fellshard 7y ago
I've been doing the last few years in Clojure (mostly to keep my knowledge of the corelib and the functional paradigm fresh until I can use it in a project). It helps in some problems, and hurts in others - sometimes an imperative, mutable approach is simply the only practical way, and I've fallen back to Java once or twice to do so. For the simulation-style challenges, I've found the language to be an absolute pleasure, giving some truly lovely code; I'm fairly sure you could make similarly lovely OO code as well, but my tastes find the functional expression of the simulation extremely attractive. Some debugging certainly does get easier, in my opinion.
patrickdavey 7y ago
I've used it to play with a different language each year, I find the puzzles perfect for that. This year though, I'm not even starting until January! I find I get completely obsessed with trying to complete them and it can ruin December for (the people around) me ;) Looking forward to January 1st though :D
stefanchrobot 7y ago
Last year I did "Advent of Elixir" at my company with the puzzles from AoC. It was slow paced but I got some people excited about Elixir! I also followed José Valim on Twitch to see how he tackled those. If you want to stay competitive, you've got to invest some time right before Christmas, so I gave up on that pretty quickly. Instead I did the puzzles at my on pace and spent some extra time playing with the puzzles that I found especially fun: https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1080574491535781899 https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1080574491535781899 https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1078448111041892352 https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1078448111041892352 As a bonus, you get something to show whenever you're asked to share some code when applying for a job! And then there's the learning factor - the puzzles are progressively more difficult, but I guess still doable for the average programmer. At some point some of them start to feel repetitive, but that's great if you get a good hold on processing data in your language of choice.
- lilsoso 7y ago
  Do the problems require familiarity with say more serious algorithmic techniques such as graphs?
  - tofflos 7y ago
    In general - no. Not in order to solve the problem. But participants familiar with such techniques will often recognize a pattern in a given problem and provide an elegant solution.
gerikson 7y ago
I don't get to code much in the day job, so having a bite-sized puzzle is great entertainment.
gonzus 7y ago
For me it was the ideal way to wade into the rust waters last year, and quickly find out it (rust) was not my cup of tea, at least not at the time. This year I will try to follow along in zig, and see where that takes me.
estomagordo 7y ago
Mainly high score hunting in Python 3, which is my fastest language. But I also plan to then do every challenge in Perl, which I want to start learning for professional reasons.

by harco 7y ago

Fellshard 7y ago

I've been doing the last few years in Clojure (mostly to keep my knowledge of the corelib and the functional paradigm fresh until I can use it in a project). It helps in some problems, and hurts in others - sometimes an imperative, mutable approach is simply the only practical way, and I've fallen back to Java once or twice to do so. For the simulation-style challenges, I've found the language to be an absolute pleasure, giving some truly lovely code; I'm fairly sure you could make similarly lovely OO code as well, but my tastes find the functional expression of the simulation extremely attractive. Some debugging certainly does get easier, in my opinion.

patrickdavey 7y ago

I've used it to play with a different language each year, I find the puzzles perfect for that. This year though, I'm not even starting until January! I find I get completely obsessed with trying to complete them and it can ruin December for (the people around) me ;) Looking forward to January 1st though :D

stefanchrobot 7y ago

Last year I did "Advent of Elixir" at my company with the puzzles from AoC. It was slow paced but I got some people excited about Elixir! I also followed José Valim on Twitch to see how he tackled those. If you want to stay competitive, you've got to invest some time right before Christmas, so I gave up on that pretty quickly. Instead I did the puzzles at my on pace and spent some extra time playing with the puzzles that I found especially fun: https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1080574491535781899 https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1080574491535781899 https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1078448111041892352 https://twitter.com/StefanChrobot/status/1078448111041892352 As a bonus, you get something to show whenever you're asked to share some code when applying for a job! And then there's the learning factor - the puzzles are progressively more difficult, but I guess still doable for the average programmer. At some point some of them start to feel repetitive, but that's great if you get a good hold on processing data in your language of choice.

lilsoso 7y ago
Do the problems require familiarity with say more serious algorithmic techniques such as graphs?
- tofflos 7y ago
  In general - no. Not in order to solve the problem. But participants familiar with such techniques will often recognize a pattern in a given problem and provide an elegant solution.

gerikson 7y ago

I don't get to code much in the day job, so having a bite-sized puzzle is great entertainment.

gonzus 7y ago

For me it was the ideal way to wade into the rust waters last year, and quickly find out it (rust) was not my cup of tea, at least not at the time. This year I will try to follow along in zig, and see where that takes me.

estomagordo 7y ago

Mainly high score hunting in Python 3, which is my fastest language. But I also plan to then do every challenge in Perl, which I want to start learning for professional reasons.