5 ms·
Like every year, I feel I'm being lured in by an overly easy day 1. Then somewhere between day 10 and 15, there will be a steep increase in difficulty and I'll
by LandR 5y ago
Like every year, I feel I'm being lured in by an overly easy day 1.
Then somewhere between day 10 and 15, there will be a steep increase in difficulty and I'll tap out for the year. Then come back to the puzzles over the course of the year and maybe knock out another one or two.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoYup, the first couple of days are always simple, but then you're on Saturday of week 2 and wondering why it's already 4 AM.
- codingdave 5y agoAgreed - I did Day One by copy/pasting the input into a spreadsheet and calculating the answers in additional columns. I suspect I'll need to actually write code soon, though. And give up soon after that.
- jaywalk 5y agoI did the same thing. I was about to start writing some code, and then figured it would be much quicker to just drop it in Excel and write a couple formulas.
- drc500free 5y agoI usually get at least 10-15 days in using Excel, and sometimes can do the later ones as well. Some of the problems are MUCH easier this way, especially since I moved to Product years ago.
- bhrgunatha 5y agoThere are some plots [1] of the time taken for the first 100 solutions to part 1 (silver dot) and part 2 (gold dot). They're a good visual indication of the relative difficulty of each question and how the difficulty of the second part increases. [1] http://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/scatterplot/ http://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/scatterplot/
- Strilanc 5y agoI like that the data clearly shows the server issues on day 1.
- djaychela 5y agoThose plots are really comforting for me, as on the days where a part was difficult (such as day 20 part 2 last year) I didn't find a solution. Thanks, I'll be keeping an eye on them this year as things progress (or not!)
- wpietri 5y agoOoh, that's really interesting. And given how many folks here talk about dropping out as it gets harder, that suggests the later problems look easier than they are.
- Jtsummers 5y agoThe weekday problems tend to be easier so you get a ramp up, but with drops in difficulty. A lot of people give up after one or two of the hard days and don't continue, but there's no actual requirement to do them in order. If they'd skip the hard ones they'd probably find several more solvable (for them) problems remaining in the year.
- pedrosorio 5y agoThese plots only include the first 100 people. Those dropping out as it gets harder were unlikely to be be represented in the top 100 for later problems either way.
- artursapek 5y ago...is the y axis showing DD:HH:MM or HH:MM:SS?
- Jtsummers 5y agoHH:MM:SS, the first 100 solvers are usually done within minutes, hours at most, and never days. None of the problems are that hard.
- time_to_smile 5y agoAnd for anyone celebrating the holidays day 10-15 tends to be where I find real life holiday planning/activities start to rapidly take over my free time. I'm certainly not going to miss out on eggnog with friends and family so I can solve a few extra AoC problems. I personally don't mind, if I spend 10 days learning a new language and solving some problems I'm satisfied. I'm still very excited when AoC comes up every year!
- simmonmt 5y agoYou only have yourself to blame if you stop early due to misplaced priorities :)