3 ms·

I can see skipping APL. Also, Rust could be frustrating if you only had a day. It like saying you are going to learn a new sport every day and skipping snowboar

I can see skipping APL. Also, Rust could be frustrating if you only had a day. It like saying you are going to learn a new sport every day and skipping snowboarding because while you can always kick or throw a ball badly, just standing up and falling down continuously for a day does not actually teach you anything about snowboarding. Forth would be a good one though. Both simple and different.

tialaramex 4y ago
It's likely that the professor knows some Rust already. In which case Rust is a powerful tool to bring to AoC late on because you can afford to take a not-so-algorithmically clever approach and Rust's optimiser will save you. Take day 16. The professor did it in Python, with which they have some experience. My Part II solution is pretty bad, it's a combinatorial explosion resulting from a search of the solution space with both the elephant and myself trying every option. But, I wrote it in Rust, so this bad solution finishes in five minutes. If I'd written this terrible solution in Python it may have taken hours to finish...