12 ms·
Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same. After thinking, "maybe puzzles co
by thomascountz 1y ago
Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same.
After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?"
And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it.
And aren't we so lucky that it isn't! Aren't we lucky to have had the prior 500+ challenges given as gifts over the years! Aren't we lucky to have a great demonstration of humility and care! Aren't we lucky to have 12 new gifts to look forward to this year!
Thank you!
- petesergeant 1y agoI’ve been trying to design a puzzle for a game this year that humans can solve but LLMs can’t. I’ve come up with one, but it was hard work! It’s based around message cracking.
- ekimekim 1y agoThere was one in a previous AoC that I think stumped a lot of AI at the time because it involved something that was similar to poker with the same terminology but different rules. The AI couldn't help but fall into a "this is poker" trap and make a solution that follows the standard rules.
- petesergeant 1y agoInteresting! Maybe that’s the general way to approach these things
- sunrunner 1y agoWas that 2023's Day 7 'Camel Cards' [1]? [1] https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/7 https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/7
- gf000 1y agoI mean, wasn't pretty much the second half of all AoC exercises beyond LLM capabilities? I remember there being multiple accounts trying to one-shot AoC and all ended on day 10 or so.
- fud101 1y ago[flagged]
- TeMPOraL 1y agoSince a "sentence", much like everything else in practice, is almost but not quite what the formal definition says, just use an LLM for this task.
- fainpul 1y agoI mean, you could just vibe code that.
- GCUMstlyHarmls 1y agoI mean is there a difference between asking an LLM via a prompt or asking an LLM via comment box?
- dinkelberg 1y agoA huge pet peeve of mine is people getting annoyed by phrases like "I mean." :)
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoWe all have our writing quirks, like how some people use shorthand for words where there is only a marginal difference (like "people" => "ppl"), or even people who capitalize the start of sentences, but not the start of their whole text. Some thoughts maybe should remain internal :)
- snovv_crash 1y agoIt affects a certain disposition for the writer; the information it contains isn't in the actual data they are expressing, but rather the state of mind that they express it from, which can be important context. Oftentimes it can indicate exasperation, which is an important social queue to be able to pick up on. A little excerpt from Arlo Guthrie "I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench, because you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug." Imagine that without the "I mean"s in it, and the importance of how they convey his stance on the situation.
- Cpoll 1y agoIsn't that easily solved by changing the terminology before giving it to the LLM?
- huflungdung 1y agoHow many <$letter>s are in the word <word with $letters>
- Crespyl 1y agoThe bigger LLMs have generally figured out this specific problem.
- Gigachad 1y agoHave a look at https://arcprize.org/ https://arcprize.org/ They have hundreds of challenges that humans can solve in under a minute which LLMs can not. Seems the general trend is figuring out the rules or patterns of the challenge when there are few examples and no instructions.
- petesergeant 1y agoAh, it also needs to be challenging for humans. It's a prize to win something. I just didn't want people to throw the question into Claude Code.
- mewpmewp2 1y agoPerhaps coding exercises that require 2d or 3d thinking, or similar. This is where I have seen LLMs struggle a lot. There are probably other areas too.
- loeg 1y agoJust have to incorporate good judgement in some way.
- LPisGood 1y agoFor more examples of such problems check Jane street puzzles of the month
- petesergeant 1y agoThose will almost certainly be too hard for the target audience
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles Really? The name of the event is "Advent of Code". Having 25 puzzles is easily its most strongly-determined aspect. You could argue for 23-29 puzzles, or perhaps for 5, but at 12 what's the name supposed to refer to?
- eterm 1y agoWell advent calendars traditionally had 24 doors.
- majoe 1y agoThis lead me done a rabbit hole on wikipedia: Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago. The four week advent period goes back to the 7th century and was introduced by pope Gregory I..
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> This l[e]d me done a rabbit hole on wikipedia: > Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago. Well, Wikipedia starts its "History" section in 1945, which is 80 years ago. But what it says about advent calendars in 1945 is that they were lower-quality reprints of earlier designs. This strongly implies that they weren't a new concept in 1945. The German wikipedia is more interested in the concept and cites the word Adventskalenders to the novel Buddenbrooks, which features one set in the year 1869 but was published in 1901. Either way, the calendars were clearly an established cultural phenomenon well before 1945. Looking at the talk page (for the English article), it seems that the history section was provided by a "translation group" from their translation of a matching section of the German article. It's not clear why they began with the post-war period; the German page goes back much further than that, which was also true at the time they provided their translation. But this does explain why the English "history" section begins by referring to prior context that doesn't exist in the English article.
- this_user 1y ago
- TeMPOraL 1y agoHate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place. > Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it. It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zeroCalories 1y agoWell, Christmas is cancelled this year I guess :(
- TeMPOraL 1y agoNot necessarily. If they insist on there being only 12 puzzles, all they need to Save Christmas is to start the event on Christmas day, and rename it to "12 Puzzles of Christmas" or "Advent of Three Kings of Code", or such -- see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710963.
- kleiba 1y agoThey could also publish the puzzles only every second day, I guess.
- gs17 1y agoI think the easiest way to have 24/25 of something would be to have the "part 2" for each puzzle get released the next day. It would probably ruin the momentum about as much as having days off would (as another alternative to make the timing fit "advent"), but there could be a fun extra layer of puzzle with a hint of what the part 2 will be so people can try to speculate and modify their code in anticipation.
- boccaff 1y agoI am not aware of Eric saying something about that alternative, but this comment on reddit[1] makes a lot of sense to me: > Given that part 2 is often a very simple modification of part 1, this could lead to many of the days being total letdowns. I can enjoy a simple puzzle, but I'd be a bit disappointed if one day is a single line change to the previous day. I'd also add that not having to be worried everyday about something makes a lot of sense. He can have fewer days "on call" in December with. [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1ocwh04/changes_to_advent_of_code_starting_this_december/nkt3l5g/ https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/1ocwh04/chang...
- rbits 1y agoPlus, I like doing Part 2 immediately after Part 1, cause then I don't have to remember how my solution worked.