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Advent of Code 2025
- enby_instrument 11mo agoI can't wait to try this year's challenges.
- mynameismon 11mo agoIs it just me, or does it seem to be temporarily down?
- zwnow 11mo ago> Should I use AI to solve Advent of Code puzzles? No. If you send a friend to the gym on your behalf, would you expect to get stronger? Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be interesting for humans to solve - no consideration is made for whether AI can or cannot solve a puzzle. If you want practice prompting an AI, there are almost certainly better exercises elsewhere designed with that in mind. And yet I expect the whole leaderboard to be full of AI submissions... Edit: No leaderboard this year, nice!
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- stOneskull 11mo agoi don't think there is a global leaderboard this year. just private ones.
- retsibsi 11mo agoNot this time: > The global leaderboard was one of the largest sources of stress for me, for the infrastructure, and for many users. People took things too seriously, going way outside the spirit of the contest; some people even resorted to things like DDoS attacks. Many people incorrectly concluded that they were somehow worse programmers because their own times didn't compare. What started as a fun feature in 2015 became an ever-growing problem, and so, after ten years of Advent of Code, I removed the global leaderboard.
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- KolmogorovComp 11mo ago> And yet I expect the whole leaderboard to be full of AI submissions... There will be no global leaderboard this year.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoI mean they're great programming tests, for both people and AI I'd argue - like, it'd be impressive if an AI can come up with a solution in short order, especially with minimal help / prompting / steering. But it wouldn't be a personal achievement, and if it was a competition I'd label it as cheating.
- chongli 11mo agoI am so glad there is no leaderboard this year. Making it a competition really is against the spirit of advent calendars in general. It’s also not a fair competition by default simply due to the issue of time zones and people’s life schedules not revolving around it. There are plenty of programming competitions and hackathons out there. Let this one simply be a celebration of learning and the enjoyment of problem solving.
- zwnow 11mo agoYea fully agree. The leaderboards always made me feel bad.
- amitav1 11mo agoI agree with the first point but the second point feels irrelevant. Yeah, people's life schedules don't revolve around it, but that doesn't mean shouldn't make iy a competition. Most people who play on chess.com don't have lives that revolve around it, but that doesn't mean that chess.com should abolish Elo rankings.
- acedTrex 11mo agoThe global leaderboard encouraged bad behavior against the entire project. Including criminal things like attempting to ddos the site.
- poulpy123 11mo agoafai your elo score don't depend of your timezone
- chongli 11mo agoChess doesn't rank people based on how quickly they complete a puzzle after midnight EST (UTC-5). For people in large parts of Asia, midnight EST translates to late morning / early afternoon. This means someone in Asia can complete each AoC puzzle during daylight hours whereas someone in eastern North America will have to complete the puzzle in the middle of the night.
- losvedir 11mo agoDepends how you look at it. Some of my colleagues rave about Claude Code, so I was thinking about trying it out on these puzzles. In that sense it is "going to the gym", just for a different thing. Since I do AoC every year, I feel like it'll give me a good feel for Claude Code compared to my baseline. And it's not just "prompting", but figuring out a workflow with tests and brainstorming and iteration and all that. I guess if the LLM can just one-shot every puzzle that's less interesting, but I suppose it would be good to know it can do that...
- zwnow 11mo agoIt 100% can do that. LLMs are trained on an unfathomable amount of data. Every AoC puzzle can be solved by identifying the algorithm behind it. Its Leetcode in a friendlier and more festive spirit.
- d_watt 11mo agoLooks like after the AI automation rush last year, the leaderboard has been removed. Makes sense, a little sad that it was needed though.
- ellisv 11mo agoI never liked the global leaderboard since I was usually asleep when the puzzles were released. I likely never would have had a competitive time anyway.
- Jare 11mo agoI never had any hope or interest to compete in the leaderboard, but I found it fun to check it out, see times, time differences ("omg 1 min for part 1 and 6 for part 2"), lookup the names of the leaders to check if they have something public about their solutions, etc. One time I even ran into the name of an old friend so it was a good excuse to say hi.
- Booleans 11mo agoI believe that Everybody Codes has a leaderboard where it starts counting from when you first open the puzzle. So if you're looking for coding puzzles with a leaderboard that one would be fair for you. https://everybody.codes/events https://everybody.codes/events
- PaulRobinson 11mo agoAdvent of Code is one of the highlights of December for me. It's sad, but inevitable, that the global leaderboard had to be pulled. It's also understandable that this year is just 12 days, so takes some pressure off. If you've never done it before, I recommend it. Don't try and "win", just enjoy the problem solving and the whimsy.
- f1shy 11mo agoWhile is „only“ 12 days, are like 24 challenges. As no leaderboard is there, and I do it for fun, i will do it in 24 days.
- tclancy 11mo agoSame. I usually try to use it as the "real-world problem" I need for learning a new language. Is there anywhere that people have starter advice/ templates for various languages? I'd love to know - install like this - initialize a directory with this command - here are the VSCode extensions (or whatever IDE) that are the bare minimum for the language - here's the command for running tests
- thebytefairy 11mo agolearnxinyminutes.com is a good resource that tries to cover the key syntax/paradigms for each language, I find it a helpful starting point to skim.
- hollasch 11mo agoThis is an area where LLMs can really help out: getting started with an unfamiliar language/IDE/ framework.
- eichin 11mo agoThat sounds healthy! But I would note that there's been interesting community discussions on reddit in past years, and I've gotten caught up in the "finish faster so I can go join the reddit discussion without spoilers". It turns out you can have amazing in-jokes about software puzzles and ascii art - but it also taught me in a very visceral way that even for "little" problems, building a visualizer (or making sure your data structures are easy-to-visualize) is startlingly helpful... also that it's nice to have people to commiserate with who got stuck in the same garden path/rathole that you did.
- qsort 11mo agoI'm actually pleasantly surprised to see a 2025 edition, last year being the 10th anniversary and the LLM situation with the leaderboard were solid indications that it would have been a great time to wrap it up and let somebody else carry the torch. It's only going to be 12 problems rather than 24 this year and there isn't going to be a gloabl leaderboard, but I'm still glad we get to take part in this fun Christmas season tradition, and I'm thankful for all those who put in their free time so that we can get to enjoy the problems. It's probably an unpopular stance, but I've never done Advent of Code for the competitive aspect, I've always just enjoyed the puzzles, so as far as I'm concerned nothing was really lost.
- squigz 11mo agoIt's really disheartening that the culture has changed so much someone would think doing AoC puzzles just for the fun of it is an unpopular stance :( Doing things for the fun of it, for curiosity's sake, for the thrill of solving a fun problem - that's very much alive, don't worry!
- Waterluvian 11mo agoEliminating the leaderboard might help. By measuring it as a race, it becomes a race, and now the goal is the metric. Maybe just have a cool advent calendar thingy like a digital tree that gains an ornament for each day you complete. Each ornament can be themed for each puzzle. Of course I hope it goes without saying that the creator(s) can do it however they want and we’re nothing but richer for it existing.
- squigz 11mo ago> By measuring it as a race, it becomes a race, and now the goal is the metric. It becomes a race when you start seeing it as a race :) One can just... ignore the leaderboard
- Waterluvian 11mo agoThat’s also completely true and something I often say about gaming. You don’t like achievements? Just don’t do them. Your enjoyment shouldn’t be a function of how others interact with the product.
- encomiast 11mo agoA little sad that there are fewer puzzles. But also a glad that I'll see my wife and maybe even go outside during the second half of December this year.
- returningfory2 11mo agoI hope your wife is also glad!
- permalac 11mo agoDoes anyone know about any good sysadmin advent?
- ahoka 11mo agoI propose Advent of Outage: just pull a random plug in the server room every day.
- tgv 11mo agoHow about something like while [1]; do kill -9 $((rnd * 100000)); sleep 5; end Probably needs some external tool for the rnd function. On a serious note, I just saw this: https://linuxupskillchallenge.org https://linuxupskillchallenge.org
- udev4096 11mo agoThat's hardly an "upskill" imo. You would know almost all of it by running a linux server for a month or two
- pona-a 11mo agoBash has a built-in RANDOM. while true; do kill -9 $RANDOM sleep 5 done Or to kill running running PIDs each time while true; do rnd=$(ps -e -o pid= | shuf -n 1) kill -9 $rnd sleep 5 done
- fduran 11mo agoI haven't set up an advent event (maybe I should) but you can do yourself a challenge a day from SadServers.com
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- fduran 11mo agohttps://sadservers.com/advent https://sadservers.com/advent
- fainpul 11mo agoOpinion poll: Python is extremely suitable for these kind of problems. C++ is also often used, especially by competitive programmers. Which "non-mainstream" or even obscure languages are also well suited for AoC? Please list your weapon of choice and a short statement why it's well suited (not why you like it, why it's good for AoC).
- f1shy 11mo agoI’ve been doing them is JS and Common Lisp. I recommend the problems to help learning new languages.
- StopDisinfo910 11mo agoI respect the effort going into making Advent of Code but with the very heavy emphasis on string parsing, I'm not convinced it's a good way to learn most languages. Most problems are 80%-90% massaging the input with a little data modeling which you might have to rethink for the second part and algorithms used to play a significant role only in the last few days. That heavily favours languages which make manipulating string effortless and have very permissive data structures like Python dict or JS objects.
- f1shy 11mo agoYou are right. The exercises are heavy in one area. Still, for starting in a new language can be helpful: you have to do in/out with files. Data structures, and you will be using all flow control. So you will not be an ace, but can help to get started. I know people who make some arbitrary extra restriction, like “no library at all” which can help to learn the basics of a language. The downside I see is that suddenly you are solving algorithmic problems, which some times are bot trivial, and at the same time struggling with a new language.
- mhitza 11mo agoThat's a hard agree and a reason why anyone trying to learn Haskell, OCaml, or other language with minimal/"batteries depleted" stdlib will suffer. Sure Haskell comes packaged with parser combinators, but a new user having to juggle immutability, IO and monads all at once at the same time will be almost certainly impossible.
- Archit3ch 11mo agoAnyone doing this in OpenGL?
- legends2k 11mo agoI'm not sure I understand this. Most puzzles are number-crunching but very little to do with graphics (maybe one or two), so no usually OpenGL isn't used AFAIK. Of course, folks may use it to visualise the puzzles but not to solve them.
- ben-schaaf 11mo agoYou definitely could do it all in shaders. People have done crazier things.
- holyknight 11mo agoI never understood the craze for "Advent of code". Already at this time of the year the last thing I want to do is code even more.
- ls-a 11mo agoI agree. Didn't these puzzles ruin interviewing for many years now. AI came along and they're still doing it. Some things will needlessly drag on before they die I guess
- MattRix 11mo agoHow do they ruin interviewing? The whole point of these puzzles is that they’re meant to be fun to solve, not a means to an end, but enjoyable for what they are.
- ls-a 11mo agoTell HR, they don't seem to get it
- legends2k 11mo agoBy the same token, AI came along and we all still have intelligence, needless, eh? I mean people reading and writing stuff has nothing to do with AI. I don't see how some people see everything as a zero-sum game.
- ls-a 11mo agoAll AI is doing is solving these puzzles, which proves they don't need any form of intelligence. You're wrong for associating AI with human intelligence. It will never happen. It might be faked once, like the moon landing, but that's it.
- phartenfeller 11mo agoWell some people like to code and logic puzzles. And especially as it is in its raw form where you can forget all the noise you encounter while coding professionally with many hoops and responsibilities.
- kylegalbraith 11mo agoExcited to see AOC back and I think it was a solid idea to get rid of the global leaderboard. We (Depot) are sponsoring this year and have a private leaderboard [0]. We’re donating $1k/each for the top five finishers to a charity of their choice. [0] https://depot.dev/events/advent-of-code-2025 https://depot.dev/events/advent-of-code-2025
- Arainach 11mo agoIsn't a publicly advertised private leaderboard - especially with cash prizes - against the new guidance? Certainly the spirit of the guidance. >What happened to the global leaderboard? The global leaderboard was one of the largest sources of stress for me, for the infrastructure, and for many users. People took things too seriously, going way outside the spirit of the contest; some people even resorted to things like DDoS attacks. Many people incorrectly concluded that they were somehow worse programmers because their own times didn't compare. What started as a fun feature in 2015 became an ever-growing problem, and so, after ten years of Advent of Code, I removed the global leaderboard. (However, I've made it so you can share a read-only view of your private leaderboard. *Please don't use this feature or data to create a "new" global leaderboard.*)
- ahoka 11mo agoThis kind of crap is the reason we can’t just enjoy an AoC anymore.
- codr7 11mo agoAgreed, reward participation, not results.
- stOneskull 11mo agoi don't think it should be a charity of their choice. i think it should have to be one of the top 5 most reputable charities in the world, like doctors without borders or salvation army.
- IsraelAfangideh 11mo agoThis will be my first one! My primary languages are Typescript and Java. Looking forward to it!
- jeroenhd 11mo agoWhile part of the fun is doing the daily tasks with your friends, you can still access the previous years and their challenges if you want to continue after advent!
- gray_-_wolf 11mo agoI am very happy that we get the advent of code again this year, however I have read the FAQ for the first time, and I must admit I am not sure I understand the reasoning behind this: > If you're posting a code repository somewhere, please don't include parts of Advent of Code like the puzzle text or your inputs. The text I get, but the inputs? Well, I will comply, since I am getting a very nice thing for (almost) free, so it is polite to respect the wishes here, but since I commit the inputs (you know, since I want to be able to run tests) into the repository, it is bit of a shame the repo must be private.
- sevenseacat 11mo agoI use git-crypt to encrypt the inputs in my public repo https://www.agwa.name/projects/git-crypt/ https://www.agwa.name/projects/git-crypt/ :)
- rawling 11mo agoI don't push my solutions publicly, but I made an input downloader so you can input your cookie from your browser and load (and cache) the inputs rather than commit them.
- yesbabyyes 11mo agoThis is cool. Kudos!
- gerikson 11mo agoIf enough inputs are available online, someone can presumably collect them and clone the entire project without having access to the puzzle input generation code, which is the "secret sauce" of the project.
- losvedir 11mo agoAre you saying that we all have different inputs? I've never actually checked that, but I don't think it's true. My colleagues have gotten stuck in the same places and have mentioned aspects of puzzles and input characteristics and never spoken past each other. I feel like if we had different inputs we'd have noticed by now.
- 12345hn6789 11mo agoIt is quite odd to call this advent when it ends halfway into the month rather than on Christmas. But I will have fun doing them either way
- smokel 11mo agoIt may have made more sense to start on Christmas Day, matching the Twelve Days of Christmas [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas
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- tgv 11mo agoI think there's a problem every other day, so it's 1, 3, ..., 23.
- alexfoo 11mo agoNo, the puzzles are every day from the 1st to the 12th inclusive. From https://adventofcode.com/2025/about https://adventofcode.com/2025/about: " Why did the number of days per event change? It takes a ton of my free time every year to run Advent of Code, and building the puzzles accounts for the majority of that time. After keeping a consistent schedule for ten years(!), I needed a change. The puzzles still start on December 1st so that the day numbers make sense (Day 1 = Dec 1), and puzzles come out every day (ending mid-December). "
- tgv 11mo agoIndeed. I had misunderstood that.
- noirscape 11mo agoTaking out the public leaderboard makes sense imo. Even when you don't consider the LLM problem, the public Leaderboard's design was never really suited for anyone outside of the very specific short list of (US) timezones where competing for a quick solution was every feasible. One thing I do think would be interesting is to see solution rate per hour block. It'd give an indication of how popular advent of code is across the world.
- phatfish 11mo agoLLMs spoiled it, but it was fun to see the genuine top times. Watching competitive coders solve in real time is interesting (Youtube videos), and i wouldn't have discovered these without the leader board.
- eshse 11mo agoI live in Sweden nowadays (UTC+1) and it starts at 6am so last year I woke up at 5:30, grabbed a coffee, and gave it a go. Got nowhere near the leaderboard times so gave up after four days!
- thedavibob 11mo agoYes: I'd argue that the timings actually work/worked better for Western Europe than the USA, I personally preferred doing the puzzle at 5am (UK) than the midnight equivalent, as I could finish before work (on a good day). Nearly scratched a decent ranking once only, top 300 or so.
- alexfoo 11mo agoEither Russia (8am) or West Coast US (9pm) would be my preferred options. Sadly it's 5am for me as I'm in the UK. In 8 years I can say I've never once tried to be awake at 5am in order to do the puzzle. The one time I happened to still be awake at 5am during AoC I was quite spectacularly drunk so looking at AoC would have been utterly pointless. Anything before 6.45am and I'm hopefully asleep. 7am isn't great as 7am-8am I'm usually trying to get my kid up, fed and out the door to go to school. Weekends are for not waking up at 7am if I don't need to. 9am or later and it messes with the working day too much. Looking back at my submission times from 2017 onwards (I only found AoC in 2017 so did 2015/2016 retrospectively) I've only got two submissions under 02:xx:xx (e.g. 7am for me). Both were around 6.42am so I guess I was up a bit earlier that day (6.30am) and was waiting for my kid to wake up and managed to get part 1 done quickly. My usual plan was to get my kid out of the door sometime between 7.30am and 8am and then work on AoC until I started work around 9am. If I hadn't finished it then I'd get a bit more time during my lunch hour and, if still not finished, find some time in the evening after work and family time. Out of the 400 submissions from 2017-2024 inclusive I've only got 20 that are marked as ">24h" and many of these were days where I was out for the entire day with my wife/kid so I didn't get to even look at the problem until the next day. Only 4 of them are where I submitted part 1 within 24h but part 2 slipped beyond 24h. Enormous understatement: I were unencumbered by wife/kids then my life would be quite a bit different.
- phplovesong 11mo agoI usually use multiple languages. Ocaml anf Go are always a pick. This year i think i want to try Gleam, and Haxe too.
- georgehotz 11mo agoI support the no global leaderboard. I was in 7th place last year but quickly got bored maintaining the aggressive AI pipeline required to achieve that. If I wanted to maintain pipelines I'd just do work, and there will never be a good way to prevent people from using AI like this. Advent of Code should be fun, thank you for continuing to do it. I'm looking forward to casually playing this year!
- minitech 11mo agoIt was pretty boring trying to place against aggressive AI pipelines like yours throughout the explicit requests not to use them[1]. I’m sorry to hear it became boring for you too. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20241201070128/https://adventofcode.com/2024/about#:~:text=Can%20I%20use%20AI%20to%20get%20on%20the%20global%20leaderboard%3F https://web.archive.org/web/20241201070128/https://adventofc...
- georgehotz 11mo agoI mean, everyone else was using them too, how can you not? That was the name of the game if you wanted to be competitive in 2024. Not using them would be like trying to do competitive pro cycling without steroids, basically impossible.
- minitech 11mo agoIt’s more like playing a casual tournament at your local chess club without an engine.
- NewsaHackO 11mo agoSaying everyone else is cheating is not a valid excuse for cheating. It's why aatrong became a pariah, even though he and everyone else was EPO doping.
- herni 11mo agoGotta love the classic "everyone else is cheating too"
- 11mo ago
- bitbasher 11mo agoI'd like to play, sadly you can't without logging in with google, github, etc.
- Jtsummers 11mo agoYou can always create a throwaway account on one of those services. It's not that hard.
- bitbasher 11mo agoYou could, but you shouldn't have to. If you want to sign up for XYZ, you need to sign up for BigCorp, you need to add your phone number to verify your account, etc. No thanks.
- acedTrex 11mo agoYou can log in with reddit, dont need a phone number for that one. And if you have an HN account you probably have a reddit acct lol
- HendrikHensen 11mo agoThe "etc" is pretty important here. You can log in using Reddit, and you can create a random throwaway Reddit account without filling in any other details (no email address or phone number required).
- chucksmash 11mo agoI believe they no longer allow new accounts without an email address. It used to be that reddit had a user creation screen that looked like you needed to input an email address, but you could actually just click "Next" to skip it. The last time I had cause to make a reddit account, they no longer allowed this.
- evandale 11mo agoYou can use a garbage email address, you don't have to verify it
- quirino 11mo agoSmall anecdote: In the IEEEXTREME university programming competition there are ~10k participating teams. Our university has a quite strong Competitive Programming program and the best teams usually rank in the top 100. Last year a team ranked 30 and it's wasn't even our strongest team (which didn't participate) This year none of our teams was able to get in the top 1000. I would estimate close to 99% of the teams in the Top 1000 were using LLMs. Last year they didn't seem to help much, but this year they rendered the competition pointless. I've read blogs/seen videos of people who got in the AOC global leaderboard last year without using LLMs, but I think this year it wouldn't be possible at all.
- letmetweakit 11mo agoMan, those people using LLMs in competitive programming ... where's the fun in that? I don't get people for whom it's just about winning, I wish everyone would just have some basic form of dignity and respect.
- jvanderbot 11mo agoYeah, it's like bringing a ~bike~ motorcycle to your marathon. But if you can get away with it, there will always be people doing it. Imagine the shitshow that gaming would be without any kind of anti-cheat measures, and that's the state of competitive programming.
- integralid 11mo agoWhy is that strange? Competitive programming, as the name suggests, is about competing. If the rules allow that, not using LLM is actually more like running tour de France. If the rules don't allow that and yet people do then well, you need online qualifiers and then onsite finals to pick the real winners. Which was already necessary, because there are many other ways to cheat (like having more people than allowed in the team).
- jvanderbot 11mo ago
- singron 11mo agoBTW the page mentions Alternate Styles, which is an obscure feature in firefox (View -> Page Styles). If you try it out, you will probably run into [0] and not be able to reset the style. The workaround is to open the page in a different tab, which will go back to the default style. 0: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1943796 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1943796
- jjice 11mo agoI _love_ the Advent of Code. I actually (selfishly) love that it's only 12 days this year, because by about half way, I'm struggling to find the time to sit down and do the fantastic problems because of all the holiday activities IRL. Huge thanks to those involved!
- PapstJL4U 11mo agoYeah, last year I only got to Day7 (on dec 26). I hope the smaller amount reduces "the fear of falling behind".
- DangitBobby 11mo agoI agree so much. Maybe I'll finally get a year done!
- schaefer 11mo agoI’m so excited for this year.
- alxndr 11mo agoIMHO they’re starting off harder this year!
- lencastre 11mo agoo’rly? I had no idea, why do you say that?
- thunderbirdsBoy 11mo ago[flagged]
- udev4096 11mo agoWould love to know which exotic and niche languages are people going to use for this year. I am personally thinking of trying out Crystal or Elixir
- christophilus 11mo agoI’m probably going to use rescript. Though I may do Gleam or Roc.
- rtfeldman 11mo agoIf you're feeling adventurous and would like to try Roc's new compiler, I put together a quick tutorial for it! https://gist.github.com/rtfeldman/f46bcbfe5132d62c4095dfa687bb9aa4 https://gist.github.com/rtfeldman/f46bcbfe5132d62c4095dfa687...
- queuebert 11mo agoBQN or its ancestor APL are good for this.
- jeroenhd 11mo agoI find it interesting how many sponsors run their own "advent of <x>". So far I've seen "cloud", "FPGA", and a "cyber security" one in the sponsors pages (although that last one is one I remember from last year). I'm also surprised there are a few Dutch language sponsors. Do these show up for everyone or is there some kind of region filtering applied to the sponsors shown?
- caarmen 11mo ago[dead]
- codr7 11mo agoI've been looking forward to this! It's kotlin and shik for me this year, probably a bit of both. And no stupid competitions, AoC should be fun. https://gitlab.com/codr7/shik https://gitlab.com/codr7/shik
- d--b 11mo agoPersonally, I never understood the grind of the advent of code. This is exactly the kind of stuff I am grateful to be able to delegate to a LLM.
- Snacklive 11mo agowhy would delegate to an LLM something that is supposed to be fun. THIS specifically is the kind of stuff you shouldn't delegate to an LLM
- yeasku 11mo agoBecause they are not a hacker, but post on hackernews every day.
- d--b 11mo agoWell, my point, if it wasn’t clear, was that I simply don’t find those problems fun. I enjoy programming a lot, but most of it comes from things like designing APIs that work well and that people enjoy using, or finding things that allow me to delete on ton of legacy code. I did try to do the advent of code many times. Usually I get bored half way through reading the first problem. and then when I finally get through I realize that these usually involve tradeoffs that are annoying to make in terms of memory/cpu usage and also several edge cases to deal with. it really feels more like work than play.
- poulpy123 11mo agoGoing blind with uiua this year.
- smokel 11mo agoFor those who think this is a typo, uiua [1] (pronounced "wee-wuh") is a stack-based array programming language. I solved a few problems with it last year, and it is amazing how compact the solutions are. It also messes with your head, and the community surrounding it is interesting. Highly recommended. [1] https://www.uiua.org/ https://www.uiua.org/
- dang 11mo agoRelated: Uiua – A stack-based array programming language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590483 - Jan 2025 (6 comments) Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37673127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37673127 - Sept 2023 (104 comments)
- poulpy123 11mo ago<narrator voice>That was a bold choice that it didn't go well</narrator voice>
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- alexfoo 11mo agoLooking forward to it but also sad that it is "only" 12 puzzles, but I completely respect Eric's decision to scale it back. I've got 500 stars (i.e. I've completed every day of all 10 previous years) but not always on the day the puzzles were available, probably 430/500 on the day. (I should say I find the vast majority of AoC relatively easy as I've got a strong grounding in both Maths and Comp Sci.) First of all I only found out about AoC in 2017 and so I did 2015 and 2016 retrospectively. Secondly I can keep up with the time commitments required up until about the 22nd-24th (which is when I usually stop working for Christmas). From then time with my wife/kids takes precedence. I'll usually wrap up the last bits sometime from the 27th onwards. I've never concerned myself with the pointy end of the leaderboards due to timezones as the new puzzles appear at 5am local time for me and I've no desire to be awake at that time if I can avoid it, certainly not for 25 days straight. I expect that's true of a large percentage of people participating in AoC too. My simple aim every day is that my rank for solving part 2 of a day is considerably lower than my rank for solving part 1. (To be clear, even if I was up and firing at 5am my time every day I doubt I could consistently get a top 100 rank. I've got ten or so 300-1000 ranks by starting ~2 hours later but that's about it. Props to the people who can consistently appear in the top 100. I also start most days from scratch whilst many people competing for the top 100 have lots of pre-written code to parse things or perform the common algorithms.) I also use the puzzles to keep me on my toes in terms of programming and I've completed every day in one of Perl, C or Go and I've gone back and produced solutions in all 3 of those for most days. Plus some random days can be done easily on the command-line piping things through awk, sed, sort, grep, and the like. The point of AoC is that everyone is free to take whatever they want from it. Some use it to learn a new programming language. Some use it to learn their first language and only get a few days into it. Some use it to make videos to help others on how to program in a specific language. Some use it to learn how/when to use structures like arrays, hashes/maps, red-black trees, etc, and then how/when to use classic Comp Sci algorithms like A* or SAT solvers, Djikstra's, etc all the way to some random esoteric things like Andrew's monotone chain convex hull algorithm for calculating the perimeter of a convex hull. There are also the mathsy type problems often involving Chinese Remainder Theorem and/or some variation of finite fields. My main goal is to come up with code that is easy to follow and performs well as a general solution rather than overly specific to my individual input. I've also solved most years with a sub 1 second total runtime (per year, so each day averages less than 40msec runtime). Anyway, roll on tomorrow. I'll get to the day 1 problem once I've got my kid up and out the door to go to school as that's my immediate priority.
- deergomoo 11mo ago> You don't need a computer science background to participate - just a little programming knowledge and some problem solving skills will get you pretty far. Every time I see this I wonder how many amateur/hobbyist programmers it sets up for disappointment. Unless your definition of “pretty far” is “a small number of the part ones”, it’s simply not true.
- alexfoo 11mo agoGot to agree. I'm even surprised at just how little progress many of my friends and ex-colleagues over the years make given that they hold down reasonable developer jobs.
- sethops1 11mo agoI think this has a lot more to do with time commitment. Once the problems take more than ~1 hour I tend to stop because I have stuff to do, like a job that already involves coding.
- crystal_revenge 11mo agoMy experience has been "little progress" is related to the fact that, while AoC is insanely fun, it always occurs during a time of year when I have the least free time. Maybe when I was in college (if AoC had existed back then) I could have kept pace, but if part of your life is also running a household, then between wrapping up projects for work, finalizing various commitments I want wrapped up for the year, getting together with family and friends for various celebrations, and finally travel and/or preparing your own house for guests, I'm lucky if I have time to sit down with a cocktail and book the week before Christmas. Seeing the format changed to 12 days makes me think this might be the first time in years I could seriously consider doing it (to completion).
- julianz 11mo agoYep, the years I've made it the furthest have been around the 11-12 day mark. The inevitably life and kids and work get in the way and that's it for another year. Changing to a 12 day format is unlikely to affect me at all :)
- bigell 11mo agoI love advent of code, and I look forward to it every year! I've never stressed out about the leaderboard. Ive always taken it as an opportunity to learn a new language, or brush up on my skills. In my day-to-day job, I rarely need to bootstrap a project from scratch, implement a depth first search of a graph, or experiment with new language features. It's for reasons like these that I look forward to this every year. For me it's a great chance to sharpen the tools in my toolbox.
- alexfoo 11mo agoSome part of me would love a job that was effectively solving AoC type problems all the time, but then I'd probably burn out pretty quickly if that's all I ever had to do. Sometimes it's nice to have a break by writing a load of error handling, system architecture documentation, test cases, etc. > For me it's a great chance to sharpen the tools in my toolbox. That's a good way of putting it. My way of taking it a step further and honing my AoC solutions is to make them more efficient whilst ensuring they are still easy to follow, and to make sure they work on as many different inputs as possible (to ensure I'm not solving a specific instance based on my personal input). I keep improving and chipping away at the previous years problems in the 11 months between Decembers.
- sizzzzlerz 11mo agoI had never heard of this before I saw something announcing this years adventure. It looked interesting so I gave it a try, doing 2024. I had a blast. In concept, its very similar to the Euler Project but oriented more towards programming rather than being heavily mathematical. Like Euler, the first part is typically trivial while part 2 can put the hammer down and make you think to devise an approach that can arrive at a solution in milliseconds rather than the death of the universe.
- sureglymop 11mo agoI want to try doing it in assembly using fasm this year. Could either be really recreational and relaxing.. or painful and annoying. Though I don't care even if it takes me all of next year, it's all in order to learn :)
- BLACKCRAB 11mo ago[dead]
- bob-surfs 11mo agoWhere my Gleamlins at? Who else is using Gleam this year?
- tylerchurch 11mo agoI am! I love the design of Gleam in theory but keep bouncing off it so I’m interested in seeing if AoC will help me give it a fair shake.
- fud101 11mo agoI've never done this before but honestly I am just turned off by the website and font being hard to read. I get that's the geek aesthetic or whatever, but it's a huge turn off for me.
- zootboy 11mo agoThere's a relevant FAQ with a solution for you: https://adventofcode.com/2025/about#faq_highcontrast https://adventofcode.com/2025/about#faq_highcontrast
- perlperson 11mo agoHistorical note: the original coding advent calendar was the Perl Advent Calendar, started in 2000 and still going. https://perladvent.org/archives.html https://perladvent.org/archives.html Advent of Code is awesome also of course -- and was certainly inspired by it.
- vidyesh 11mo agoOther Advent Calendars for developers https://github.com/vimode/Advent-Calendars-For-Developers https://github.com/vimode/Advent-Calendars-For-Developers I am still updating it for this year, so please feel free to submit a PR or share some here.
- aadv1k 11mo agoAdvent of code is such a fantastic event. I am honestly glad it's 12 days this year, primarily because I would only ever get to day 13 or 14 before it would take me an entire day to finish the puzzles! This would be my fourth year doing AoC. Looking forward to it :) I plan on doing this year in C++ because I have never worked with it and AoC is always a good excuse to learn a new language. My college exams just got over, so I have a ton of free time. Previous attempts: - in Lua https://github.com/Aadv1k/AdventOfLua2021 https://github.com/Aadv1k/AdventOfLua2021 - in C https://github.com/Aadv1k/AdventOfC2022 https://github.com/Aadv1k/AdventOfC2022 - in Go https://github.com/Aadv1k/AdventOfGo2023 https://github.com/Aadv1k/AdventOfGo2023 really hope I can get all the stars this time...Cheers, and Merry Cristmas!
- mattbillenstein 11mo agoI've done all the years and all the problems. The part I enjoy the most is after figuring out a solution for myself is seeing what others did on Reddit or among a small group of friends who also does it. We often have slightly different solutions or realize one of our solutions worked "by accident" ignoring some side case that didn't appear in our particular input. That's really the fun of it imho.
- adastra22 11mo agoHate to be that guy, but this is unreadably small text on mobile.
- mnafees 11mo agoI love Advent of Code! I have used previous years' problems for my guest lectures to Computer Science students and they have all enjoyed those more than a traditional algorithmic lecture.
- itzjacki 11mo agoFinally that time of year again! I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I usually drop off about halfway anyways (finished day 13, 14 and 13 the previous 3 years), as that's when December gets too busy for me to enjoy it properly, so I personally don't mind the reduction in problems at all, really. I'm just happy we still have great puzzles to look forward to.
- spooky_deep 11mo agoDo the problems get harder each day?
- The-Ludwig 11mo agoYes! With difficulty usually peaking on the weekends.
- wodenokoto 11mo agoOh… I’ve never done these “in time” and wondered why the next day problem felt so much easier. I always put it down to overthinking and never arriving at a solution but maybe it was actually a much tougher problem!
- roman_soldier 11mo agoNot a fan of these "Coding for fun" things. Code for a job to earn money, yes, a side project where there is an end goal, yes. This seems like a waste of time for working developer. Maybe it's useful for people trying to learn but also becoming pointless now as all Junior dev roles can be done with AI. I mean do plumbers have an advent of plumbing where they try and unblock shit filled toilets for fun?
- gus_massa 11mo agoI just found in Google (don't worry, SFW) https://www.plumbingnationals.com/ https://www.plumbingnationals.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWrvnNMsmeM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWrvnNMsmeM
- stablesteady 11mo agoIt's literally just puzzles which have to be solved through code. Solving puzzles is a very normal thing to do for many people
- roman_soldier 11mo agoNever got that, I have plenty of "puzzles" to solve in work and life which have real outcomes. I guess Im too utilitarian to enjoy puzzles with ROI.
- torben-friis 11mo ago>I mean do plumbers have an advent of plumbing where they try and unblock shit filled toilets for fun? No, but you’ll see it for writers, musicians, and the like. Engineering (software or not) can be an intellectually rewarding experience for many. I don’t know why some people find this something to scoff at, would you rather have no pleasure derived from your work?
- roman_soldier 11mo agoNo I get that, it's just not for me that's all.
- ngrislain 11mo agoA good opportunity to learn a new programming language: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46105849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46105849
- fnands 11mo agoDoing it in Mojo this year. Much easier so far than it was in 2023 when just basic string wrangling was basically nonexistent.
- Barry-Perkins 11mo ago[dead]
- baud147258 11mo agowell, I tried to do the first day and I think it's an indictment of my own capabilities that I spent most of my day on the second part and still failed to get the correct result. That sort of programming is not something I've been doing at my current position, but still as programmer that has been working for a decade, that smarts a little.
- Walt-Stevens21 11mo ago[dead]
- John-Tony 11mo ago[dead]
- mclau153 11mo ago"That's not the right answer; your answer is too low. Curiously, it's the right answer for someone else; you might be logged in to the wrong account or just unlucky. In any case, you need to be using your puzzle input. If you're stuck, make sure you're using the full input data; there are also some general tips on the about page, or you can ask for hints on the subreddit. Please wait one minute before trying again. [Return to Day 1]"
- Alive-in-2025 11mo agoI'm getting this too, what did you do about? It seems to be switching me between two datasets. I downloaded the data again. When I click on "go back to problem 1", that's when it happens.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo agoIs it necesary to "log in" with a so-called "tech" company such as Github (Microsoft), Reddit, Google, etc., in order to see the puzzles
- Jtsummers 11mo agoOnly to see half the puzzles. You can see the rest without logging in.
- henhouseai 11mo agoI am glad to have found this thread bc I had never heard of AoC before. I ended up running through Day 1 just in time to catch Day 2 at midnight and so did that one too. I am definitely looking forward to the next 10 days now. Having only started using python in the last few months (and always alongside agents to help me learn the new language) I am enjoying this opportunity/invitation to challenge myself to write the code from scratch, because it is helping me reinforce my understanding of the fundamentals of a language that is new to me. On the one hand I do love how (in general nowadays) I can tell an agent to “implement a grammar parser for this example input stream” yet on the other hand, it’s too easy to just use the code without bothering to understand how it works. Likewise, it is so pleasantly easy these days to paste an error message into a chat window instead of figuring out for myself what it means / how to fix it. I love being able to get help (from agents) with that kind of stuff, but I also love being able to do it on my own. Thank you to the folks who organize this event, for giving me that extra motivation to tie a ribbon around my understanding of various topics enough to be able to write python without help from agents or reference guides. I’d also like to add that having never participated when the global leaderboard existed, I cannot compare this to that, other than to say that I appreciate how this way encourages me to come up with “personal challenges” like not using an IDE with autocomplete, or not looking up any info from reference sources, or not including any libraries beyond the core language functionality.
- stOneskull 11mo agothe adventofcode subbreddit is pretty cool to visit once you've finished. i learned a new approach (for puzzle 2/2) that i wouldn't have, as my first approach was 'good enough' and i would've left it at that.
- Alive-in-2025 11mo agoI do love this, did it last year, but the system keeps seeming to switch its notion of what dataset I'm supposed to be using. I used git auth. I'm having a problem where the webpage switches me to a different dataset. I've been logged in the entire time in the same session, same user. I get "wrong answer but that's the answer for a different dataset". It seems to be switching me between two "problem sets". Then it keeps telling me I'm submitting answers too fast. Originally I saved my dataset as "prob1-test.txt". It kept telling me I had the wrong answer. I did some debugging, perhaps I fixed a bug but I'm not sure. Then I downloaded the dataset again after I really thought I had it right and tried a bunch of other things. I got a completely different data set! Call this "prob1-test-ds2.txt". I submitted an answer on data set 2 and it was accepted. So I'm on to part 2 of the day 1 problem. I have the same problem again, I think it's right (but not impossible it could be wrong ;-)). It's giving me this feedback: "That's not the right answer; your answer is too low. Curiously, it's the right answer for someone else; you might be logged in to the wrong account or just unlucky. In any case, you need to be using your puzzle input. If you're stuck, make sure you're using the full input data; there are also some general tips on the about page, or you can ask for hints on the subreddit. Please wait one minute before trying again. [Return to Day 1]" If I had to guess, as part of debugging this I get a "go back to problem 1 definition" after getting a "wrong answer" result. Pretty sure it's working now that I have the "this is the answer for another dataset" message, but I keep getting either "this is the answer for another dataset" or "too many submissions". I'm waiting a few minutes between them. How can I fix this switcheroo problem.
- Alive-in-2025 11mo agoUpdate - I see someone reported the same thing below. I know how you might fix it, put a dataset set ID at the start of the dataset and tell people to skip it. Like (# 9481818). and you have to put that in your answer. This way you could detect this bug.
- greenido 11mo agoI still love solving them myself (30-90 min/day, no copy-paste), and private leaderboards with friends feel as human as ever.