3 ms·

Got 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 devel

by alexfoo 11mo ago

Got 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 ago
I 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 ago
My 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 ago
  Yep, 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 :)
ryandv 11mo ago
Why try any more? There are so many fucking frauds in this field.
ksenzee 11mo ago
This type of problem has very little resemblance to the problems I solve professionally - I’m usually one level of abstraction up. If I run into something that requires anything even as complicated as a DAG it’s a good day.
onion2k 11mo ago
In order to complete AoC you need more than just the ability to write code and solve problems. You need to find abstract problem-solving motivating. A lot of people don't see the point in competing for social capital (internet points) or expending time and energy on problems that won't live on after they've completed them. I have no evidence to say this, but I'd guess a lot more people give up on AoC because they don't want to put in the time needed than give up because they're not capable of progressing.
- foo42 11mo ago
  I find the problem I have is once I get going on a problem I can't shake it out of my head. I end up lying in bed for hours pleading with my brain to let it go if I've not found the time to finish it during the crumbs of discretionary time in the day!
- lan321 11mo ago
  I've never tried AoC prior but with other complex challenges I've tried without much research, there comes a point where it just makes more sense to start doing something on the backlog at home or a more specific challenge related to what I want to improve on.
- alexfoo 11mo ago
  Yeah, time is almost certainly the thing that kills most people's progress but that's not the root cause. I think it comes down to experience, exposure to problems, and the ability to recognise what the problem boils down to. A colleague who is an all round better coder than me might spend 4 hours bashing away trying to solve a problem that I might be able to look at and quickly recongise it is isomorphic to a specific classic Comp Sci or Maths problem and know exactly how best to attack it, saving me a huge amount of time. Spoiler alert: Take the "Slam Shuffle" in 2019 Day 22 (https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/22 https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/22). I was lucky that I quickly recognised that each of the actions could be represented as '( a*n + b ) mod noscards' (with a and b specific to the action) and therefore any two actions like this can be combined into the same form. The optimal solution follows relatively simply from this. Doing all of the previous years means there's not much new ground although Eric always manages to find something each year. There have also been some absolutely amazing inventions along the way. The IntCode Breakout game (2019) and the adventure game (can't remember the year) both stick in my mind as amazing constructions.
TiredOfLife 11mo ago
Because like 80% of AoC problems require deep Computer science background and deeply specific algorithms almost nobody is using in their day to day work.
- queuebert 10mo ago
  But what about all those LeetCode interviews? /s

by alexfoo 11mo ago

Got 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 ago

I 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 ago

My 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 ago
Yep, 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 :)

ryandv 11mo ago

Why try any more? There are so many fucking frauds in this field.

ksenzee 11mo ago

This type of problem has very little resemblance to the problems I solve professionally - I’m usually one level of abstraction up. If I run into something that requires anything even as complicated as a DAG it’s a good day.

onion2k 11mo ago

In order to complete AoC you need more than just the ability to write code and solve problems. You need to find abstract problem-solving motivating. A lot of people don't see the point in competing for social capital (internet points) or expending time and energy on problems that won't live on after they've completed them. I have no evidence to say this, but I'd guess a lot more people give up on AoC because they don't want to put in the time needed than give up because they're not capable of progressing.

foo42 11mo ago
I find the problem I have is once I get going on a problem I can't shake it out of my head. I end up lying in bed for hours pleading with my brain to let it go if I've not found the time to finish it during the crumbs of discretionary time in the day!
lan321 11mo ago
I've never tried AoC prior but with other complex challenges I've tried without much research, there comes a point where it just makes more sense to start doing something on the backlog at home or a more specific challenge related to what I want to improve on.
alexfoo 11mo ago
Yeah, time is almost certainly the thing that kills most people's progress but that's not the root cause. I think it comes down to experience, exposure to problems, and the ability to recognise what the problem boils down to. A colleague who is an all round better coder than me might spend 4 hours bashing away trying to solve a problem that I might be able to look at and quickly recongise it is isomorphic to a specific classic Comp Sci or Maths problem and know exactly how best to attack it, saving me a huge amount of time. Spoiler alert: Take the "Slam Shuffle" in 2019 Day 22 (https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/22 https://adventofcode.com/2019/day/22). I was lucky that I quickly recognised that each of the actions could be represented as '( a*n + b ) mod noscards' (with a and b specific to the action) and therefore any two actions like this can be combined into the same form. The optimal solution follows relatively simply from this. Doing all of the previous years means there's not much new ground although Eric always manages to find something each year. There have also been some absolutely amazing inventions along the way. The IntCode Breakout game (2019) and the adventure game (can't remember the year) both stick in my mind as amazing constructions.

TiredOfLife 11mo ago

Because like 80% of AoC problems require deep Computer science background and deeply specific algorithms almost nobody is using in their day to day work.

queuebert 10mo ago
But what about all those LeetCode interviews? /s