An unofficial home for the advent of code community on programming.dev!
Advent of Code is an annual Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like.
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console.log('Hello World')
TypeScript for me. I've got an interview for a primarily TypeScript position coming up this week so would like to brush up on its quirks.
If the interview doesn't go well, then I'll probably switch to Go, though. I've been really enjoying Go for hobby programming.
Some Mixture of Haskell and Python and maybe Rust if my friends get me to join them.
Haskell! Because it fits the way I think nicely, and I don't want to write in anything else :)
I always use Rust, because I cannot use it at work and I am still bad with it.
New Years resolution the past 5 years: I will get better with Rust.
...and I do get better but somehow it always feels like it's not enough. Like, I'm still an imposter.
I can program an entire embedded USB keyboard/mouse firmware from scratch that can do all sorts of things no keyboard has ever done before yet I still feel like a newbie somehow. Like there's all these people that talk about traits and mutli-threaring with async and GPU and AI stuff and I'm like, "I wrote an embedded_hal crate that lets you use both 8 and 16-channel multiplexers simultaneously!" or, "I wrote an interface that let's you use the extra space in your RP2040 flash memory as a filesystem!"
Yet everything I ever write in Rust always just uses the most basic and simple features because I still have trouble with complex lifetimes (passing them around quickly gets too confusing for me) and traits that work with non-basic types (because in the world of embedded 'static is king).
Good news: if you’re writing #Rust and only using basic features of the language, you’re doing it right.
People who use the advanced stuff either have unique, interesting challenges, or they’re over-engineering. Since the former are overrepresented in the blogosphere, you’re probably comparing yourself to them. But just because their problems are interesting doesn’t mean yours are not! Nor does it mean you have to use the same solutions.
If you can solve interesting problems (it sounds like you can!) and keep the code simple, more power to you!
Maybe you should work more on you self-esteem instead of rust?
Doesn't seem healthy to be good at something and not recognizing it as an accomplishment.
Haha, well... I have plenty of self-esteem but not Rust-specific self-esteem. I still have imposter syndrome with that language.
I'm a top notch expert in Python and JS though! 😁👍
I wrote PyMinifier which required such a deep understanding of Python it kinda broke my brain writing it for a while, haha. I eventually figured everything out though and got an even deeper understanding of the language and its features.
For JS it has just been years and years and years of knowing 100 ways to do what I want in JS but none ever seeming to be, "correct". Then eventually I realized there's no best way to do basically anything in JS and that's when the true enlightenment came 🤣
If you look at anyone's JS code and think to yourself, "ugh, there's got to be a better way to do this" chances are you're wrong. All the ways will be equally shitty for any number of different reasons! 😆
I am glad to hear that :) I have friends who don't cherish their accomplishments so maybe I was just in that headspace. Sorry for assuming.
Yeah, I started to learn to code with JS and the whole thing seemed to be, and I don't intent to be insulting, amateurish. Not something I would expected from engineers who try to be efficient and pride themselves with that.
Kinda lost interest in the whole thing because everything seemed so needlessly complicated and fast changing.
But a few weeks ago I started to pick up rust and it seems to have a lot more thought put into it.
The installation process is straight forward, the compiler pretty much tells you what you did wrong, tools are easy to set up and the name of the language is cool^^
fast changing
This happens because JS is such a shit language! There's no best way (or even good way) to solve any given problem. This results in everyone reinventing the wheel every goddamned day.
Someone like you and me thinks to themselves, "this is such crap!" And they're right! 🤣 So they come up with a new way of doing things that's just a little bit better and they post it publicly.
Then some huge amount of new JS developers (there's always a steady stream) and a few old ones think, "hey, this isn't a bad idea!" So they start using the new thing. Then it becomes the hot new thing and suddenly huge amounts of JS code is depending on it.
Then people start to realize that this new way doesn't quite work so well in certain situations so they add on to it by making new utilities/GUI libs. Others see the wisdom in this and adopt these new tools.
These new "solutions" build and grow in complexity until new JS devs working with the new paradigm think, "this is such crap!" And they're right!
😂
This year I'm thinking of a real challenge and writing brainfuck with butterflies.
Or Rust. Rust is the way.
Real programmers don't mess time messing around with butterflies or physically interacting with the world. They just intimidate the program into acting as they want through sheer fucking will
I will try to learn rust while doing it, seems like an up and coming language with some interesting features.
I never get past the first 10 days anyway due to how long they start to take and how many things are going on in December.
I hate the ones that turn out to require some niche mathematical knowledge too....
I'm going to try with an awful language so I can better criticise it in future.
Java
I like to use lisp. It is about the only time I get to use it, and I get a little better each year.
I skipped 2023, but in 2022 I got decently far using newer Excel functions like LET and LAMBDA. And then if I could I would golf the solution into a single cell formula. Years before 2022 I used Python. I think I had more fun with Excel. Will I be up for it this year?
Thinking of using nim again like last year
Going with c# again. I know the language super well but don't often have a chance to get really deep into it with the stuff at work. These often present very non typical problems that require lesser used features.
C# is like a black hole for me. Ever since I started using it, I have been unable to really get into anything else.
If I would have learned it later, I could have learned five other languages instead ( really learned, I have still played with a bunch ).
I'd advise to pick up at least a second language for your non-critical projects. At first it feels so uncomfortable, but as you gain proficiency, you'll see it's a real ego boost. You realise that there really isn't anything you can't learn.
Portuguese and Gleam.
Go. I actually I haven't written a single line of Go since last year's AoC so it's a good excuse to go again (pun intended).
6502 machine code
On real hardware?
It'll definitely be running on hardware
Whitespace
Probably start with Rust again this year, although it definitely makes some of the days a lot harder. I might switch to something better for quick code if I fall too far behind.
I might even try PHP - I coded it professionally at the start of my career but haven't touched it for a decade and I'm curious to know if its improvements make it pleasant to use.
Might finally do something with Elixir. Plenty of ideas for using it with Phoenix and while I've seen a couple of tutorials for simple stuff like a live chat, I've done fuck-all thus far.
Might try V one way or another as well. Super small compiler and very small executables make me happy.
I don't code enough to justify investing time and energy into becoming fluent in a new language, andd habits die hard, so... perl. It does what I need it to do, and it is so thoroughly embedded in the back of my head that it's extremely rare that I have to look something up when writing.
I want to use ArkScript this year, a small lisp like language written in C++. Might be fun, might find ways to improve the standard library!
Hm. Want to try to use the Relational Model, but am starting to hate SQL. Anyone know of any decent alternatives?
Typically when people want to avoid sql they use an orm, but um, I'm not sure why you want to use a database for aoc
I always use R! Sometimes I sprinkle in some Rcpp (c++ with extensions for interacting with R objects).
Python. I don't have much fun in that language and I figure maybe doing AoC will help delete the mental barrier of "Python make sad" and also get me to learn more about it, so if it still makes me unhappy at least it won't be an "I have very little understanding of what I am doing" unhappy.
I don't entirely know why, but it's difficult to enjoy programming in python, even if you enjoy the end product. Something about it's design, which usually forces you to do things imperatively or reach for a library, it's position as mainly a glue language, it's philosophy of "there should only be one way to do it". They're practical philosophies, but not very fun
You might have put into a words a suspicion I've had for a long time. I don't know if this is completely the case for me. But yes, Python most of the times doesn't spark joy
I have previously done it in Rust, but have toyed with the idea of taking this year as a reason for looking into OCaml.
Go, out of the languages I use at work, it is the one I learned most recently and have the least experience with. I am not planning to get on the leader board (or even comple more than the first week of challenges), but it is an excuse to get more comfortable with the standard library.
Scala 3 again. More inline. More better.
Really curious about how'd unsupervised AutoGPT handle it. Will probably require making some kind of agent that handles input and feedback loop, and it will definitely be a disaster, but could be interesting exercise.
Been doing Ruby the last few years, since it's what I use most at work.
Might try for some C# as well though.
Rust again, more than likely. I enjoyed using it last time, and want more practice