Anyone still working on these?
Days 16 and 17 have been rather annoying for me, mainly because [minor spoiler for the second half of both] the second half has requested some insanely large number of iterations of the first half that would take an eternity by brute force (at least, with my chosen language/code), requiring a mathematical answer instead. Since I was really tired when I first tried them, it wasn’t until later the next day that I pegged to the “proper” solution, which I already had in my code… it was a “can’t see the forest for the trees” case both times.
Difficulty level is still all over the place by my reckoning. I’m tempted to go back and rate each one just to see what I think of 'em after having come to an actual answer.
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I want to, but between work overtime and Xmas crap I haven’t done any (wah). I’m hoping it will stay up after the 25th so people can at least work through it.
Come to think of it, a 12 days of coding might be less stressy than an advent calendar, since people will have more vacation time around then.
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Ouch, I hear ya on that. Overtime’s the pits, though if you’re paid decently for it it can help.
The previous years’ calendars appear to still be available, though they aren’t gated by day or solving the previous puzzle anymore (for instance: http://adventofcode.com/2016 ). I took a brief look at last years’, and discovered that the final puzzle actually involves deciphering ASM code… which I’ve done before, but I am incredibly rusty on.
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Looks like the day gating is all removed now that day 25 is over. This was definitely interesting, thanks for pointing it out.
Had some real head-scratchers in there, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy day 25 was compared to some of the others. For me, at least, the hardest ones were days: 3, 10, 16, 21, and 23.
I’m considering putting together some generalized utility functions for the wheels I kept finding myself reinventing so I have 'em around for next year.
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It’s a great idea until you start redoing the utility functions essentially reinventing the wheel anyway.
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