#advent-of-code — Public Fediverse posts

RE: https://mas.to/@TodePond/117060305989613310

This so stupidly simple yet so profound.
I just taught a software engineering course at a summer camp for students. And one of our intros was: “wou will get frustrated. Frustration is good, because it means you are learning the hard stuff!”

If you bypass that frustration with a shortcut, you will not learn the hard stuff.

All of my #basil work has thought me so much about language design and compilers (and my even earlier dabbling into doing an #intCode compiler for #adventOfCode)

I decided to turn back time and do #AdventOfCode 2015. I've done through problem 16 so far. OMG these are so fun! They're original. They're a little brain twisty without being out of this world hard.
The last couple of years the problems had been somewhat repetitive - same concept with a different twist. Not that they weren't fun but they were solving the same problem. I hope that with fewer problems we'll get back to more original things.

Okay, this is looking good.

I took my #AdventOfCode solutions from 2024, which I wrote for IBM Java 1 on OS/2 Warp 4, and gave them a try on Sun Java 1.3 on Windows 95. The build times feel a bit slower (I haven’t measured them, though) but the actual runtimes are a lot faster. 😲

That’s at least a factor of 2-3, sometimes more. The difference on day16/1 is huge – I remember that this day was very memory intensive and IBM Java’s garbage collection was struggling.

(And yes, that is LibreOffice Calc, because I, too, sometimes can’t be bothered.)

Java 1.3 on Windows 95 with Proton as the editor could be another option for next #AdventOfCode.

Win95 runs pretty smoothly on my old box (no surprise, that box came with Win95) and I like Java, so … why not …

Not sure about the speed, though. 🥴

I just completed "Trash Compactor" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2025

Implemented my own Vertical Slice iterator over a two dimensional slice. I was quite pleased with that.

https://github.com/jeffmallozzi/aoc2025-zig/blob/main/src/day06.zig

https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/6

#AdventOfCode #AoC #Zig

I just completed "Cafeteria" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2025

Yup, I'm still chugging along on 2025. And as always, part 2 makes me refactor part 1
https://github.com/jeffmallozzi/aoc2025-zig/blob/main/src/day05.zig

https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/5

#AdventOfCode #AoC #zig

It brings me joy that Brian Goetz does #AdventOfCode in #Java https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrF4dCC0daE

Never streamed before. Live now on #Twitch as a test #coding #AdventOfCode in #Windows95

https://www.twitch.tv/0x1ac

Wrote a longer blog "Optimizing a Grid Thing" post about my solution for an #adventofcode puzzle from 2024 (day 14, part 1): https://web.xiaolong-hosting.com/blog/post/optimizing-a-grid-thing

#guile #functionalprogramming #bitboard #computerprogramming #coding

I just completed "Factory" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode
😅️😅️😅️

https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/10

I've completed "Printing Department" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2025

Not too happy with the way I hand-jammed the iterator over my neighbors struct but oh well

https://github.com/jeffmallozzi/aoc2025-zig/blob/main/src/day04.zig

#AdventOfCode #AoC #Zig

https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/4

I just completed all 12 days of Advent of Code 2025!

#AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/

#adventofcode 2015 in C, day 17.

A very quick one here. Mostly brute forcing, and some probably unnecessary right-shifting, just because it looks nice.

https://notes.adfoucart.be/aocode15/day17.html

oh my god I finally have arbitrary precision math AAAAAAAAAAA IT'S TAKEN OVER 2 YEARS to get time and motivation for this

here, have 30 factorial using uint128, in #forth on #hp200lx

so now I can FINALLY do the #AdventOfCode puzzles that need >=64 bit math, without falling back to something like Lua.

#adventofcode 2015 in C, day 16.

The puzzle was easy enough, and then I spent waaaay too long hunting down a dumb malloc/free error. In the spirit of being transparent about my process, which is kind of the point of this series, I'll leave my flailing around in the blog post.

https://notes.adfoucart.be/aocode15/day16.html

#programming

A strange package has arrived. Received for my outstanding performance on last year's #AdventOfCode. Except the year is wrong on the shirt :) I suppose it's a prediction for this year's event ;-p

#Kotlin #Kodee #AoC25 #AoC26

#adventofcode 2015 in C, day 14

Once again, "reading the puzzle incorrectly" is the main source of error here, otherwise very straightforward. We get to add a bit to our parsing toolbox along the way, as a bonus.

https://notes.adfoucart.be/aocode15/day14.html