Writing this on 26th December 2024, a day after the AOC'24 officially ended. This was my first time ( technically - not counting the day 1 that I did last year and gave up) actually trying to do the problems consistently( was just a try though).

For those reading and don't have any idea about what AOC is- in short it's an annual coding event with interesting puzzles daily from 1st to 25th December as something to do in the holidays.

I just participated in for the fun problems and to experience doing them on the same day. Probably was the most inconsistent person due to numerous reasons- did not fully know the concept and it took atleast 1-2 hours to learn it, exams, health blah blah blah. I had 18 *'s in the end (missed a whole week due to finals), something I am definitely not proud of but at the same time I do not care enough, the whole purpose was to have fun and learn something new about the language I was doing it in - python, which was definitely done. Just to show the consistency, here is how it looks like after the end.

Experience

The day 1 problem this year was relatively wayy easier than last year's, I was actually sitting in front of the screen at 10:29 am (I.S.T) and hitting reload after every second, managed to finish part 1 in like 50 mins and did the second one in the next 20. The problem was nothing special in itself, just the normal sorting and arithmetic reasoning. The days after that were doable too, did not do day 5,6 due to some exams and had to learn regex after day 2 (pretty much made the problems a piece of cake - must-do for anyone). For me, the most interesting problem is still the one from day 9- The Disk Fragmenter, it just was too well phrased. Pretty sure had the most inefficient solution having O(N^2) complexity but still was fun to do it.

NOTE- Just wanted to give a shoutout to the crazy guys that I found on reddit and were too impressive not to mention-

• nicuveo- HE DID THE DAY-7 IN BRAINFUCK, like -I couldn't even begin to comprehend why someone would do that to themselves but really impressive shi. (might try one day myself now)

https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/s/wuwuv1uGTb

• sailor- bro just quite literally decided to do these on Nintendo DS.( agree with them on the fact that AOC is pretty predictable when it comes to the problems, and probably could be a little more diverse).

https://sailor.li/aocnds.html

The best days to view reddit after doing the solutions had to be day 11 - finally bruteforce failed us in part 2 (had me waiting for 5 mins before realising it's not going anywhere) and day 13- was just too fun to look at people not using basic geometry and using everything except it. Some screenshots from day-11 -

Hopes

Even though had a lot of fun this year with just those 18*'s, the goal for '25 is to get to at least 40 (preferably not in python this time) and maybe get a rank under 1k, the best this year was something in 6000's.

Something that I didn't quite like this year was the repeated use of a concept consecutively for days-limiting both creativity and higher attempts(if you didn't know the algorithm either learn it or leave it). Hoping that will be able to manage time better next year and maybe pull the problems even between finals week (this time it took a lot more time than it should have). The personal times for this year were absolutely fucked, as I emphasized that the main focus was not on the timings but it would definitely be a savior to solve them fast and get on with other things in life.

And yes finally - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Hoping for an absolute beast of a '25.