advent-of-code VS adventofcode

Step-by-step explanation | full code

Code's all here: https://github.com/xavdid/advent-of-code

AoC is one of my favorite events of the year! I find the puzzles generally approachable, but interesting enough to spend time on. I also like that there's a definitively right answer, which motivates me in an interesting way. I've developed a base class over the years that handles input parsing, so I can focus more on the solutions themselves.

Additionally I've been solving for a number of years, but for the past 2 years, I've done a daily explanation of the solution. I use interesting parts of the Python stdlib and walk readers through common algorithms. I've found it _incredibly_ rewarding and plan on doing it again this year.

You can see all of those solutions here: https://github.com/xavdid/advent-of-code/tree/main/solutions

Please let me know if you enjoy reading these, I love hearing from folks!

Nice! This was basically the same as my solution, but mine was much more verbose.

Solution and writeup here: https://github.com/xavdid/advent-of-code/tree/main/solutions/2021/day_6

I do a daily solution walkthrough on GitHub if you'd like to follow along. Yesterday's is here: https://github.com/xavdid/advent-of-code/blob/main/solutions/2021/day_1

AoC is one of my favorite events of the year. I find the puzzles to be much more approachable than things like Project Euler. I regularly credit my yearly participation for making me a better programmer.

I also do a daily writeup of my solution, which helps make sure I understand the problem and help others who are learning. I found it super rewarding last year, so I'm doing it again this year. They're in my GH repo. Here's today's: https://github.com/xavdid/advent-of-code/tree/main/solutions...

My big tip is that you probably don't need to worry about competing for the leaderboard (unless you really want to). Go at your own pace, don't stay up weird hours, and take a break.

Part one went fairly fast, but spent quite some time on getting part two right. I settled on the approach of just iterating over the grid and using a boolean to see if I had to count elements or not. However, I had some issues figuring out when to swap, this post by /u/rogual helped me figure it out. After that I lost quite some time on an error that only occurred with my input, not with the example input. It turned out that my loop (which I take form my p1 solution) didn't include the start node, which caused all sorts of counting issues.

[Language: Elixir] https://github.com/mathsaey/adventofcode/blob/master/lib/2023/4.ex