Advent of Code 2024

See Advent of Code for details.

It reminds me of the Lego advent calendar where each model is a tiny investment in time to build it. I look at Advent of Code as a similar low-investment opportunity to practice some coding on puzzles that can be interesting without having tons of gotchas.

Why Ruby?

I'm doing them in Ruby because while I'm not an expert, I know it well enough and I could use some more practice.

I'm more knowledgeable in Java, but it takes more work to get anything done in Java. I feel my knowledge of Python is not quite strong enough; I would spend even more time looking things in the language. I could have tried JavaScript, but I feel Ruby is a little better at parsing text than JS.

I could have tried Groovy, but it's been a while since I've coded in Groovy and it has been losing popularity lately. I feel that's unfortunate.

Why Are There No Tests?!?

I just tinker on these late in the evening. For these, I care more about coming up with a solution that I find elegant than adhering to strict engineering discipline. I try to keep the code "simple", so each solution is a single script that operates on an input text files and writes to stdout.

Stats

Day		Part 1 Rank	Part 1 Total	Part 1 Percentile		Part 2 Rank	Part 2 Total	Part 2 Percentile
25		5229	23697	77		3798	15443	75
24		4506	25137	82		9476	17278	45
23		5112	25543	79		5501	23019	76
22		18822	26891	30		15777	23342	32
21		12227	21407	42		12104	18057	32
20		5741	28171	79		6342	24462	74
19		2799	32387	91		2676	29543	90
18		6772	32762	79		7318	32031	77
17		5932	36573	83		18638	26480	29
16		13539	35633	62		13062	29750	56
15		5806	43980	86		4319	34180	87
14		5423	49165	88		5686	44116	87
13		8352	51705	83		5392	46326	88
12		9939	55776	82		9622	44358	78
11		12897	67759	80		10107	58718	82
10		34717	65179	46		33627	63738	47
9		32764	73694	55		23435	62091	62
8		35875	75650	52		34046	72534	53
7		39538	88251	55		36628	83825	56
6		44271	106824	58		27499	79380	65
5		61170	119858	48		54206	106085	48
4		31579	139431	77		26847	128392	79
3		60274	175538	65		53287	158364	66
2		61493	216512	71		44660	173894	74
1		104725	261090	59		98763	243249	59

As of 2025-01-12 13:26:00 PST.