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Day_25(2023): off by one error in my days
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Sheinxy committed Dec 25, 2023
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Expand Up @@ -123,10 +123,10 @@ The real problems with the puzzles in my opinion is easy to see when you see my

## Top 3 least favorite puzzles (from third least favorite to least favorite):
- Day 8: This problem's solution only works thanks to specific properties of the input. The good thing is that it is obvious to find them simply by visualising the graph.
- Day 19: This problem's solution only works thanks to specific properties of the input. You might notice it when visualising the graph. If you don't, then the best way to notice it is by visualising all the intermediate steps (which might not be easy to do in Haskell C:)
- Day 20: This problem's solution works thanks to specific properties of the input. And I still don't know exactly what these properties are (or how they interact with each other to give the answer), I just noticed that answers followed a quadratic law and that there were no walls on the starting row, starting column, and that the starting point is at the center of the map. That's like, three different properties to assume would work on all inputs.
- Day 20: This problem's solution only works thanks to specific properties of the input. You might notice it when visualising the graph. If you don't, then the best way to notice it is by visualising all the intermediate steps (which might not be easy to do in Haskell C:)
- Day 21: This problem's solution works thanks to specific properties of the input. And I still don't know exactly what these properties are (or how they interact with each other to give the answer), I just noticed that answers followed a quadratic law and that there were no walls on the starting row, starting column, and that the starting point is at the center of the map. That's like, three different properties to assume would work on all inputs.

So yeah, I don't like input-specific solutions. Or, to be precise, input-specific solutions where the specificity is not mentionned in the problem (for example, day 25 is a bit input specific because we know that there are only 3 edges that we need to remove, but this property is given in the puzzle). I know analysing the input is expected, however it is not that fun in my opinion. I let day 8 have a pass on that one, because the property is really easy to see once you graph the input. However, day 20 was just frustrating to me, and I didn't feel proud of my solution in the end. When you look at the supposedly hardest days this year (by looking at the one that took the most time to be solved on the leaderboard), day 19 and 20 are part of it. Yet, their solution is actually quite simple. It just feels like they were made artificially harder than they really are. (Of course, this is only my opinion. Furthermore, it doesn't change the fact that there were many great puzzles this year, and that Day 10 will probably be in my favorite AOC puzzles for quite a long time!)
So yeah, I don't like input-specific solutions. Or, to be precise, input-specific solutions where the specificity is not mentionned in the problem (for example, day 25 is a bit input specific because we know that there are only 3 edges that we need to remove, but this property is given in the puzzle). I know analysing the input is expected, however it is not that fun in my opinion. I let day 8 have a pass on that one, because the property is really easy to see once you graph the input. However, day 21 was just frustrating to me, and I didn't feel proud of my solution in the end. When you look at the supposedly hardest days this year (by looking at the one that took the most time to be solved on the leaderboard), day 20 and 21 are part of it. Yet, their solution is actually quite simple. It just feels like they were made artificially harder than they really are. (Of course, this is only my opinion. Furthermore, it doesn't change the fact that there were many great puzzles this year, and that Day 10 will probably be in my favorite AOC puzzles for quite a long time!)

(Let's face it though, the really problem with this year's puzzle is that all of the answers were numerical. I was waiting so much for a "print a bunch of dots pipes and dashes in a specific way and read the letters they form" :3c)

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