I am wondering if manual inspection is the way to go for pt2? Seems almost achievable with some formatting. Anyone been down this road?

  • hades@lemm.ee
    3·
    3 days ago

    Feels like a really bad way to get the solution, though.

    Does that come from an expectation that AoC is a programming challenge, where you typically are expected to come up with an implementation that works for all possible inputs? Because AoC is intentionally not that. Some tasks in AoC can/should be solved by hand, and I don’t think you should feel bad about it :)

    • addie@feddit.uk
      2·
      3 days ago

      I know - thank you, though, good to know it’s not just me. Not the first puzzle that I’ve solved using GraphViz, either.

      Some of them do depend on some unstated property of the input that can only be discerned by inspecting it - I don’t feel too bad about that kind of ‘cheat’, as long as it goes from “the input” -> “your code” -> “the output”.

      Some of them - and I’m thinking another that ludicrous “line up the hailstones” one from day 24 from last year - are the kind where you parse the input so you can output it in the right format for Wolfram Alpha. Most unsatisfying as a coding puzzle.