Advents of Code (programming challenges)

[pier4r]

working slowly on the day 14.

My goodness! First and foremost it was good to pick again the RPL as I am super rusty. I wasn't good before, I am even worse now. I forgot many commands and I had to search through the 50g AUR once again (before browsing the index was enough). How quickly my brain forgets things, and that also because I often don't have time to play around with programs like I did in the past (I do use the systems, but mostly for simple equations or stopwatch function or the like).

Second. On other forums people were unhappy that in the competition some could use Github Copilot or GPT models to produce part of the code and speed up the solution.
Then someone argued "imagine if a person wants to use a vintage system with punch cards, what should we say if we use modern IDE or libraries?".
Well I completely forgot how long it takes - especially if one is rusty - to avoid all the syntax errors, every time sending the program to the calculator and to parse the input is already a (nice) challenge. Further there is no regexp whatsoever (unless I missed libraries). What could be a compact challenge solved in a few hours tends to take much longer, then no wonder one subconsciously puts the thing aside, unless the problem is small.

Anyway, it still feels easier than puppet in manipulating data structures. Further, if I am not wrong, I never really processed strings (although in the past I opened a thread about it) or (ab)used formats like complex numbers or conversions (hex and others), so at least so far I am using functions I barely used in the past.

Hopefully I will have a working code soon, then I can post it (while the calc computes the result, hopefully the pre test on the emulator will be enough*).

Further I fear that a like Day13 on the calculator is very unlikely to be solved, due to the debugging difficulties.

*: I used to do everything on the calc, but due to lack of time, as many said in the past, the emulator really helps to speed up things. Only the emulator lets the laptop fan really work a lot - especially old laptops. Therefore for the big work the calc is still the best (if one can wait) as it is silently computing everything overnight or during the week if one has time only at the end of it.