my solutions for https://adventofcode.com/2021
I initially decided to use python but for the first puzzles I used a spreadsheet as it did the job quickly and efficiently ;-).
All spreadsheets !
Same !
Still can do part 1 with spreadsheet but part 2 is so much easier with recursion that I use python
Python again but trying to be more idiomatic than in day 3 and using generators. They are quite a pain to debug as they are lazy but with no caching, i.e. can only be evaluated once. Feel a bit like a half baked lazy list implementation. I can certainly understand it is more efficient to execute but to quickly develop a working solution, it is probably better to stick to lists. And then optimize with generators if necessary.
I'm getting a better grasp of the VS code debug mode for Python which is actually great.
side effects galore ! tripped by .sort()
nice one
All with the spreadsheet
part1 with spreadsheet, part 2 with python (brute force, not really smart)
Part 1 could have been done with a spreadsheet but as I had doubt for part 2 I did all in Python.
I'm getting the hang of python, there are still a few things that annoy me like:
- mutable operations on collections, like reverse or sort on a list.
- also because it is an interpreted language, I only find out if I forgot the '()' at the end of
reverse()orsort()when I run the program. That wouldn't happen with a statically typed language.
Anyway, I think I still prefer immutable collections, operations are more succinct and less error prone.
This time, as from the very detailed descriptions and the number of examples give it is very clear that the behavior is difficult to get right I decided to write some more granular unit tests compared to the other days.
I have been tripped by another interesting characterics of python mutable collections (I could expand on [[False] * 3] * 3])
Also got tripped again at runtime after forgeting () after copy !
Another nice recursive algorithm ! It is always very satisfying to solve what looks like a complex problem with a short implementation.
A good way to properly understand when collections can be safely mutated. Actually, I'm embracing more and more immutability in python. For example in how I populate the dictionary with the paths. Clearly the pendulum is coming back !
I don't think that's going to last, it is probably ok in a small example but it does feel like playing with fire in a larger program where that can introduce insidious bugs.
Not too much to add, quite straightforward to implement. I'm really getting up to speed with Python now, I managed to avoid the usual pitfalls.
Nice to get a visual result !
I did part 1 with the naive approach of modifying the string although it was kind of obvious that part 2 would be about scalabilty of the solution.
One nice thing with python is that ints are of unlimited size. I only realizes when I was working on this puzzle and ints were getting bigger and bigger.
In Scala I would have had to rewrite the code with big int.