seligman / aoc

Solutions to Advent of Code puzzles in Python.

These are my solutions to the Advent of Code puzzles.

The solutions are written in Python 3.12. For the most part, code is designed to be quick to write rather than maintainable or easy to read. I'm not quite playing code golf with this code, but I'm also not avoiding copy-n-paste and short variable names if it speeds up writing code. I don't often make it to the leaderboards, but when I do, I'll show up as seligman99 there.

In each year you can run ./advent.py run ## to run a day's helper and see its output:

$ ./advent.py run 1
## Day 1: Not Quite Lisp
Entered basement on 1795
74
# That took no time to complete.
# Got expected output!

Or, each day's helper can be run directly to run and test its output. Each day also has a test harness to test the sample input for the day:

$ ./advent.py test 1
## Day 1: Not Quite Lisp
Entered basement on 1
That worked!
Done, 1 worked, 0 failed

advent.py has a bunch of other options, including the ability to run with other test input, run other commands in the helpers that support them, mostly for drawing animations, and prepare a new day. Run it without any arguments to see what it can do.

Starting in 2019 I've started adding some animations to the respective yearly folders under animations. These are simple attempts to visualize some of the puzzles as it's processed. Starting in 2022, I've adding links in each year's README to online copies of all of the animations, including ones with files too big check in here.

Two extra classes are common to the helpers, though they get expanded and modified from time to time:

• Grid: implemented in grid.py is a n-dimensional simple matrix class that supports arbitrary unbounded access, including negative positions. Under the covers it's a wrapper around a defaultdict, and almost always slower than other options. It does make writing code a bit faster.

• Program: implemented in program.py is a compiler/runner for the "int code" type puzzles. It supports some basic debugging, and the ability to save state for cases where it's helpful to roll back the state machine.

• Animation: implemented in animation.py is some helper methods useful when drawing animation in code, and some methods to setup the state and turn a bunch of .png files into a .mp4 using ffmpeg. It can be used with the Grid class to draw several states of a grid, and animate the final result. It can also be used on its own to animate bespoke drawings.

Also, I have a simple ticker here that counts down to a few minutes before another puzzle is unlocked.