zecookiez / adventofcode2020

A series of challenges in the spirit of the holidays 🎄

AdventOfCode2020

A series of challenges in the spirit of the holidays 🎄

All of these solutions will be written and verified with Python with the following goals in mind:

1. Efficiency, where an efficient algorithm will do the job without over-killing the problem. I am aiming for a cumulative sub-15 seconds using plain Python (no PyPy or JIT compilers) for these tasks.
2. Organization. Avoid duplicate code for better readability and modularity. No 🍝 code!
3. Keep it simple!

Notable Nights

• Day 1: Site went down, and apparently I did not refresh it fast enough.
• Day 3: Kept the extra newlines in the data, immediately regretted my decision.
• Day 9: Two lessons learned: always preprocess input, and always go for the simpler solution (unless it's too slow but I should've checked).
• Day 10: Should've read the end of the problem first, because I solved the wrong problem for part 1.
• Day 12: Getting good sleep is important!
• Day 14: Reading is hard ;-;
• Day 18: Took a "nap" and woke up way after the contest began...
• Day 21: I don't understand how I misunderstood the problem this badly.
• Day 22: Lost all my time from a misleading example and a hidden key point. The bad streak continues...
• Day 23: The bad streak continues... The good news is that I completed all of my schoolwork so I can focus on AOC now :)
• Day 24: The bad streak continues...

Tasks

Day	Name	Part 1	Part 2	Points	Runtime
1	Report Repair	622nd	545th	0	1ms
2	Password Philosophy	24th	34th	77 + 67 = 144	2ms
3	Toboggan Trajectory	306th	174th	0	1ms
4	Passport Processing	139th	51st	0 + 50 = 50	4ms
5	Binary Boarding	39th	22nd	62 + 79 = 141	2ms
6	Custom Customs	113th	23rd	0 + 78 = 78	2ms
7	Handy Haversacks	14th	24th	87 + 77 = 164	4ms
8	Handheld Halting	52nd	23rd	49 + 78 = 127	10ms
9	Encoding Error	261st	817th	0	5ms
10	Adapter Array	255th	50th	0 + 51 = 51	1ms
11	Seating System	20th	21st	81 + 80 = 161	349ms
12	Rain Risk	455th	228th	0	1ms
13	Shuttle Search	29th	53rd	72 + 48 = 120	1ms
14	Docking Data	155th	456th	0	32ms
15	Rambunctious Recitation	251st	73rd	0 + 28 = 28	5373ms
16	Ticket Translation	90th	72nd	11 + 29 = 40	26ms
17	Conway Cube	14th	18th	87 + 83 = 170	302ms
18	Operation Order	3016th	1753rd	0	36ms
19	Monster Messages	404th	132nd	0	133ms
20	Jurassic Jigsaw	236th	158th	0	228ms
21	Allergen Assessment	1026th	647th	0	3ms
22	Crab Combat	117th	263rd	0	1370ms
23	Crab Cups	614th	139th	0	5985ms
24	Lobby Layout	368th	173rd	0	208ms
25	Combo Breaker	392nd	321st	:(	919ms

Current score: 1274 points

Total runtime: 14998 milliseconds (under the 15 second limit by 2ms!)

Calendar Art

Credits to Eric Wastl (the creator of AOC) for the amazing ASCII calendar art!

Final Reflections

• Keeping some templates would be nice (double newline input parsing, bipartite matching, linked list)
• I should brush up on regexes
• I should practice number theory and linked lists problems
• Be less afraid of attempting backtracking
• Set an alarm for 30 minutes before every night
• Reading skills are important ;-;
• Debugging skills are important ;-;

With that being said, I am more than happy about my performance this year. This is not only the first year I've made it to the top 100, but the first year I completed all 25 days as well. Looking forward to Advent of Code 2021!