As a non-Indian, the amount of scams and other external negative impacts coming from the country are extremely disproportionate, so if this evens things out a bit, I'm for it.
It's totally true. I was doing Advent of Code before I had any training or work in programming at all, and a lot of it can be done with just thinking through the problem logically and using basic problem solving. If you can reason a word problem into what it's asking, then break it down into steps, you're 90% of the way there.
Comparing previous years, they're exactly what I'd expect, to be honest. Only people serious about completion will...well...complete it. Even if they do not know any code, if you pick something well-documented like Python or whatever, it should not be a tremendous challenge so long as you have the drive to finish the event. Code isn't exactly magic, though it does require some problem-solving and dedication. Since this is a self-paced event that does not offer any sort of immediate reward for completion, most people will drop out due to limited bandwidth needing to be devoted to everything else in their lives. That versus, say, a college course where you paid to be there and the grade counts toward your degree; there's simply more at stake when it comes to completing the course.
But, speaking to the original question as to the number of newbies that go all the way, I'd say one cannot expect to increase their skills in anything if one sticks in their comfort zone. It should be hard, and as a newbie who participated in previous years, I can confirm it often is. But I learned new things every time I did it, even if I did not finish.
I have to say, I've read many out-of-touch comments on HN over the years but this is definitely among the most out there, borderline delusional comments I've ever seen!
The idea that anyone who doesn't know any code would:
1) Complete in Advent of Code at all.
2) Complete a single part of a single problem.
let alone, complete the whole thing without it being a "tremendous challenge"...
is so completely laughable it makes me question whether you live on the same planet as the rest of us here.
Getting a person who has never coded to write a basic sort algorithm (i.e. bubble sort) is already basically impossible. I work with highly talented non coder co-workers who all attended tier-1 universities (e.g. Oxford, Harvard, Stanford) but for finance/business related degrees, I cannot get them to write while/foreach loops in Python, and simply using Claude Code is way too much for them.
If you are even fully completing one Advent of Code problem, you are in the top 0.1% of coders, completing all of them puts you in the top 0.001%.
I can't begin to describe how valuable your input has been through this whole thread about something you're quite possessive and passionate about, which surely places you in a position to aggressively dismiss any other possible way of looking at it! Wow, love learning about new perspectives on HN!
Wishing you best of luck in AoC, Life and Love but I imagine someone like you doesn't need it, being a complete toolbox and all.
P.S.: Tell your coworkers I'm sorry they have to put up with you.
You're the person saying Advent of Code is "so easy" that anyone even people with no coding ability at all should find it do-able, which is totally diminishing the difficulty of the problems, and asserting your own genius, i.e. that you found it totally trivial.
I am the person saying that actually, stuff like Advent of Code is incredibly difficult and 99% of active programmers aren't able to complete it, let alone people who don't code.
I am not an elitist at all, unlike yourself, I don't find completing "Advent of Code" easy, in fact, it would take me a long time to complete it, more time than I have available in my busy life in the average December. And I doubt I would be able to complete it 100% without looking up help, getting hints, or using LLMs to help.
You clearly didn't read my whole original comment before mouthing off. Go back and do that, you'll find that I pointed out most do not complete it, that it is supposed to be challenging and I never called it "easy" as you imply ("not tremendously difficult" =/= "easy")
Heck, I even talked about having to be serious about completion, and you could not bother to read the whole comment, then proceed to call me delusional? FFS, I am now praying for your co-workers and I'm not even religious.
Did YOU even read your original comment? You asserted that people who have never coded could complete the event!
Did you realize only roughly 500 people of the > 1M who are registered for advent of code even complete it?
You said "it should not be a tremendous challenge", i.e. not that big of a deal even if you don't know how to code. Which is absolutely diminishing the difficulty of the event, I mean, come on man...
This is why I'm asserting you are quietly oblivious to the abilities of most people. I am asserting that most people who CAN code, cannot complete the event, yet alone non-coders. I am a very active coder (for fun mostly these days, but also sometimes for work), but I could not complete Advent of Code. Maybe if I took all of December off work to dedicate serious time, but even then I wonder if it's possible without looking at hints/LLM-help etc.
I often try and help my co-workers who are working on AI based side-projects for fun, so I have a strong insight into the abilities of non-coding smart people, and the reality is that yes, they get very turned off as soon as you get anything more complex than for-loops and if-statements. This isn't me being mean to co-workers, this is the reality of things I have experienced. It's not a brains thing, they can understand more complex stuff, but they don't want to, they find it annoying, boring, not worth the time/effort etc. So the idea of them learning dynamic programming, DFS/BFS, more complex data structures etc, is well, just not going to happen.
My point is that you are effectively saying, "oh just about anyone can do Advent of Code if they want to", is totally not grounded in any sort of reality.
The amount of injected implication you are imposing on everything I said...this is some seriously unhinged gaslighting in effort to obfuscate the fact that you came out of the gate calling someone delusional over a comment you barely understood. We're wasting each other's time, so I'm out.
It's a bit of a lost gem. Unlike the Playstation games, which are Tomb Raider clones and aren't well regarded, Zero Hour is based on the Build engine like the original Duke Nukem 3D was and while it doesn't hold up to that standard, it's arguably the best of the non-3D Realms Duke Nukem games. Unfortunately they changed the perspective to third person (with a half-finished first person mode as a cheat) and it controls poorly. With the source available, that can now be fixed.
No deal breakers but the lack of first person viewmodels, the really narrow FOV and an aggressive joystick accelerlation curve make it unpleasant to play. It isn't too bad on emulators that hack in keyboard and mouse, but this port is a good opportunity to polish it up further in much the same way that Perfect Dark port did.
Good question, but I wish they had a screenshot thre so I could send this to my school buddies. Last time we played this everything was still a simple chaotic heaven :)
I recently bought a Windows laptop, and the first thing I did was figure out how to not create a MS account, and next was to remove all the spyware/bloatware, and then after that configure WSL.
When you get past all the garbage, it's a fine OS to work in. Then again, so is MacOS, many flavors of Linux, etc. As the importance of the OS itself becomes less and less important for general consumers when most people live in the browser for their day-to-day job, Microsoft will find it harder to sell licenses (maybe they already are?), and they will resort to more ways to extract money from users, driving more of them away.
fwiw, I prefer the ergonomics of Windows to any other OS for daily activities and non-dev work, but it's such a weak preference that I wouldn't hesitate to switch if they ever actually force any of this MS account or always-online spyware without recourse.
> Then we call ourselves democracies, shining example to all the world. But we fail to recognize our personal responsibility for the actions of our governments. Because when a warmonger, thug, wannabe dictator or international bully-extraordinaire comes into power in a democracy, we probably could have personally done a lot more to prevent it, with little fear of repercussions, and we didn't.
Really? Tell me how Americans could have voted that would have not lead to giving billions in weapons to Israel to flatten Palestine.
I'm pretty sure there are, and were, candidades for Congress that would vote against that, at least in some congressional districts. It just wasn't high enough on the voter agenda. Also Kamala Harris would be at least a bit less friendly towards Israel. Possibly much less friendly.
You are meeting Iranians who are outside of Iran (sample bias), and reading news in English. If you think that qualifies you to make sweeping assertions about Iranian views, I don't know what to say.
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