As already described in previous year’s post about Advent of Code [1], it is an advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language. Some people use it for programming practice, others as a speed contest or to challenge each other. I’m interested in creating the most efficient algorithm, while keeping the code as clean and readable as possible. Additionally, I like learning new techniques and python tricks while doing so!
Using pytest [2] in combination with its parametrize feature [3] and unittest’s mock library [4], each algorithm is executed given the actual inputs from the website and are checked whether they finish in a reasonable amount of time. The running times of my algorithms of the last two years summed up to about half a minute. The challenges of this year added a mere 8 seconds and with a few optimizations in last year’s algorithms, I am able to solve all 75 challenges of the last 3 years in about half a minute on my private laptop with decent specifications. Not too bad!
You can find the source code at my personal GitHub.