Advent of Code 2022 Wrap-Up

Last year, mid-November, I discovered the annual Advent of Code challenges. This is a fun event happens every December, with a programming challenge posted nightly every day from the 1st to the 25th. The challenges are interesting and varied, and form a story (of sorts) about Christmas elves and their adventures.

People all over the world give these challenges a try; nearly 250 thousand people completed at least the first challenge. Though we're all facing the same tasks, the input file — and therefore the correct answer — is unique to each player. So you can't just find the answers on the internet; you have to write some code. (And in fact each day has two versions of the task: a simpler version, and a more complex follow-on.)

I decided this would be a great chance to exercise MiniScript, a new(ish) scripting language designed to be particularly simple and clear. And so I did. I did early challenges in command-line MiniScript, but after a few days, switched to Mini Micro so I would have access to graphics and some handy libraries.

The result was, in short, a delight. I was able to solve both versions of all 25 tasks, and MiniScript held up like a champ. And in many cases, I was able to produce fun (or even useful!) visualizations of the problem and solution.

So, for posterity, here is a link to my write-ups of all 25 challenges from the 2022 Advent of Code.

1. Snack Calories
2. Rock Paper Scissors
3. Rucksack Reorganization
4. Camp Cleanup
5. Supply Stacks — the first day I used Mini Micro
6. Tuning Trouble — first time I got into the top 1000
7. No Space Left On Device — solved two ways
8. Treetop Tree House
9. Rope Bridge
10. Cathode-Ray Tube
11. Monkey in the Middle
12. Hill Climbing Algorithm
13. Distress Signal — first time in the top 300
14. Regolith Reservoir
15. Beacon Exclusion Zone
16. Proboscidea Volcanium — first time I went to bed without a solution
17. Pyroclastic Flow
18. Boiling Boulders and a follow-up
19. Not Enough Minerals — my least satisfying solution
20. Grove Positioning System — a hard lesson about making assumptions
21. Monkey Math
22. Monkey Map
23. Unstable Diffusion
24. Blizzard Basin
25. Full of Hot Air — a blissfully simple final challenge.

I already wrote some final thoughts at the end of my Day 25 write-up. So, I'll just conclude here by saying that the exercise was both fun and useful, and I'm looking forward to playing again next year!