alt Hacker NewsAdvent of Code 2025
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Small anecdote:
In the IEEEXTREME university programming competition there are ~10k participating teams.
Our university has a quite strong Competitive Programming program and the best teams usually rank in the top 100. Last year a team ranked 30 and it's wasn't even our strongest team (which didn't participate)
This year none of our teams was able to get in the top 1000. I would estimate close to 99% of the teams in the Top 1000 were using LLMs.
Last year they didn't seem to help much, but this year they rendered the competition pointless.
I've read blogs/seen videos of people who got in the AOC global leaderboard last year without using LLMs, but I think this year it wouldn't be possible at all.
Advent of Code is one of the highlights of December for me.
It's sad, but inevitable, that the global leaderboard had to be pulled. It's also understandable that this year is just 12 days, so takes some pressure off.
If you've never done it before, I recommend it. Don't try and "win", just enjoy the problem solving and the whimsy.
I _love_ the Advent of Code. I actually (selfishly) love that it's only 12 days this year, because by about half way, I'm struggling to find the time to sit down and do the fantastic problems because of all the holiday activities IRL.
Huge thanks to those involved!
Opinion poll:
Python is extremely suitable for these kind of problems. C++ is also often used, especially by competitive programmers.
Which "non-mainstream" or even obscure languages are also well suited for AoC? Please list your weapon of choice and a short statement why it's well suited (not why you like it, why it's good for AoC).
Taking out the public leaderboard makes sense imo. Even when you don't consider the LLM problem, the public Leaderboard's design was never really suited for anyone outside of the very specific short list of (US) timezones where competing for a quick solution was every feasible.
One thing I do think would be interesting is to see solution rate per hour block. It'd give an indication of how popular advent of code is across the world.
Looks like after the AI automation rush last year, the leaderboard has been removed. Makes sense, a little sad that it was needed though.
I am very happy that we get the advent of code again this year, however I have read the FAQ for the first time, and I must admit I am not sure I understand the reasoning behind this:
> If you're posting a code repository somewhere, please don't include parts of Advent of Code like the puzzle text or your inputs.
The text I get, but the inputs? Well, I will comply, since I am getting a very nice thing for (almost) free, so it is polite to respect the wishes here, but since I commit the inputs (you know, since I want to be able to run tests) into the repository, it is bit of a shame the repo must be private.
A little sad that there are fewer puzzles. But also a glad that I'll see my wife and maybe even go outside during the second half of December this year.
I find it interesting how many sponsors run their own "advent of <x>". So far I've seen "cloud", "FPGA", and a "cyber security" one in the sponsors pages (although that last one is one I remember from last year).
I'm also surprised there are a few Dutch language sponsors. Do these show up for everyone or is there some kind of region filtering applied to the sponsors shown?
I've been looking forward to this!
It's kotlin and shik for me this year, probably a bit of both. And no stupid competitions, AoC should be fun.
This will be my first one! My primary languages are Typescript and Java. Looking forward to it!
Excited to see AOC back and I think it was a solid idea to get rid of the global leaderboard.
We (Depot) are sponsoring this year and have a private leaderboard [0]. We’re donating $1k/each for the top five finishers to a charity of their choice.
BTW the page mentions Alternate Styles, which is an obscure feature in firefox (View -> Page Styles). If you try it out, you will probably run into [0] and not be able to reset the style. The workaround is to open the page in a different tab, which will go back to the default style.
I'd like to play, sadly you can't without logging in with google, github, etc.
I usually use multiple languages. Ocaml anf Go are always a pick. This year i think i want to try Gleam, and Haxe too.
Personally, I never understood the grind of the advent of code. This is exactly the kind of stuff I am grateful to be able to delegate to a LLM.
Would love to know which exotic and niche languages are people going to use for this year. I am personally thinking of trying out Crystal or Elixir
It is quite odd to call this advent when it ends halfway into the month rather than on Christmas. But I will have fun doing them either way
> Should I use AI to solve Advent of Code puzzles? No. If you send a friend to the gym on your behalf, would you expect to get stronger? Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be interesting for humans to solve - no consideration is made for whether AI can or cannot solve a puzzle. If you want practice prompting an AI, there are almost certainly better exercises elsewhere designed with that in mind.
And yet I expect the whole leaderboard to be full of AI submissions...
Edit: No leaderboard this year, nice!
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I never understood the craze for "Advent of code". Already at this time of the year the last thing I want to do is code even more.
I support the no global leaderboard. I was in 7th place last year but quickly got bored maintaining the aggressive AI pipeline required to achieve that. If I wanted to maintain pipelines I'd just do work, and there will never be a good way to prevent people from using AI like this. Advent of Code should be fun, thank you for continuing to do it. I'm looking forward to casually playing this year!
I'm actually pleasantly surprised to see a 2025 edition, last year being the 10th anniversary and the LLM situation with the leaderboard were solid indications that it would have been a great time to wrap it up and let somebody else carry the torch.
It's only going to be 12 problems rather than 24 this year and there isn't going to be a gloabl leaderboard, but I'm still glad we get to take part in this fun Christmas season tradition, and I'm thankful for all those who put in their free time so that we can get to enjoy the problems. It's probably an unpopular stance, but I've never done Advent of Code for the competitive aspect, I've always just enjoyed the puzzles, so as far as I'm concerned nothing was really lost.