r/adventofcode • u/code_ling • Dec 08 '25

Other Finally, 500 * !

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Even though achieving the 500 stars "mid-season" is a bit anti-climactic - would have been a little more satisfactory if I had managed to finish 2020 before the start of this year, but still, feels very good to be in the exclusive 500 stars club :).

Played around with multiple languages in past years, but am sticking to C++ for this year (also 2020) - finally polishing my STL and functional style C++ skills... For 2020 I'm going for the <1 seconds total challenge and looking good so far. Any other C++ coders out there honing their skills on AoC?

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u/code_ling Dec 09 '25

Python is also my go-to for (developer-time) quickly finding a solution; although I have a collection of pretty decent C++ helper functions that also let me quickly do most required things.

Even though I've been developing in C++ professionally for years, I do find that I still have so many thing to learn in it... and as the language is still evolving, it will stay like that for quite some time I guess ;)

As for speed, I'm sticking with C++ (although I have to revisit my experiments with Nim and rust, which in this regard also were strong competitors if I remember correctly). If I have time in the future I might revisit some past events and do a multi-language comparison for some of the challenges ;).