Advent Of Code 2018

[AdamR_AYX]

Who is interested in seeing how many of the www.AdventOfCode.com problems they can solve using Alteryx?

From the website:

"Advent of Code 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 you like. People use them as a speed contest, interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, or to challenge each other."

Think of it as a weekly challenge type exercise every day till Christmas!

Days 1-4 are very solvable with Alteryx and I am curious to see how many days will be solvable without reaching for the SDK 😉

James Dunkerley has set up a private leaderboard for Alteryx solvers, which you can join with this key 453066-ca912f80.

Hopefully see you there!

[JohnJPS]

Now that Python is built in, that's another easy cheat. ;-)

[jdunkerley79]

No cheating :) - no Python or R.

Day 8 has been fiddly to say the least, but all are do able so far.

[patrick_digan]

We've solved all of the puzzles so far with the exception of the second part of Day 9. Various attempts have been made (@Claje, @jdunkerley79, @cgoodman3, @andyuttley), but they've all come up short so far...

[Claje]

Technically I think my day 9 solution could work for part 2...

I just might need a few months to find out.

[jdunkerley79]

Mine would have be a few weeks.

When I gave up it was at 24 TB processed

[cgoodman3]

I've got a bit behind, but so has everyone else except for "cixtor" (does anyone know who that is). Have others got behind because they are now stretching the limit of Alteryx or like me have plenty of other things to be doing so haven't got round to them yet?

[patrick_digan]

@cgoodman3First, I don't know who that cixtor character is but I would be surprised if they're using Alteryx :) Second, I've slowed down because Alteryx no longer seems like the right tool for the job. I've only been able to solve a couple problems with the help of @jdunkerley79's VarNum and VarText addins. I was able to setup a pure Alteryx approach, but the size of the problem wasn't conducive to that setup. By using the VarNum function, I was able to change my slow running macros to fast running generate rows. It's crazy how powerful alteryx can be in this setup. I was too intimidated to even attempt Days 15-17 after reading through the problems and trying to think through how I would setup my solution.

[Claje]

Other than 9-2, pretty much every problem reads like it is solvable in Alteryx.

I've slowed down because I've had plenty of other things to keep me occupied, and because the complexity of the prompts after day 11 has increased.  I think, glancing at them, that I could probably come up with something in Alteryx for problems from days 12+, but I was mostly doing these as a side activity in the evenings and started finding myself spending more time reading the problems, which left me without much time to solve.

I might get back into solving this weekend, but I might also stay busy!

[jdunkerley79]

So far all the ones I have solved have been 'pure' and avoided any custom functions.

9-2 definitely needs a linked list which you can mutate. 

14-1 took an age with my algorithm and I stopped it short of what I needed for 14-2 :(

I cracked at the amount of text on 15 and 16 and haven't looked yet.

Pretty sure cixtor and ttateyama are not using Alteryx (one is a Go developer and one a Ruby one) - I haven't booted them as it didn't feel Christmassy

I think I will add a linked list to the Abacus functions, this would make 9 and 14 doable... (all in favour click star!)