The earliest memory I have of ‘programming’ is in the early/mid 90s when my father brought home a computer from work. We could play games on it … so of course I took the spreadsheet program he used (LOTUS 123, did I date myself with that?) and tried to modify it to print out a helpful message for him. It … halfway worked? At least I could undo it so he could get back to work…

After that, I picked up programming for real in QBASIC (I still have a few of those programs lying around), got my own (junky) Linux desktop from my cousin, tried to learn VBasic (without a Windows machine), and eventually made it to high school… In college, I studied computer science and mathematics, mostly programming in Java/.NET, although with a bit of everything in the mix. A few of my oldest programming posts on this blog are from that time.

After that, on to grad school! Originally, I was going to study computational linguistics, but that fell through. Then programming languages (the school’s specialty). And finally I ended up studying censorship and computer security. That’s about where I am today!

But really, I still have a habit of doing a little bit of everything. Whatever seems interesting at the time!

AoC 2022 Day 23: Elf Scattinator

2022-12-23

Source: Unstable Diffusion

Part 1

Implement a cellular automaton with the following rules:

  • If you have no neighbors, don’t move (important, I forgot this one for a while)
  • Otherwise:
    • Calculate a potential move:
      • If you have no neighbors to the north, move north
      • If not, check likewise for south, then west, than east
    • If no other agent is moving to the same space, move to your potential move
    • Otherwise, don’t move
  • On each frame, rotate the order the directions are checked in (NSWE, SWEN, WENS, ENSW, NSWE, …)

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AoC 2022 Day 22: Wonderator

2022-12-22

Source: Monkey Map

Part 1

Given a map and a series of instructions formatted as distance + turn (L or R), find the final position. Any time you would walk off the edge of the map, wrap to the opposite edge.

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AoC 2022 Day 20: Deencryptinator

2022-12-20

Source: Grove Positioning System

Part 1

Given a list of numbers mix them by moving each number forward/backward in the list based on it’s value. For example, in 4, -2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 moving the -2 will result in 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, -2, 9. Each number should be moved exactly once in the original order they appeared in the list.

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AoC 2022 Day 19: Blueprintinator

2022-12-19

Source: Not Enough Minerals

Part 1

Given a series of given a series of blueprints, each of which gives instructions for how to build a single robot from a collection of materials that in turn will produce one of a given material per turn, determine the best order of builds to maximize your geode (the most valuable material) production for each blueprint given a time limit of 24 minutes.

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AoC 2022 Day 17: Tetrisinator

2022-12-17

Source: Pyroclastic Flow

Part 1

Simulate Tetris on a 7 wide board with a given (infinitely repeated) series of left and right inputs to be applied on each frame before dropping the block and a given (infinitely repeated) set of blocks. Once 2022 blocks have been dropped, what is the total height of the placed blocks?

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AoC 2022 Day 16: Pressurinator

2022-12-16

Source: Proboscidea Volcanium

Part 1

Given a graph of nodes, some of which have a pressure (per tick output value) and an agent that can move through the graph and activate specific nodes (so that they output their per tick value every future tick), what is the maximum total output possible in 30 steps?

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