Programming

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… before taking a hard turn into the private sector to follow my PhD advisor.

Since then, I’ve worked in the computer security space at a couple of different companies. Some don’t exist any more, some you’ve probably heard of. I still program for fun too, and not just in security.

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

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AoC 2024 Day 22: Xorshiftinator

2024-12-22

Source: Day 22: Monkey Market

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Implement a PRNG with the following update function:

  1. Multiply by 64, xor with the previous value, modulo 16777216
  2. Divide by 32, xor with the previous value (from step 1), modulo 16777216
  3. Multiply by 2048, xor with the previous value (from step 2), module 16777216

For each of a series of seeds, sum the 2000th generated number.

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AoC 2024 Day 21: Busy Workinator

2024-12-21

Source: Day 21: Keypad Conundrum

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

You are trying to type a code on a keypad:

+---+---+---+
| 7 | 8 | 9 |
+---+---+---+
| 4 | 5 | 6 |
+---+---+---+
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
+---+---+---+
    | 0 | A |
    +---+---+

But you cannot type directly. Instead, you can control a pointer on the keypad with arrow keys:

    +---+---+
    | ^ | A |
+---+---+---+
| < | v | > |
+---+---+---+

Whenever you type a ^ on the arrow keys, the pointer on the keypad will move up one, etc. When you type A, then the pointer on the keypad will type whatever it is pointing at.

But that’s not enough either. Add a second keypad. And then a third, that is the one you are actually controlling.

For each output sequence multiple the length of the minimum input sequence needed to generate it by the numeric value of the input sequence (ignoring any A); sum these.

Note: Moving off any keypad or into the blank spaces is an error.

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AoC 2024 Day 20: Shadow Catinator

2024-12-20

Source: Day 20: Race Condition

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a maze with exactly one path, find how many single walls you can walk through (remove) that shorten the best path by at least 100 units.

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AoC 2024 Day 17: Virtual Machininator

2024-12-17

Source: Day 17: Chronospatial Computer

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Implement a virtual machine. The machine will have 3 unbounded signed registers, 8 opcodes (see below), a variable parameter scheme (see below that). You will be given the initial values of the 3 registers and a program. Find the final output.

Instructions

OpcodeInstructionDescriptionNotes
0adv reg/valA = A >> OP
1bxl valB = B ^ OP
2bst reg/valB = OP & 0b111
3jnz valIf a =/= 0, jump to LIT
4bxc ignoreB = B ^ CStill takes param, but ignores it
5out reg/valOutput bOnly outputs lowest 3 bits
6bdv reg/valB = A >> OPSame as adv but writes to b
7cdv reg/valC = A >> OPSame as adv but writes to c

Parameter specification

For instructions that can take reg/val, 0 to 3 (inclusive) are treated as literal values, 4 is register A, 5 is B, 6, is C, and 7 is an error (should never happen).

For instructions that only take val, it’s always a literal value in the range 0 to 7 (inclusive).

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AoC 2024 Day 14: Chaosinator

2024-12-14

Source: Day 14: Restroom Redoubt

Full solution for today (spoilers!).

Part 1

Given a series of robots defined with initial position and velocity on a 101x103 toroidal grid, calculate where the robots will be after 100 iterations. Return the product of the number of robots in each quadrant of the final grid, ignoring the middle lines (since they’re odd).

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