I wanted to get an idea of how the blocks were landing and here's some thoughts on what I came up with:

• they were building a simple maze (duh I guess).
• the final (blocking) block is highlighted as a tiny red dot for half a second or so (edit: now flashing!).
• my generated path jumped about seemingly at random even when blocks landed elsewhere so I don't animate the dropping of the first 1000 blocks as it's more noise than data.
• the ~500 blocks before the final one don't affect my path at all, so it's quite a boring end.
• Lemmy doesn't like long animations, so I skip 10 blocks at a time.

If you want to toast your CPU for a few seconds, here's some terrible Uiua code.

 undefined

    
Data  ← ≡◇(⊜⋕⊸≠@,)°/$"_\n_" &fras "AOC2024day18.txt"
End   ← 70_70
Count ← 1024

D₄      ← [1_0 ¯1_0 0_1 0_¯1]
Valid   ← ▽¬⊸∊:▽⊸(≡/××⊃(≤⊢End|≥0))+D₄¤
BestLen ← ⍣(-1⧻⊢path(Valid|≍End)0_0↙:Data|∞)
Chop!   ← ◌⍢(⨬(⊙◌+1|⊙⊙◌:):⟜^0⌊÷2+,,|>)

BadBlock ← -1Chop!(=∞BestLen)Count ⧻Data
Skip     ← 1000
Step     ← 10
Time
  

I've had a few comments on my Uiua solutions asking how you're even supposed to understand them, so I thought I'd write a little explainer.

Uiua is a new language that uses the array programming paradigm (other languages in this family are APL, J, K, R and BQN). This approach recognises that a great deal of programming is about the manipulation and interrogation of arrays of data and so provides tools to handle arrays of data as fundamental units. So rather than building nested for-loops to access data items, you manipulate the array as a whole, e.g. to add 1 to every element of a multi-dimensional array A, you would simply write +1A. This approach not only makes some aspects of programming easier, it also means that the compiler can generate extremely efficient code, and in principle make use of massively parallel processes for further speedups (I don't know to what extent Uiua supports this). Array programming languages are very useful for people who want fast processing of larg

The !adventofcode@lemmy.world community is currently without an active mod: the original creator does not seem to have been active on Lemmy in months. I PM’d them to check whether they were still interested in the community and have received no reply.

I'm presently more or less the only active poster there, though that may change next month when this year's Advent of Code kicks off.

Hi all,

As many people here may already know, Advent of Code is an annual programming challenge that runs from 1st to 25th December each year where each day a new puzzle is published for you to solve. The puzzles ramp up in difficulty during the month and can test your familiarity with core computer science principles and algorithms.

As the title says, I'm currently going through my entries (written in Dart) to last year's challenge and rewriting them to run in your browser using DartPad. I'll be posting one a day until 25th November to the Advent of Code community on lemmy.world.

It's fairly quiet there at the moment, but I hope that with enough awareness of the community, it will liven up enough over the coming weeks that I don't have to go back to the other place for interesting discussions and hints next month!

Cheers, Michael

This happens for me on a small number of posts, and is generally repeatable, even when the website shows comments.

For instance, running on lemmy.world, GetPost(id: 290602) tells me the post exists and has 7 comments, as does https://lemmy.world/post/290602

But GetComments(postId: 290602) returns an empty list.

If I run against the original post on 'programming.dev', GetComments(postId: 99912) does show me the comments, but I don't think I'm supposed to be second guessing the federating logic :-)

Has anyone seen anything similar or can confirm they see this same behaviour for this post?

It's about 10 cm (4") long. Metal and plastic.

Hopefully this will stump people a little longer than the other challenges have managed. What a naive fool I was! < 1 minute again...

If you do find the answer using Google Lens, hold onto it for a while to see if unaugmented humans can work it out :-)

Please add spoiler tags to any guesses to add to the element of suspense.

We think it is, but it would be great if someone with a little more knowledge could post a more authoritative response in that thread.

Sorry for the quality of the pic. Beer had been taken.

Two white plastic discs that rotate freely, each with two semicircular arms which again rotate freely.

More pictures:

Got a thing? Want to know what it is? Ask the massed minds of "What is this thing?" for help!

https://lemmy.world/c/whatisthisthing

!whatisthisthing@lemmy.world

/c/whatisthisthing@lemmy.world

Currently in Challenge mode, so if you've got something you think will stump us, post it as a CHALLENGE.

Just while the sub (group? community?) finds its feet, I thought it would be fun to post a few challenges. I'll be searching through my house for obscure objects, to see how obvious they really are...

So, what is this thing? Springy metal, about 5cm across, with rubbery sleeves on the two arms.

A local farmer pens their sheep up at various points along the meadows by the river over the summer, and yesterday they were enjoying having some access to the beach for a change.