programming, Advent of Code
I'm doing #AdventOfCode <https://adventofcode.com/2018> this year, mostly as a way to build familiarity in #Kotlin.
I've spent a fair amount of time optimizing for execution speed.
Why? Partly because these are presented as puzzles, and that adds a dimension to the puzzle.
But I also think it's important to remind ourselves how fast programs *can* be.
programming, Advent of Code
I've worked in places where there's been an attitude of "yes, this is slower than we'd like, but there are *hundreds* of elements to it, so users will just have to wait a little for it to update."
Friends, in a world where you can hold a multi-gigahertz multi-core computer in your hand that costs less than your team's ☕ budget for the day, "hundreds" is not a large number.
Our colleagues in the game industry know to measure things in _milliseconds_, not seconds.
programming, Advent of Code
And yes, I'm writing differently than I would production code.
There's a new puzzle every day.
The input comes consistently formatted from a single source.
These programs don't have to be maintained by a diverse team over the next few decades; probably nobody will look at them again after the end of the month.
All of which means I get to play a little looser with some things in order to focus on particular aspects of the puzzle.
programming, Advent of Code
My #AdventOfCode solutions, if you're in to that sort of thing, are at https://gitlab.com/keturn/advent2018/tree/master/src
Except for when I'm feeling fancy and want to put a visualizer on it, that has a different set of build requirements and is at https://gitlab.com/keturn/advent2018-gdx/tree/master/core/src/main/kotlin/net/keturn/advent2018/gdx
