> By measuring it as a race, it becomes a race, and now the goal is the metric.
It becomes a race when you start seeing it as a race :) One can just... ignore the leaderboard
It becomes a race when you start seeing it as a race :) One can just... ignore the leaderboard
Instead, getting gold stars for solving the puzzles is incentive enough, and can be done as a relaxing thing in the morning.
No matter what you do, as the puzzles get harder, you won't solve them in a day (or even a lifetime) if you don't come up with good algorithms/methods/heuristics.
> Having a leaderboard also leaks into the puzzle design.
Even before LLMs I knew it was filled with with results faster then you can blink.
So some of us, from gut feeling the vast majority, it was always just for fun. Usually I spent at least until March to finish as much as I did in every year.
Many people do - well, did - AoC while ignoring the leaderboard.