Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place.
> Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it.
It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
Advent does not mean 25. It just means 'the coming', so 12, 25, 1, 8 are all acceptable lengths. And if you reay need it to be 24 you can calm it 0.5 per day.
It's a reference to a German tradition of Advent Calendar with 24 small doors. Every day from 1st to 24th of December children would open one door and find a candy, a picture, a small toy, a quest etc. depending on calendar's theme
I get it, but Advent calendars are not just German. I am pretty sure they are common all over the western world where Xmas is celebrated. But Advent doesn't in any way mean 25.
They're definitely not German now. They may have been originally, but these days, they're first and foremost a commercial phenomenon, meaning they went global. Chocolate advent calendars. Trinket advent calendars. DIY advent calendars. ${insert your most hated kids toys franchise} advent calendars. And so on.
You need to turn in your polish passport for publicly saying that the advent is 25, not 24 days ;P
Really though, for Catholic and protestant churches, Advent starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas, so isn't always the same length. In Orthodox Churches, Advent is 40 days (starting Nov 15) just like Lent.
To be fair in the original Advent of Code the last day is just a freebie and not a real programming problem.
Right, mini-spoiler if you've never reached 50 stars for a year:
The 50th star is awarded for having the other 49 stars and then basically clicking OK I think. If you've been diligently solving them in order, it means you effectively get two stars for your final 49th puzzle of the year on Christmas Day, which makes sense because then the puzzles are very hard and a "normal" puzzle wouldn't leave much time for other Christmas Day activities. But if you're the sort of person who often gives up on a day and never comes back you may never have seen this because you never got to 49 stars.
You're not quite right that the Christmas Day puzzle is trivial - it's the first half of a maybe week 1 type difficulty puzzle, but there just isn't a second half:
Here's the puzzle text for last year's Xmas Day (if you are logged in you can play, but even without it will explain the puzzle it just won't give you an input to test your solution):
https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/25
Right so since each problem has more than one part, we are back to advent of 24 problems.
> The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
You're overly attached to the meaning of Advent, but you aren't even aware of the meaning. It doesn't mean exactly 25. This year Advent Sunday is November 30th.
And the creator of Advent of Code can do whatever they want with it, despite the name. They've put an immense amount of effort into this for so long - if that had been me, I would have been incredibly disheartened to see people saying "the whole point is just 25".
Advent is the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. 4 is in the name, not 25.
Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “arrival” or “coming.” It refers to the coming of Christ. There is no 4 in the name, no 24, 25 or whatever else.
Advent is a liturgical season, not a set of 4 Sundays. Neither 4 nor 25 are "in the name."
I thought it was meant to be like an Advent Calendar, which is normally 25.
Not in all traditions. E.g. in Germany Christmas Eve is typically the last day so you only get 24.
https://www.lego.com/en-gb/holiday-gifts/advent-calendars
24 doors on the Lego calendars too
And even in the places where it’s 25 days, there’s plenty of advent calendars that only have 12 doors - though they’re typically budget versions of expensive calendars (eg a dram of whisky behind each door)
Falsehoods programmers believe about time #604: all advent calendars have 25 slots
Yeah, in Sweden too.
Norway, too.
Winter Solstice is usually (not always) on 21th December.
Sometimes on 23nd?
Ah interesting. TIL.
Yep, Advent wreaths have 4 candles, so there's wiggle room to reduce the frequency further.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_wreath
> The 25 is there in the name.
This largely depends on who you're asking? I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider 24 the course correct number of Advent, simply because that's the common number here (we celebrate Christmas on the 24th). So 12 makes perfectly sense, just do every second day.
There are also many groups who don't start on the 1st of December, but on the first Sunday of Advent. And probably many others.
Advent calendars are used to count down the days. Doing one every other day defeats the purpose.
How so? Advent candles increment once per week, which is even lower frequency.
I thought the purpose was to be a fun thing we used to kill time over the holidays
Christian holidays are not meant to be fun; literally, the whole theme is about sins, suffering and death (or in this case, being born into life of suffering and culminating with death).
I think the majority of people celebrating christmas are not doing so for religious reasons
If, as you claim, the association of 25 to "advent" is primarily commercial, that's much more of a reason to avoid that association. In any case it's very culture-specific. In many countries, including mine, Christmas Eve is the "main" event that people look forward to, and the number of "advent days" in calendars and such is 24. On the other hand, ecclesiastically there are four Advent Sundays, and the number of days is thus variable and also not really pertinent.
> Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now
the word you're looking for is pedant
"pedant who didn't look up their own point or consider other world perspectives before boldly declaring that the way they thought about it first was the only true way"
In the spirit of pedantry, I added even more minor detail!
Technically the event needs to go for a certain number of days, but Advent doesn't mean puzzles must come every day. They can do puzzles every 2-3 days if they want to.
For Christian Advent to be exactly 25 days long, that would be a coincidence.
Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent.
If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only three weeks earlier.
Anyway, this is Western Christianity.
In Eastern Christianity, the Nativity Fast starts on a fixed day: November 15.
Which happens to fall on November 28th, yes.
All correct. Which is why I said religious slash commercial tradition - Advent is first and foremost just another sales event, and for convenience of sellers and buyers (and their children) the commercial advent got regularized to 25 days, so the stock of calendars that failed to sell last christmas season can be put up to sale in the coming one.
If I were Christmas of code, it would start mid-June and end on Christmas Eve!
You're forgetting about Halloween, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and the most recent Singles Day (11.11); the Commercial Calendar is steadily squeezing the Christmas Season into December and out of the rest of the year!
Commercial Halloween starts during October just after or parallel with October-fest. It ends before end of October because people buy things for an event before it starts. End of Halloween is when Commercial Christmas starts.
There is no time for actual advent or winter calmness in general.
Wouldn't winter calmness be January or February, maybe March? You know coldest time in general on Northern Hemisphere?
I think you are right, that seems to be the case.
I decided to indulge in a Dunkin' pumpkin donut this morning, what with it being late October and the weather actually now fall-like. Apparently they have already discontinued them!
> the Commercial Calendar is steadily squeezing the Christmas Season into December and out of the rest of the year!
We can only hope. The Christmas song containment fields are weakening as we speak.
Right, my local grocery store moved Halloween stuff to where Diwali stuff was near the front of the store, and immediately put Xmas stuff where the Halloween stuff used to be, in a week's time it'll be a whole aisle of Xmas.
Agreed, I didn't mean to critique you!
I appreciate you working out the math above! :).
(I never could wrap my head around all this. I had enough problems with Easter events, where the math makes a detour through a Lunar calendar.)
EDIT: And my memory of the Tradition is wrong too, it's supposed to be 24 - as confirmed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710618, and corroborated the two "Paw Patrol" themed Advent Calendars I just found still stashed in my home office.
The Sunday after the first full moon after March 21st (first day of spring) - what could possibly be confusing about that?!
j/k ;-)
Since we're all being exacting here… =p
> (first day of spring)
It's actually the March equinox. "Spring" is true only in the northern hemisphere. What's more it's the ecclesiastical equinox, not the astronomical equinox, whose date actually varies depending on the year.
Never mind that all this is descriptive of dating in countries that grew up with Western Christianity. Countries where Eastern traditions dominate often date it differently.
All good will to you both = )
+1 from me!
I still find it easier to explain it as "14 Nisan *energetic hand wave*!!" :).
There are tons of advent calendars commercially sold that have fewer than 25 slots.
It’s safe to say this ship has sailed.
Well, Christmas is cancelled this year I guess :(
Not necessarily. If they insist on there being only 12 puzzles, all they need to Save Christmas is to start the event on Christmas day, and rename it to "12 Puzzles of Christmas" or "Advent of Three Kings of Code", or such -- see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710963.
They could also publish the puzzles only every second day, I guess.
That was my first thought too, and I'd prefer it, cause sometimes I'll get stuck on a problem, or I'm busy, or I forget, and I'd rather have one more day. Bur it's Eric's call in the end.
Give a kid half of an advent calendar and tell them to open the window every second day, let's see how long it'll keep their interest (I expect much less than 12 days) :). That's not how Advent Calendars work!
We’re not kids though…
Let your hair down man, it's christmas!
Or publish the harder version of the puzzle on a different day to the easier version.
> Hate to be the…
You don’t seem to hate it that much?
Geez. Do you really think the number matters? I would be grateful to the creator even if it was 3 days.