Gonna give up on Advent of code.
I know I'm not really a programmer and while I had fun solving the challenges so far it feels I fail to translate the idea of solution into working code. i.e. I know how it should be working, but when diving into the code I'm losing focus and getting lost in the functionality.
It was also good reality check of my skill level when a task took me 50 min while TOP100 is below 10. Can't really fit the time it takes me to come up with a solution with other activities I should actually be doing.

There's so much more to being a developer than just writing code quickly.

Don't be hard on yourself. I have known developers that didn't even know what telnet was, let alone how to use it.

We all have skills that make us uniquely suited for the work we do.

@sariel yeah i'm aware being dev is much more than writting code, be it optimization, architecture, UX, ...

i know i would get to the solution eventually. it's just the realization i have to drop the fun part (aoc) due to lack of skills in order to accomodate for the rest of daily byz

I repeat something : Don't be to hard on yourself.

I did some leedcode at one point, but it is good if you are new or like doing some challenges.

But they are not real company problems.

Also most rely on patterns and algorithms learned from some textbook.

So I don't even bother with the advent of code.

If you like the challenge, do it for that. Don't look at the top 100. All that matters is the knowledge you gain.

idk man maybe try chatGPT. i mean. it takes awhile to get good or at least translating your ideas into code. you get better at it the more you do it.

Don’t sweat it! I have had two use ”quick” programming twice in my career. (A long time). Ok, maybe ten times but two was the real deal. Both times it was really, really bad and I was the guy that should sort it out. Once tens of thousands of messages was not consumed by a service and it was paramount to get it working because we knew the problem was going to escalate quickly by the hour. The other time was similar but at that time the problem would not escalate. It was just that the entire system was down. Hundreds of users. Waiting. 😬

In both cases there was the need to understand and fix fast. But, I mean. It almost never happen in real life. So, don’t be so hard on yourself! I don’t feel like I’m a genious programming wiz. Quite the opposite in fact. Just keep on learning, that is what I do.

But I do think it is really good training your brain in these contests continuously.