Using Cursor to Effortlessly Pass Advent of Code

December 13, 2024

Using Cursor to Effortlessly Pass Advent of Code

The holiday season is here, and for developers, that often means one thing: Advent of Code (AoC). Every year, thousands of programmers challenge themselves to solve daily programming puzzles leading up to Christmas. While AoC is an excellent opportunity to sharpen your problem-solving skills and learn new concepts, it can also become a time-consuming endeavor, especially as the puzzles get progressively harder.

Enter Cursor – a tool that can take your AoC experience to the next level by speeding up your coding process and helping you solve puzzles more efficiently. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use Cursor to tackle AoC like a pro.

What is Cursor?

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor designed to streamline your development process. Think of it as your personal coding assistant, capable of:

Autocompleting code snippets
Generating boilerplate code
Providing real-time feedback
Debugging and optimizing code

It integrates seamlessly with popular programming languages and is perfect for rapid prototyping and iterative problem-solving – exactly what you need for Advent of Code.

Why Use Cursor for Advent of Code?

Advent of Code puzzles require you to:

Parse input data.
Develop efficient algorithms.
Debug and optimize your solutions.

Cursor excels in all these areas. Here’s how:

1. Parsing Input Data

AoC puzzles often come with tricky input formats that require custom parsers. Cursor can:

Autogenerate code to parse inputs based on sample data.
Quickly handle edge cases with suggestions and corrections.

Example: If the input data is a list of integers separated by newlines, Cursor can auto-generate a parser function:

# Input example: "1\n2\n3\n"
input_data = """1\n2\n3\n"""
def parse_input(data):
    return list(map(int, data.strip().split('\n')))

parsed_data = parse_input(input_data)
print(parsed_data)  # Output: [1, 2, 3]

2. Developing Algorithms

Cursor’s AI capabilities shine when you’re brainstorming algorithms. By simply describing the problem in comments, Cursor can:

Suggest initial solutions.
Provide alternative approaches.
Optimize existing code.

Example: For a puzzle requiring the computation of the shortest path in a grid, you can write a comment like this:

# Find the shortest path in a 2D grid using BFS

Cursor will generate a Breadth-First Search implementation for you, saving time and effort.

3. Debugging and Optimizing Code

Cursor’s real-time feedback helps identify and fix bugs quickly. It can:

Point out inefficiencies in your code.
Suggest optimizations to improve runtime performance.

This is particularly useful for AoC puzzles, where efficient solutions are often required for large datasets.

Example: If your solution for a sorting problem is too slow, Cursor might suggest switching from bubble sort to a more efficient algorithm like merge sort or quicksort.

A Complete Example

Let’s walk through an example. Suppose AoC Day 5 asks you to find the top three most common words in a text file.

Problem Statement:

Given a text file, return the top three most frequent words (I know they aren’t always this straight forward but just a toy example).

Using Cursor:

Write the Problem as Comments:

  # Read a text file.
  # Count the frequency of each word.
  # Return the top three most frequent words.

Cursor Suggests Code:

from collections import Counter

def top_three_words(file_path):
    with open(file_path, 'r') as file:
        text = file.read()
        words = text.lower().split()
        word_count = Counter(words)
        return word_count.most_common(3)

# Example usage
print(top_three_words('input.txt'))

Test and Optimize

Test the code with various inputs, and if performance is an issue with large files, ask Cursor to optimize it for memory efficiency.

How have I used this?

I used Cursor on some side projects for fun and also for this Advent of Code season. I would argue AoC’s problems are generally more complex than what I would be doing in my day to day workflows. If Cursor can help me solve AoC problems, I am sure it can help me solve my day to day problems as well. This had helped me get all the way through day 7 of AoC in less than an hour! There was only 1 part of a day that it struggled on. I was very impressed with the results, because it’s batting much better than myself! Another thing I was super impressed by, was I found the answer to the problem in python, pasted it in, and asked it to translate it to JS and it did it perfectly! Boom! I had the solution for day 3 part 2.

Conclusion

Advent of Code is a fun and rewarding challenge, but it doesn’t have to be stressful. With tools like Cursor, you can focus on learning and enjoying the puzzles rather than getting stuck on tedious coding tasks. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned programmer, Cursor can help you level up your AoC game. You can even use Cursor for free if you bring your own AI models! You can find more info here.

So this holiday season, make Cursor your coding companion and breeze through Advent of Code. Happy coding!