The Haskell Unfolder Episode 37: solving Advent of Code 2024 day 4
In this episode of the Haskell Unfolder, we are going to try solving the latest problem of this year's Advent of Code live.
When you're given an array of characters, and your first step is "I'm going to store that in a map of (int , int) -> char" I think you need to question your methods.
Why? They immediately explain that the difference in performance would not be significant on such a small problem and I see no other reason to prefer arrays over maps.
The advent of code is to help people learn, and part of that is teaching people that the data structures matters. Toy problems help people see patterns, and just going "we'll use a map despite it being a poor choice" doesn't teach anything except an anti-pattern.
@wewbull @Noughtmare knowing when to say "this isn't the perfect data structure, but it's convenient, and it's fine for this use-case" is a perfectly acceptable lesson to learn