[sagaro]

Unlike Project Euler etc. where one really needs to be good at algorithms/math etc to make the most efficient code, else it will just run for days to brute force, most of advent of code can be solved with terrible algo as the input data is very small.

I think most CS grad students can solve Advent of Code. Some people, probably don't finish it not because it is hard, but probably because they lose interest.

[plandis]

In my experience solving several years of Advent of Code, this is only true for part 1 of most days. A lot of part 2 solutions rely on heuristics to be solved in reasonable amounts of time.

[robryan]

There are some from 2023 that aren't. Day 12 part 2 at least for me had one input that ended up being 95% or more of all permutations and would have taken at least weeks.

[Sateeshm]

I failed to brute force day 4 part 2