Advent of Code 2024 using low-level programming (Structured Text in CODESYS)
Advent of Code is a good opportunity to learn new languages or frameworks. Additionally, I like hard problems and games. Why go the easy way and pick a new high-level language when you can also choose one that's used to control robots? To quote the AI: "Highly unsuitable to solve algorithmic problems." Yeah, I'm not so sure if it was a great idea to pick a language that has no dynamic memory and runs on cycles.
So to answer the initial question: Just because it's fun to find out!
I will be happy when I can solve even one of the problems. I hope there is some file reader or this experiment will be over before it starts. I will not solve the puzzles if I have to type the input into the memory addresses manually. Most input files have over 1000 lines!
Yes, the complete code is in the repository. I made a readable code folder with all the files because Codesys saves everything as one big binary. Codesys has a 'print' button—the first time I saw something like that in an IDE—but it worked wonderfully as a PDF export.