Lots of people do Python so it makes sense that a lot of leaderboard solutions are in python! Hardly rigorous (n=1) but I got on the leaderboard for day 2 using K. Other people have before in array languages too.
> "Lots of people do Python so it makes sense that a lot of leaderboard solutions are in python!"
Does it? If you saw a bike racer riding an old steel commuter bike with mudguards and pannier rack, because lots of people ride those, wouldn't that be weird? Bike racers ride lightweight carbon fibre bikes and they do so because other bike racers ride them and they could not be competitive with something much heavier and less aerodynamic. They use every advantage they can get.
If there was a programming language which was unusually good for rapid data crunching, over several years of AoC wouldn't you expect it to become the dominant language on the leaderboard?
AOC is pretty low stakes, so it doesn't really make sense to put too much effort into it. For the average person they can get a lot faster by automating all the input downloading/submitting/etc and writing a huge number of utilities in their language of choice than by learning an array language.
Each year probably only a single digit number of people using an array language actively try for leaderboard spots, so if anything it's impressive any of them manage compared to the 100x or 1000x number of python/etc programmers also competing.
Does it? If you saw a bike racer riding an old steel commuter bike with mudguards and pannier rack, because lots of people ride those, wouldn't that be weird? Bike racers ride lightweight carbon fibre bikes and they do so because other bike racers ride them and they could not be competitive with something much heavier and less aerodynamic. They use every advantage they can get.
If there was a programming language which was unusually good for rapid data crunching, over several years of AoC wouldn't you expect it to become the dominant language on the leaderboard?