I am so glad there is no leaderboard this year. Making it a competition really is against the spirit of advent calendars in general. It’s also not a fair competition by default simply due to the issue of time zones and people’s life schedules not revolving around it.
There are plenty of programming competitions and hackathons out there. Let this one simply be a celebration of learning and the enjoyment of problem solving.
I agree with the first point but the second point feels irrelevant. Yeah, people's life schedules don't revolve around it, but that doesn't mean shouldn't make iy a competition. Most people who play on chess.com don't have lives that revolve around it, but that doesn't mean that chess.com should abolish Elo rankings.
Chess doesn't rank people based on how quickly they complete a puzzle after midnight EST (UTC-5). For people in large parts of Asia, midnight EST translates to late morning / early afternoon. This means someone in Asia can complete each AoC puzzle during daylight hours whereas someone in eastern North America will have to complete the puzzle in the middle of the night.
There are plenty of programming competitions and hackathons out there. Let this one simply be a celebration of learning and the enjoyment of problem solving.