I never, in all the years of participating in AoC did take a look at the global leaderboard.
Even before LLMs I knew it was filled with with results faster then you can blink.
So some of us, from gut feeling the vast majority, it was always just for fun. Usually I spent at least until March to finish as much as I did in every year.
Oh, i’m quite sure it does. In fact, it’s a central thing in so much of psychology. The only difference is how you get there. Some people can just ignore and others take more effort.
I stopped staying up until midnight for the new problem set to be released and instead would do them in the afternoon. Even though I could compare my time to the leaderboard, simply not having the possibility of being on the board removed most of the comparison anxiety.
