Advent of Code
I enjoyed solving Eric Wastl’s excellent Advent of Code programming puzzles over Christmas last year. The puzzles are nicely themed and the site itself is a delight: lighting up an ascii art Christmas tree, row by row, became an addiction.
Advent of Code is a series of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill levels. They are self-contained and are just as appropriate for an expert who wants to stay sharp as they are for a beginner who is just learning to code.
First time through, I blasted through all the puzzles using Python, leaning on its standard containers, algorithms and text munging capabilities: “an expert who wants to stay sharp”, if you like. Now I’m tackling the problems again using languages and techniques I’m less comfortable with: “a beginner who is just learning to code”, which I like.
Second time round is fun, slow and instructive. I’m posting solutions on github.
Articles