As the days have drawn in and the temperatures have dropped mercilessly, there’s a thought that has warmed my soul each winter since 2020 - It’s nearly December.

December means Advent of Code.

Every year since I’ve discovered it, I’ve revelled in spending some¹ time each day hacking together a solution for Eric Wastl’s latest puzzle.

Why do I love it?

The puzzles are fun!

The outrageous festive storyline combined with the feeling of freedom from puzzles which aren’t specific to any language or environment, the knowledge that you can crack out a pencil and paper (or some origami) if the situation really calls for it.

I always learn something

Sometimes this is from the exercise of completing the puzzles themselves but increasingly it’s because of the huge community that has grown around the event. I relish reading through the solutions posted on the subreddit and marvelling at the ingenious approaches and elegant execution.

It’s a challenge

The increasing difficulty lets me speedrun all the emotions associated with programming, right from confident mastery in the early days to clueless muppet by the end.

It’s 2024 and of course I’m taking part again. This year I’m taking a stab at some of the earlier days in Go, just to try and get a feel for the language, but undoubtedly once the going gets tough I’ll revert to my trusty preferred-puzzling-language of Python.

Footnotes

1. Ok, maybe a lot. ↩