It’s been just over a month since the end of Advent Of Code 2016, and I’d like to jot down some final thoughts:
- Coding challenges are fun. There are plenty of challenge sites out there, and Advent of Code has a great way of presenting the puzzle by integrating a story.
- As in real life, examples don’t always match up with actual input.
- There are always edge cases that don’t behave the way you expect them to.
- The first solution you think of will always require refactoring for the second part, so try to make your code as modular as possible.
- If you want to be on the leaderboard, you’ll need to be fast, and it helps if you live in the right timezone.
- If you’re not worried about the leaderboard, Advent of Code can be a great way to learn new features of your language, or to learn a new language entirely.
- My knowledge of algorithms is severely lacking.