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.