While I am still waiting for my hard-earned Hacktoberfest 2019 swag, I am already on another code related challenge. The name: Advent of Code 2019 edition. This one is more competitive as well since the global and local rankings are ferocious. First things first, how does it work? Well, every day at midnight EST/UTC-5, a new two-part puzzle is up. Be among the first 100 to solve it to reach worldwide glory or vanish into nothingness. While it is a fairly easy task for our American friends to stay up till midnight to take on that problem, we Europeans need to be early birds with setting alarms at 5 am.
This might come as a surprise to you, but I am not one to wake up at 5 to write some code. Generally, if I wake up at 5.30 it’s to hit the gym so won’t be on a keyboard before 7 am. While I am at peace with not showing in the global leaderboard anything soon, private leaderboards are lots of fun. After the first two days, I proudly stand in the top 10 of my company at the moment. It’s easy to be there will getting softball problems but let’s see whether it will still be when Santa arrives.
I remember that last year I completed only the first eight days then dropped it when it felt too time-consuming between work flights and holidays. This year, no travel on my way aside for that Christmas Eurostar ride but this should be good. I’m gonna try to get a decent run maybe even grab all the fifty stars to help Santa deliver presents. As long as I don’t forget my UK-EU power adapters this is possible.
Feel free to challenge me by sending me your leaderboard codes by DM on Twitter. I hope you will this Advent of Code 2019 as much as I plan to. May the flow be with you.
03/12/2019 EDIT: Since literally everyone is putting their code out there on Github I’m doing the same. Have fun browsing some average looking code.