What is your goal?

• Relaxed Approach
  • Have a good time and learn something new without pressure
     
• Take a Challenge
  • Try to reach your personal best (fastest, most levels, etc.)

Relaxed Approach

• You are relatively new to coding or coding challenges
• You want to try something new (e.g. language, framework, AI)
• You are in the mood for something "crazy"
  (e.g. Scratch, esoteric language like Piet)
• You want to have fun with friends on a team
  (especially in teams with different levels of experience)
• You simply don't feel like competing

Take a Challenge

• You want to show your capabilities (e.g. to get an internship position)
• You want to find out what your current coding level is
• You like competitions
• Prepare!
  • Use a tech that you know well ➡️ training is required!
  • Use prior editions of the comp to learn more about kinds of puzzles
  • Have the starter code ready
  • Choose your work environment wisely (e.g. silent room vs. crowd)
  • Team or solo? If in a team, find the right one

Important Questions

• Programming language
• Framework
• Development environment
• With internet research?
• Any AI? If AIs, which ones?

Tips

• Quick and dirty first, clean up later
  • Not too dirty, don't get lost in chaos
  • E.g., duplicated code for different levels is ok
• Make good use of samples with provided results
  • Use them for (automated?) testing
• Use a console app, not a fancy UI
  • Build a fancy UI later if you want
• Master core techniques
  • File reading and parsing
  • Text splitting
  • Iterators, map/reduce, LINQ
  • Regex, maybe with match groups