What is AoC...

What is AoC?

• A series of Christmas-themed coding puzzles
  • A new puzzle every day between Dec, 1st and Dec, 25th
  • By solving, you help to get Santa out of trouble
  • Puzzles start rather simple, become harder later in December
  • Puzzles focus on algorithmic and data structure-related problems
• A speed coding contest
  • Puzzles are published at midnight EST (UTC-5)
  • Solve them as fast as possible to reach a top rank on the leaderboard
  • Setup private leaderboards for your community
• A great opportunity to practice a new programming language (e.g. Rust)
  • AoC is completely language-agnostic
  • You can use Scratch or Excel if you want 😂
• A lot of fun 😁

How does it work?

You start on a blank slate

• You can tackle the puzzle of the day or any puzzle of past days
• You can access puzzles of previous years to practice before Dec, 1st

The Puzzles

• Puzzles embedded in a story about Santa Claus
• Description contains examples with solutions that you can use for TDD
  • E.g. practice to build unit tests from them

Algorithm, tests

The Puzzles

• You can download your personal puzzle input from the AoC site
  
   
• You need to parse the puzzle input properly
  • Sometimes simple CSVs, sometimes more complex
  • Great to practice file handling, RegEx (matches, capture groups 🔗), splitting strings into spans, etc.
    
    
     
  • Don't download input via code with frequent HTTP requests to not overload AoC servers
• ​You need to process the input properly
  • Great for practicing iterators and generators

The Puzzles

• Done? Type in your answer online...
  
  
  
   
• And hopefully you will get your first...

The Puzzles

• You get a second puzzle to earn a second star
  • Typically, a slightly more difficult version of the original puzzle
    
    
    
    ​
• Again, you get examples with solutions (TDD)...
  • and you are back to coding...
• Great to practice refactoring

⭐⭐

Tips

Tips

• What do you want to get out of AoC?
• Want to get better in speed coding?
  • Make sure to get up early 😴⏰🔔
  • Quick and dirty is fine
• Want to practice a new language?
  • Don't underestimate the additional effort as AoC challenges are sometimes hard
  • Code quality and idiomatic coding
• Join a group that works on AoC
  • Having a fixed appointment makes it easier to stay on it
• Prepare a project/workspace structure in the first few days
  • You will need it once the puzzle become harder
• Prepare family that you will be coding on Dec 24th and 25th 🎄🤣

AoC and Communities in Linz

• We participated in AoC 2020 with young coders at
  
  
  
   
• Mentors and young coders meet daily and solve puzzles together
  • Two young coders made it to 50⭐in 2020 👏
• Do you want to join?
  • Rust coders are very welcome
  • Work on your own solutions and help young coders overcome problems

Want to do AoC 2021 in Rust?

But you don't want to code alone?

Meetup