Advent of Code

The annual coding event I participate in (2017 - Present)

This isn't really a side project, but I think it's worth mentioning here. For the last couple of years, I have been participating in this annual coding puzzle game. It takes place during Advent (hence the name) and consists of 25 puzzles with one getting published each day. The puzzles can be solved in any language. I did the first year in 2017 in Python and other years in Kotlin (including past years, cause the archive of puzzles is open to everyone). AoC is a great opportunity to play with a new language, get more familiar with the standard library of language you already use, and brush up on your algorithms and data structures skills.

Last year I encouraged some of my colleagues to participate, we set up a private company leaderboard and had a blast. Even our non-programmer COO joined in and put on a remarkable performance, solving the first days with his Excel magic and then trying Python for the first time.

That being said, the biggest challenge for me in this competition is to wake up every day at 6 AM for almost a month, cause that's when the puzzles are published in my timezone :)

Lessons learned: Increased knowledge of common algorithms, data structures, and Python/Kotlin standard libraries.