With December coming right up, some of you may already be eager to open their advent calendars. For those of you who may not have an advent calendar, or are up to some challenge for the december month, we would like to introduce to you: “Advent of Code”
Advent of Code (AoC) is an advent calendar consisting of small programming puzzles and challenges that you can solve in any programming language you would like. Each day you are presented with a small puzzle consisting of two parts, allowing you to earn up to 2 stars for each day. Don’t worry if you don’t have much or any previous experience in competitive programming or coding challenges in general. The puzzles are built in a way that most of them can be solved simply by critical and logical thinking. Additionally all puzzles are embedded in a cute little backstory (As opposed to the dark backstory of Dieter Schlau for everyone who visited a previous iteration of Competitive Programming) to motivate you to help Santa Claus save Christmas, so really in the end you don’t only do the challenges to obtain stars but also you do it for the plot.
While you do not need to be an exemplary student of AlgoDat or Competitive Programming to take part in AoC, for those of you that are into that, there of course also is a competitive aspect to the whole deal. The first 100 persons that finish a puzzle can earn points on the global leaderboard. Additionally we as the Students’ Council have setup a private leaderboard you can join to see how you rank against other students at SIC. However, be aware that the puzzles always release at 6:00 AM Saarbrücken Time, so getting on the leaderboard may only really be a matter of being dedicated to get up early in addition to being fast.
We believe that Advent of Code is a great opportunity for all students to challenge themselves on different problems and can vastly help you to improve your programming skills and is a perfect addition for anyone taking Programming I or really, any student of SIC.
Advent of Code starts at December 1st and ends on December 25th. For more information visit the AoC’s website at: https://adventofcode.com/
To join the FSR Leaderboard use the code 2253378-eb43346f to join the private leaderboard on https://adventofcode.com/2022/leaderboard/private
Important Disclaimer: Advent of Code is in no way hosted or organized by the Students’ Council. We just really like it and want to promote it to our students!