Christmas season is upon us again, and as every year, many people are frolicking on the Christmas Market and warm themselves with Mulled Wine, Hot Chocolate, and lots of Candied Almonds. You are not interested in that, but still want to enjoy Christmas Season? Then we offer you the perfect alternative this year: For the third year in a row, we present to you “Advent of Code”.

Advent of Code (AoC) is a digital advent calendar designed by computer scientists for computer scientists, and therefore, every day there await small (and big) programming puzzles and challenges for you. With solving the two-part tasks you can earn up to two stars. For that you don’t need any prior knowledge of competitive programming or advanced algorithms and data structures. Best of all, you can even use your favourite programming language! The puzzles are usually designed in such a way that you can quickly find the solution with logical-analytical thinking and a little puzzling. The puzzles are also part of a cute little story in which you can help Father Christmas to make Christmas really happen. In the end, AoC is not necessarily about solving all the puzzles – real fans just want to save Christmas from the Grinch.

However, if you actually want a challenge, then AoC has this up its sleeve for you: if you are particularly fast and one of the first 100 to solve the task of the day, you will receive points on the global leaderboard. The student council has also created a private leaderboard for you, where you can compete with all other SIC students. Rumour has it that anonymous professors are also participating . It should be noted, however, that the puzzles for us are published at 06:00 in the morning – so if you want to climb to the top, you must not only steel your programming skills but also your will to get up early..

We believe that Advent of Code is a great opportunity for all students to challenge themselves and expand their skill set through various problems. Therefore, there are no students at SIC who cannot benefit from it.

This year, AoC starts on December 01st and ends December 25th. You can find more information on the AoC website: https://adventofcode.com/2024.

To join the private FSR leaderboard, use our code 2253378-eb43346f on https://adventofcode.com/2024/leaderboard/private. If you already participated last year, you are already part of the leaderboard and don’t need to do anything else.

Disclaimer: Advent of Code is not hosted or organised by the Student Council of Computer Science. We are just big fans of the concept and want to promote it at our faculty.