Early in December, someone at Very floated a link to Advent of Code and asked who was interested. I enjoy writing code for side projects in the free time I definitely don’t have, so I decided to give it a go.

Day 1 was easy, and while my colleagues were debating which of their professional languages to do it in, I thought, “Well, this would be easy in Bash.” So I did that. I dragged my roadtrip group in on this adventure, too.

Then I hit an interesting question. Do I do Day 2 in Bash again? Or move on to something else? Just for kicks, could I do it in PowerShell? How hard would that be? Not particularly, and it gave me a chance to play with PS for the first time.
That turned into the monumentally stupid idea to do every day in a different language alongside my friend George — who, I’ll note, is a computer scientist and skilled engineer, which I am not. But that gave me some good practice with research and pair programming.
By the end of the year, I’d made it through Part 1 of Day 19, skipping Day 17 because a four-dimensional cellular automaton problem seemed really hard to tackle on top of year-end close-out. Then it was time to go hide in a cabin in the woods for New Year’s, leaving VSCode at home. But this project was an absolute blast, and I do intend to finish — at a slower pace.

Picked up enough R (Day 11) to put this chart together, which I’d like to take to other data visualization projects one day.
Check out my Advent of Code Repo on GitHub.
Language Thoughts
To the extent I was able, given the cycle time, I tried to be as idiomatically “proper” in the language-of-the-day. Clearly, some languages, their docs, and some of the puzzles made this easier or harder to pull off.

- The mainstays of my professional work have been JavaScript (Day 16) and PHP (Day 18), both of which were fun and comfortable to use.
- I finally wrote something in C (Day 3), which I wouldn’t necessarily say I enjoyed so much as say I feel like is a rite of passage?
- I also finally wrote something in Java (Day 4) in a victorious long-delayed rematch! Java defeated me when I was thirteen and I couldn’t even get a Hello World to work.
Languages I Loved
- I enjoyed how clean and lightweight, yet powerful Lua (Day 7) and Go (Day 14) both felt.
- Clojure (Day 5), though I find it difficult to read, finally made me sit down and learn reducers and recursion. Not sure I can make a habit of this one — it feels like a game of Scrabble with only parentheses tiles. But it was cool in its own way.
- Finally, Kotlin (Day 6) wins First Prize as a language I would love to use again. I found it to be well-documented with clearly written error messages, making it easy for beginners to approach. Its foundation in Java is clear, but I found it much simpler to use.
Languages I Didn’t
- Groovy (Day 10) had every opportunity to be a cousin to Kotlin, but its error messages are so hard to parse and its documentation felt disorganized by comparison. I spent less time planning my solution than fighting with always having written something incorrectly in ways I had trouble deducing.
- Confession: my first experiments in the “cgi-bin” days were in Perl (Day 08). Truth be told, I enjoyed writing this but compared to the other languages we explored, I now understand much more clearly all the criticism against Perl. And why seasoned engineers are dismayed that Perl was my first language.
- I found Haskell and F# to be incredibly difficult to get started with, to the point that I bailed on both, though I would like to try Haskell again at some point. Part of the issue with F# is that it was hard to research because search results contained a sea of C# and .NET information mixed in. Haskell is just so far afield from anything else I’d written that I felt like the only way to start would be to read a textbook cover-to-cover.
Thank You to my Team
Thanks to George and Evan for being sounding boards and pair programming buddies late into many nights. Thank you also to Mitchel H, Allie S, Sara P, Brad B, Diego M, Gaspar T, and Tony S at Very who cheered me on, provided rescues, made this a lot of fun, and let me learn from their code, too.
An Appendix of Fun Moments
The Best Hint: I hit a wall in C. I knew my approach was right but the final answer was wrong. I noticed that the program was not doing multiplication correctly. Mitchel gave me a well-constructed no-words hint that taught me about data types (specifically, different sizes).
My code output compared to my calculator:

What Mitchel sent me:

The answer was that I needed a unit64_t
instead of an int
or long
.
Accidental Reducer: That time I finally learned what reducers are by accidentally writing one.

Marine Navigation: Finally breaking out graph paper for the TCL (Day 12, Part 2) ship navigation puzzle, which was not hard but easier to draw than to code.

Zoom Whiteboarding with George: Planning out which question to answer, and how to answer it, to solve the laptop charger chain problem (Day 10, Part 2).

Delightful One-Liner Methods in Kotlin (Day 6)

On Ruby: When a Ruby (Day 15) Engineer told me this:

A performance boost from first-solution to final-answer by refactoring file-seeking for-loops with circular buffers and queues Chapel (Day 9), reducing execution time from 2.4 seconds to 0.02 seconds.
A Commit Log of Despair (Python, Day 19):

Which ultimately resulted in this hilariously horrifying automatically generated regular expression match pattern. But it did work!
^(((b(a((a(ab|ba)|b(ba|aa))a|((ab|bb)b|(b|a)(b|a)a)b)|b(a((b|a)a|bb)a|(((b|a)a|ab)a|(b|a)(b|a)b)b))|a(a(aab|b((b|a)a|bb))b|b((((b|a)b|aa)b|((b|a)a|bb)a)b|(b(ab|bb)|abb)a)))a|(a((a((ab|ba)a|(ba|(b|a)b)b)|b((ba|(b|a)b)a|(ab|bb)b))b|(b(aba|baa)|a(aab|aaa))a)|b((ba((b|a)a|bb)|a(a((b|a)a|bb)|b(ba|aa)))a|((a(b|a)(b|a)|b((b|a)a|bb))b|b(ba|aa)a)b))b)b|(a((b((b|a)(b|a)bb|(b((b|a)b|aa)|aba)a)|a(a((ba|aa)a|((b|a)b|aa)b)|b(((b|a)a|bb)b|((b|a)b|aa)a)))a|(((bba|(b|a)(b|a)b)a|aabb)a|(a(b(b|a)(b|a)|aba)|b((ba|aa)a|bab))b)b)|b(a(b(((ba|aa)a|(ab|ba)b)a|(aaa|(ba|aa)b)b)|a((aba|b(ab|bb))a|(b((b|a)a|bb)|a(ab|ba))b))|b((b(ba|aa)b|(abb|b(ab|ba))a)b|(a(b((b|a)a|ab)|a(ab|ba))|b(((b|a)b|aa)a|(ba|(b|a)b)b))a)))a)(((b(a((a(ab|ba)|b(ba|aa))a|((ab|bb)b|(b|a)(b|a)a)b)|b(a((b|a)a|bb)a|(((b|a)a|ab)a|(b|a)(b|a)b)b))|a(a(aab|b((b|a)a|bb))b|b((((b|a)b|aa)b|((b|a)a|bb)a)b|(b(ab|bb)|abb)a)))a|(a((a((ab|ba)a|(ba|(b|a)b)b)|b((ba|(b|a)b)a|(ab|bb)b))b|(b(aba|baa)|a(aab|aaa))a)|b((ba((b|a)a|bb)|a(a((b|a)a|bb)|b(ba|aa)))a|((a(b|a)(b|a)|b((b|a)a|bb))b|b(ba|aa)a)b))b)b|(a((b((b|a)(b|a)bb|(b((b|a)b|aa)|aba)a)|a(a((ba|aa)a|((b|a)b|aa)b)|b(((b|a)a|bb)b|((b|a)b|aa)a)))a|(((bba|(b|a)(b|a)b)a|aabb)a|(a(b(b|a)(b|a)|aba)|b((ba|aa)a|bab))b)b)|b(a(b(((ba|aa)a|(ab|ba)b)a|(aaa|(ba|aa)b)b)|a((aba|b(ab|bb))a|(b((b|a)a|bb)|a(ab|ba))b))|b((b(ba|aa)b|(abb|b(ab|ba))a)b|(a(b((b|a)a|ab)|a(ab|ba))|b(((b|a)b|aa)a|(ba|(b|a)b)b))a)))a)(a((((a(a((b|a)a|bb)|bab)|b(aba|bab))b|(a(b|a)(b|a)(b|a)|b((b|a)(b|a)a|aab))a)a|((b(b(ba|(b|a)b)|a((b|a)b|aa))|a(ba|(b|a)b)(b|a))a|(b(aaa|(ba|aa)b)|a(a(ab|aa)|bba))b)b)b|((((ba|aa)(b|a)b|((ab|bb)b|baa)a)a|(a(aba|bab)|b(b|a)(ba|aa))b)a|((b((b|a)(b|a)b|aaa)|a((ba|aa)a|((b|a)a|bb)b))a|(((ba|aa)a|((b|a)a|bb)b)b|(aaa|b(ab|bb))a)b)b)a)|b(((a((aaa|(ba|(b|a)b)b)a|(aab|bab)b)|b(((ba|bb)a|((b|a)a|bb)b)a|bbab))a|(b(((ba|bb)a|((b|a)a|bb)b)a|(bba|a(ba|bb))b)|a((b(ab|bb)|aab)a|(b|a)(ba|aa)b))b)b|(b(a((((b|a)a|ab)a|(b|a)(b|a)b)b|(aaa|(ab|bb)b)a)|b(a(a(ab|ba)|bbb)|b(aaa|b(ab|bb))))|a((b(b(ba|bb)|a(ab|ba))|a(b(ba|aa)|a((b|a)b|aa)))a|(a((ab|ba)b|aaa)|b((ba|(b|a)b)a|(ab|bb)b))b))a))$
And with six more puzzles left to build, I am sure there will be more eventually.