Advent of Code Wrap-up

Advent of Code wrapped up yesterday (although the comapny's internal competition will continue through December 31 to allow people to catch up at their leisure). I did much better than expected, managing to be one of the first 10 people to finish each puzzle every night. It took me about 38 hours to finish every puzzle.

In addition to earning all 50 stars for 2018, I went back and completed all 50 stars for 2017 (which was very helpful for discovering reused concepts and algorithms between years, shaving some time off of my 2018 attempts). I also wrote a blog post for the official company blog detailing my experiences with a healthy dose of company rah-rah incorporated.

It was fun to participate in a shared experience like this, and actually making it to the end while doing it at midnight every night was the coder's version of running a marathon. It whet my appetite for more tech side projects in 2019. Now I can sleep normally again!