Fine, I’ll do Advent of Code

I’ve considered participating in Advent of Code in the past few years. I started a couple of the problems, but never took it very seriously. This year the Advent of Code made a couple changes that make it a bit more accessible:

1. Only 12 days of problems instead of 25: This makes it much easier to fit into my busy December schedule visiting family and holiday shows.
2. No public leaderboard: That way I don’t get too worked up about how long it takes me to finish part 2 of each problem.

In the past, I’ve attempted the Advent of Code problems in Rust. I’m a huge fan of Rust, and enjoy using it to write my ML framework rs-ml. However, the “quick and dirty” nature of these one-off questions does not fit well into Rust’s philosophy, so I end up spending more time fighting the borrow checker than actually solving the problem. This year, I’ll be taking the opportunity to learn Go. I’ve heard lots of good things about Go, notably quick compilation and simple syntax; two commonly complained about pain points of Rust. My primary goal is to have a basic grasp of Golang by the end of the 12 days of code. By writing this I’m keeping myself accountable to share my progress and what I learned about Go after the 12 days are up. Maybe I’ll be able to add a new language to my toolbelt!