Advent of Code
Annual programming challenge - solutions and notes
Annual programming challenge that runs every December, Advent of Code offers a series of puzzles that test various programming skills. I have participated in multiple years, primarily using Kotlin. This serves as a good exercise in problem-solving and exploring other mechanisms and libraries in Kotlin.
Years
| Year | Language | Days |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Kotlin | [6/25] |
| 2017 | Kotlin | [2/25] |
| 2021 | Kotlin | [3/25] |
| 2022 | Kotlin | [7/25] |
| 2023 | Kotlin | [15/25] |
Notable Problems
Given the nature of Advent of Code, the problems vary widely in terms of themes and required skills. Some later days were less complex and took less time, while some earlier days were the opposite.
Patterns & Takeaways
Many of the issues that the problems present could be solved with complex Regular Expressions, but I found using recursiveness to be more intuitive and easier to implement. Parsing is done line by line, as to avoid the complexity of multi-line regexes, and the recursive nature of the problems lends itself well to a recursive solution.