The best thing about Advent of Code is how you can adjust it to anyone's skills and interests - you can do it for time, you can take ages, you can use any langu

The best thing about Advent of Code is how you can adjust it to anyone's skills and interests - you can do it for time, you can take ages, you can use any language you want or multiple languages, you can get help from other people online, you can go down various CS rabbit holes, you can make more elaborate solutions and/or extensions (some people were doing really cool visualisation of the game of life variations last year) etc. It's very easy to recommend to it anyone who does any amount of programming at any level, from complete beginners to very experienced. Other people in this thread are talking about learning new languages and I found that a bit distracting. I think I'd rather focus on the puzzles themselves and there's also something very satisfying about writing a clean and concise solution in a few lines which you can't always do when you're picking up a new language. I like using Python for it because I can just translate what I'm thinking to a solution without worrying about the language itself. Also, even if I didn't mind doing it in a new language, I don't think that AoC gives you large enough problems that can really explore a new language and all of its features. And you can always mix the languages if there's a language that's really suitable for a given problem. You don't have to stick to the same language for all problems. I really enjoyed last year's, I'm looking forward to this one.