Improve your Code and Problem Solving skills this December for FREE!

Want to improve your coding and problem solving skills while saving Christmas?

Since 2015, Eric Wastl has been devising and hosting a free, worldwide programming contest called the Advent of Code. It's a similar concept to an advent calendar, except instead of eating a little chocolate each day you get some clever coding puzzles. These puzzles can be solved in any programming language (or even without a programming language - I had a co-worker that did it in Microsoft Excel!). The only thing that matters is figuring out the right answer to the puzzle given your personalized input data.

There is a global leaderboard (and private leaderboards too), but the real value of participation is what you learn along the way. The problems start very simple, but by the end of the month it requires much deeper thinking. You will learn about what kinds of algorithms do and don't work for certain situations, how to handle user input, path-finding, computer theory, and more as you progress.

The best part of it all is that it's totally free! All you need to start is to log in using a GitHub, Google, Twitter, or Reddit account. You can work at your own pace (even taking years to complete), and if you have struggled for too long on a question you can always take a look at community contributions on the subreddit.

I've run an internal event at my work for the last 4 years during the Advent of Code and everyone involved has had a very positive experience, and learned a lot that has benefitted their day-to-day work. This year, as I'm between jobs, I'd like to invite you all to participate! I'll be live streaming while seeing each problem for the first time, and attempting to solve. If you tune in, I'll be walking through my process for solving the problems and how I make my code not only work, but testable too! I may also be switching between languages throughout the month to help people from different backgrounds better understand, as well as to show that problem solving skills are universal, and help no matter what language you write in.

You can go learn more and get ready at https://adventofcode.com. If you would like to watch me solve the puzzles live, go to https://joe.skeen.rocks/advent-of-code for schedule and archives.