Advent of Code: Solving Puzzles With Python (Overview)

Philipp Acsany
Advent of Code: Solving Puzzles With Python Philipp Acsany 00:54
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Advent of Code is an online Advent calendar where you’ll find new programming puzzles offered each day from December 1 to 25. While you can solve the puzzles at any time, the excitement when new puzzles unlock is really something special. You can participate in Advent of Code in any programming language—including Python!

With the help of this Code Conversation, you’ll be ready to start solving puzzles and earning your first gold stars.

In this video course, you’ll learn:

  • What an online Advent calendar is
  • How solving puzzles can advance your programming skills
  • How you can participate in Advent of Code

Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be approachable by anyone with an interest in problem-solving. You don’t need a heavy computer science background to participate. Instead, Advent of Code is a great arena for learning new skills and testing out new features of Python.

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00:00 Welcome to another Real Python Code Conversation. I’m Philipp, your host for today’s session about a very special Advent calendar, Advent of Code. An Advent calendar is typically something where you count down the days until Christmas by getting a little chocolate or a little something every day.

00:18 Advent of Code is an Advent calendar full of programming puzzles, and today you’ll open a door to an older Advent of Code Advent calendar and tackle one of the programming puzzles you find there.

00:31 You won’t be alone in this. Joining me today is Geir Arne, a real Python team member as well, and a prolific Advent of Code gold star collector. Hi. Hey, Philipp.

00:42 Today I want you to walk us through one of the former Advent of Code coding puzzles, but before we do so, maybe you can tell the viewers a bit more about Advent of Code in general.

Michael Doornbos on Nov. 28, 2023

I enjoyed Geir Arne’s write up of this last year. Excellent work. I was actually able to do about a third of the puzzles on my Commodore PET 2001 from 1979 last year and did the remaining that proved too much work for the 1Mhz machine in Julia. I plan to do the same thing with the PET this year and use Python for the rest. Happy Holidays!!!

Geir Arne Hjelle RP Team on Nov. 30, 2023

Thanks Michael. I enjoyed the Commodore code and animations you shared last year. Looking forward to see what you do this year!

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