Introduction

What is it all about?

Probably many of you already know what the Advent of Code is, but for those who doesn't, let me give you a quick overview. I, myself had no idea of this thing existing, until my friend wrote to me asking if I am going to participate, just one day before it has started. The Advent of Code is a set of programming challenges, one for each day of advent. The official website of this event is https://adventofcode.com/ where you can find all the information about the author and all the details about the initiative itself. Participation is free and everyone willing to test their skills can do it by simply logging in. The core of the page are of course the coding challenges themselves, which are posted one by one, everyday. When this article is posted it is already way after this year's edition has ended, but nothing to be worried about - you can still do all the challenges, even those from previous years are still there and are still accessible!

Why did I decided to take a part?

Well, the short answer is: Why not?

To learn something new, you need to try new things and not be afraid to be wrong.

— Roy T. Bennett

I've never thought of myself as a programming god or a person who knows everything there is to know. I also really like to try new things and challenge myself, so as soon as I was introduced to the Advent of Code, I already knew, I wanted to try myself. I was a little bit afraid that the challenges are going to be accessible only in the specific day of the challenge. I'm not always able to find few hours of time everyday, working full time and having couple of different private projects going on (one of which is this website at the time of writing this article). But as mentioned before, all the challenges are available at any time, so it was a perfect match for me.

How to get started?

If you want to try it yourself you simply have to go to the Advent of Code website. Using the button you will be able to log in choosing from couple of different available authentication options. I, personally, have chosen GitHub. Basically whatever your choice is, just follow the authentication steps and you will be redirected back to the main page. Now we can see our name/nickname in the navigation bar and from now on we are good to go! Our progress will be stored so no worries that you will lose anything if you close the page. Now lets take a look at the main page again - can you see the numbers? (in my case at the attached screenshot 1 to 6) These are the numbers of the puzzles for the specific day. By clicking on any of these numbers you will be redirected to the puzzle page with the whole description and a simple form to post your result and check if your answer is right or wrong, and if it's wrong there will be a short information why/what is wrong.

Now having all this knowledge and an account on the website, we are ready to start with our first challenge. Day 1, part 1