Last year, I did [#AdventOfCode](https://adventofcode.com) as an exercise to learn #rust. It's a sequence of daily programming puzzles in December. I'm thinking of doing it again this year and learning #haskell.
I don't try for speed, and I don't try to be the first to solve a problem. I take my time and solve each day's problem a day or two later. It would be nice to have people to chat with about solutions if anybody else is interested.
@bwbeach I'd tried AoC a few times too, mostly for Python. But I keep getting distracted by real life.
Maybe I should try this again but with JavaScript? Since my future needs might require more JS and it'd help if I actually knew it in the first place... 😅
@codo_sapien I really enjoyed learning #rust. I like the language design and the community is friendly. It took me some time to understand borrowing. And I didn't get as far as multi-threading.
If i had to pick a new language for work, it might be #rust.
@bwbeach I did the 2020 and 2021 Advent of Code almost all in Haskell. Enjoyed it and found Haskell beautiful, expressive and concise, but really struggled when naieve FP solutions were infeasible, usually where a straightforward mutation-based dynamic programming could be done easily in e.g. Python. I found some nice tricks and learned to use the ST monad, but it was a lot of work and uglified the code (also, hard to debug). I'd definitely recommend trying it; no matter what it's a great learning experience.
@bwbeach hi Brian! I do AoC with python. Last year was my first and I’ve almost finished all the previous years now.
@mmszk I'm impressed that you've done most of the previous years.
@bwbeach just takes time, really. It’s good practice and I’m still learning.
@bwbeach I did just that (use it to learn Haskell) a couple years ago and it was extremely painful, but very educational. Unfortunately recently I've let life get in the way too much for adventofcode - I always try to catch up late at night during family vacation, but never quite make it 🤪