# Blogging the Advent of Code

The holidays are coming up and you know what that means? Advent of Code! My favourite coding event. It is at turns hilarious and frustrating. It’s a good coding workout with interesting problems that exercise different aspects of coding. They post a new 2-part problem each day from December 1 to the 25th. If you solve them all you get the full complement of 50 stars -- and you save Christmas. 
https://adventofcode.com/

I use python, but the Advent of Code is language agnostic.

I've done Advent of Code since 2017 when I earned 50 stars thanks to help from Women Who Code, Stack Overflow -- and the patience of my family. In 2018 I tackled the challenge in Julia, a new language for me, and earned 23 stars. Last year I switched back to Python and got 37 stars. In my free time I've also gone back to 2015 and earned 37 stars. In other words, I'm decent at the event, but no expert. 

My github repository for this event is here: https://github.com/alyshareinard/Advent-of-Code-2020

This year I am shooting for all 50 stars. My plan is to blog daily about my efforts and share my code via GitHub. I’ll post on a one day delay, to avoid affecting any competition results and I’ll try to hide big hints/spoilers. But in general this will be a record of my thought processes, dead ends, and successes. Perhaps it will help others who are doing the Advent of Code, or who just want insight into the thought processes of a self-taught long-time coder.

Bear with me as I'll also be learning to blog while doing this event.  

See you in a couple days.