Advent of Nim 2020

27 November 2020 The Nim Team

Tuesday December 1st at 5 a.m. UTC will mark the start of the sixth incarnation of Advent of Code, popular programming contest started back in 2015. The author describes Advent of Code (AoC) as “a series of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels in any programming language you like”.

The rules of AoC are quite simple. Starting from December 1st until Christmas, every day at 5 a.m. UTC a new task is released. The tasks consist of two parts, where second part is revealed after you solve the first part, and it is a continuation and/or variation of the first part. You don’t submit your code, just the result of your calculation.

The participation in AoC is free (although, if you like it, consider donating), all you need to do is log in with your Github, Google, Twitter, or Reddit account.

If you have never participated in AoC before or you want to prepare yourself for the start of the competition by solving some tasks, take a look at the previous events. To bring you up to speed, we recommend solving any of first 10 tasks of any year, as those are usually easier and can be solved relatively fast.

Nim leaderboard

We are organizing the official Nim private leaderboard, where you can compete against other Nim users. To join the Nim leaderboard, all you have to do is use 40415-c732e66e code in the previous link.

If you are one of 164 (!) people who have joined this leaderboard in previous years, there’s no need to do it again – you’re already in. If you’re not there yet, hurry up! Private leaderboards are limited to 200 members.

Sharing solutions and asking for help

People usually share their solutions on r/adventofcode subreddit and we encourage you to share your Nim solutions there too and showcase the beauty of Nim.

We have the official Advent of Code megathread on our forum where you can post links to your AoC repositories, share your solutions, ask for help, discuss the tasks, etc.

You can also use Nim IRC/Gitter/Discord channel if you have some Nim-related problem, but have in mind that your snippets might contain spoilers for other who haven’t solved the task yet – not everybody will be able to solve the tasks at 5 a.m. UTC. Consider waiting at least couple of hours before asking for help (in that time, try it some more to see if you can solve it by yourself :)).

Have fun!