Advent Of Code 2016 – Day 1

So on Hacker News, I came across something awesome.  Advent of Code (http://adventofcode.com/)

A programming challenge that takes 25 2-part challenges, one  a day until Christmas.  I’ve been looking for a side project to hone my code, and this was perfect.  Especially after dragging my feet on board game bots, Alexa skills, general programs, and so on and so forth.  I’ve been having a bit of trouble lately because I haven’t felt like I was advancing my technical skills in a bit, and this will help.

I’ve done plenty of coding challenge sites before, with the most notable being Project Euler, so i wanted a nice challenge this time.  I knew I wasn’t going to be the fastest on the site, so speed wasn’t going to be an option.  Instead, I want to work on being a polyglot.  Let’s work in a few different programming languages.  The goal then, 25 languages in 25 days.  Am I going to be successful?  Probably not.  I have a hackathon week at work.  I have Christmas shopping to do.  I make dinner every night and have a wife and son to tend to.  But, once everyone goes to bed and the house is quiet, it’s my time to shine.

Let’s look at how the first day went……

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