diff --git a/blog/_posts/2025-01-16-advent-of-code-recap.md b/blog/_posts/2025-01-16-advent-of-code-recap.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..bb0bce202 --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/_posts/2025-01-16-advent-of-code-recap.md @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +layout: blog-detail +post-type: blog +by: Jamie Thompson and Seth Tisue, Scala Center +title: Recap of Advent of Code 2024 +description: A recap of how the Scala Community participated in the recent 2024 Advent of Code challenge +--- + +Happy New Year everyone! + +**[Advent of Code](https://adventofcode.com/)**, started by [Eric Wastl](http://was.tl/), is a yearly event providing daily programming puzzles between December 1st and December 25th. + +Following on from [last year's blog post](https://scala-lang.org/blog/2024/01/10/advent-of-code-recap.html), let's see how the Scala community participated in the Advent of Code 2024. We were pleased by the strong engagement on both the [Scala Discord][discord] and on [our solutions website][sc-advent-of-code]. + +## Why we do this + +At the [Scala Center](https://scala.epfl.ch), we love writing code in Scala, and we hope you do too. One of our core priorities is to _communicate excitement about Scala_, which motivates us to participate in the Advent of Code and share experiences solving problems with Scala with the wider programming community. + +Another key priority is to improve the _onboarding experience for newcomers_. Part of that experience comes from the first impressions someone has reading Scala code. We hope that through hosting articles on [our solutions website][sc-advent-of-code], newcomers can see that programming in Scala is an elegant way to solve problems. + +## Engagement from the community + +### Discord channel + +This year, we had dozens of people engaging in lively conversation (with spoilers duly grayed out, of course!) in the `#advent-of-code` channel on the [Scala Discord server][discord]. Thank you to everyone who shared their code and/or helped each other come up with the best solutions. We especially thank those who offered friendly help to Scala newcomers. + +### Community solutions + +We had 281 solutions submitted to [the website][sc-advent-of-code] this year, increased from 237 last year and 164 the year before, with many first time contributors. + +We give a special shout-out to [Paweł Cembaluk](https://github.com/AvaPL), who was the only participant to submit a solution for all 25 days, and [Raphaël Marbeck](https://github.com/rmarbeck), who was close behind with 24 solutions. + +### Explainer articles + +As usual, we reached out to the community to help write the daily articles that show well-coded, well-explained solutions. The community organized a posting schedule which led to 24 completed articles. Thank you to all the authors who contributed. Each article has the author's name at the top. The articles are on [our solutions website][sc-advent-of-code]. + +## Summary + +If you read this far, thank you again everyone for contributing to Scala and participating in Advent of Code, we hope you all had fun -- and learned some things, too. See you next year -- happy coding! + +[sc-advent-of-code]: https://scalacenter.github.io/scala-advent-of-code/2024/ +[discord]: https://discord.com/invite/scala