Seven-Segment Search

Since 2015, Eric Wastl has published 50 puzzles - once each year - as part of what's called Advent of Code.

I learned about the puzzles early 2021.

Imagine discovering a TV show that's 6 seasons in, and you could start at any season knowing there are five other seasons waiting for you to experience.

Anyway, until this year, I hadn't followed along in real-time as new puzzles were released.

Thus far - up to and not including Day 9 - I've had a blast!

• Each puzzle has a verbose, whimsical, but straightforward description that offers plenty of details to help the puzzler understand what's expected
• Each puzzle has two parts: the first is relatively easier than the second, but not always easy to begin with
• There is a collection of code repositories featuring other people's completed puzzles. When I'm stumped, or when I just want to see how others solved a puzzle, browsing these repos helps me learn new computer science techniques.
• Many of the puzzles are highly memorable given the amount of energy I put into attempting to solve them

Day 8 was particularly daunting.

• Decode sets of letters corresponding to each of the segments from a seven-digit display

It required an extensive process of careful analysis, deductive reasoning, and pattern identification...not to mention the code needed to make a computer do all this work!

There's nothing more rewarding - aside from finally beating a major boss in a game from the Souls series - than printing what I think is the correct answer in my console, copy-pasting it into the website's Answer field, clicking 'Submit', and seeing the delightfully short message that I was right.

Personal tally this year: 8/9 days with both parts completed.

Best feeling: validation that I am a Designer who codes.