https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/6

This was my first real attempt at a harder puzzle. I was just finishing my springboot course and, of course, fell for the exponential growth trap. Only I didn’t realize exponential growth was the problem. So, I set up a database and a springboot application, like I had just learned. I believe I did get a result, but it took about 10 hours or so.

Good times!

Eventually this puzzle became the pitch how I got my current job.

Oh boy, how can i forget 2019 and the whole series of “intcode” challenges!

You had a growing specification of a sorta-pcode virtual computer, opcodes, etc. Your input was the titular intcode, a list of integers representing instructions and you had to execute that code and use that execution to solve the bigger challenge, e.g. play a simple one-sided Pong!

In 2019 there was a series of problems where had you make an interpreter for a bytecode they made up. Intcode I think. I really like programming languages and that kind of stuff so those were great for me.