Normally I post these on Sunday, but I'm sitting in an office waiting room (nothing scary) on a Saturday and figured I'd go ahead and share today. As always, I'd love some feedback if you find these posts helpful, or want me to share something with my audience (almost 100 people, so not a terribly huge group but it's growing!). Let's get started.

Advent of Code

Advent of Code is a yearly coding challenge run from December 1st to the 24th. Every day they host two challenges, with the second one always being a variation of the first. It starts off fairly easy, but can get quite complex as time goes on. I haven't "finished" AoC in years, but that's ok, I find it a lot of fun. It's also a great way to try new languages. Last year I did all my solutions in Python and I plan on doing the same this year. The advice I typically give to folks considering this is - take it easy. If it starts becoming not fun, just plain stop. Another thing I've done in the past when stumped is to find a solution (there's a reddit just for puzzle solutions) in another language and "translate" it to the language you're using. You can access past events if you would like to get an idea of what's involved.

Jamstack Community Survey Results

Like data? Like the Jamstack? Of course you do. The very details Jamstack Community Survey gives a huge heaping of details about the near seven thousand people who filled it out. It's not just Jamstack related, but also covers employment questions as well (remote versus in office, people who resigned, etc).

Blast from the Past - BBC on Text Adventure Games and Infocom

Last but certainly not least is this incredible BBC news report on text games and Infocom. When I grew up, I was a huge Infocom fan. This transitioned into being a fan of MUDs in college and I've got a great deal of respect for the genre. This video is interesting not just for the historical perspective, but also the "interesting" way of handling bug reports - binders of reports on paper. Makes you appreciate JIRA more, right?