Advent of Nim 2021

26 November 2021 The Nim Team

Wednesday December 1st at 5 a.m. UTC will mark the start of the seventh incarnation of Advent of Code, popular programming contest started back in 2015. The author describes Advent of Code (AoC) as “a series of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels in any programming language you like”.

The rules of AoC are quite simple. Starting from December 1st until Christmas, every day at 5 a.m. UTC a new task is released. The tasks consist of two parts, where second part is revealed after you solve the first part, and it is a continuation and/or variation of the first part. You don’t submit your code, just the result of your calculation.

The participation in AoC is free (although, if you like it, consider donating), all you need to do is log in with your Github, Google, Twitter, or Reddit account.

If you have never participated in AoC before or you want to prepare yourself for the start of the competition by solving some tasks, take a look at the previous events. To bring you up to speed, we recommend solving any of first 10 tasks of any year, as those are usually easier and can be solved relatively fast.

Nim leaderboards

Advent of Code offers private leadearboards, and Nim has not only one but two of them.

The original Nim private leaderboard has filled up last year to the maximum of 200 users. We have opened a new private leaderboard, which you can join by using 681448-60235f8f code on this link.

If you have joined one of these leaderboards in previous years, there’s no need to do it again – you’re already in.

Sharing solutions and asking for help

We have the official Advent of Code megathread on our forum where you can post links to your AoC repositories, share your solutions, ask for help, discuss the tasks, etc.

People usually share their solutions on r/adventofcode subreddit and we encourage you to share your Nim solutions there too and showcase the beauty of Nim.

If you’re sharing your solutions via Twitter, use #AdventOfNim hashtag and/or mention @nim_lang.

You can also use Nim IRC/Gitter/Discord channel if you have some Nim-related problem, but have in mind that your snippets might contain spoilers for other who haven’t solved the task yet – not everybody will be able to solve the tasks at 5 a.m. UTC. Consider waiting at least couple of hours before asking for help (in that time, try it some more to see if you can solve it by yourself :)).

Have fun!