Advent of Code 2021 – Mark Stickling

stickling.co.uk

This year's Advent of Code story was about exploring a deep ocean trench in a mini-submarine and solving problems with the instruments and navigation as you diver deeper and deeper.

This year I decided to break from my JavaScript day-to-day and attempt every puzzle using Python:

• I practiced a lot of data manipulation in Python.
• Learned how to use List Comprehensions where I would usually reach for JavaScript Array.prototype.map()
• Understood that I had to import reduce rather than relying on it just being there as in JavaScript.
• Noted the differences between copy and deepcopy.
• Used a Lambda function or two which feel a lot like JavaScript Arrow Functions.
• Figured out basic unit-testing. As Python's unittest is readily importable this was much nicer than the JavaScript experience of having to decide which of many test runners to choose.
• Used type hinting to tighten the feedack loop of errors and warnings.
• Setting up VSCode for Python work and utilising the built in debugger.

I managed a score of 21*. A little better than last year. Looking forward to completing every star one year 💪.

Unit testing

Python version 3.10.0

Scripts

• Run all tests
  • python3 -m unittest
• Run a single test file:
  • python3 -m unittest test_dayXX