Previously I mentioned the Advent of Code as a possible thing you might want to look at for using as a way to learn a new language in a fun and exciting way during December.

This year, it'll be running again, and I intend to have a go at it again in Rust because I feel like I ought to continue my journey into that language.

It's important to note, though, that I find it takes me between 30 and 90 minutes per day to engage properly with the problems, and frankly the 30 minute days are far more rare than the 90 minute ones. As such, I urge you to not worry if you cannot allocate the time to take part every day. Ditto if you start and then find you cannot continue, do not feel ashamed. Very few Yakking readers are as lucky as I am in having enough time to myself to take part.

However, if you can give up the time, and you do fancy it, then join in and if you want you can join my private leaderboard and not worry so much about competing with the super-fast super-clever people out there who are awake at midnight Eastern time (when the problems are published). If you want to join the leaderboard (which contains some Debian people, some Codethink people, and hopefully by now, some Yakking people) then you will need (after joining the AoC site) to go to the private leaderboard section and enter the code: 69076-d4b54074. If you're really enthusiastic, and lucky enough to be able to afford it, then support AoC via their AoC++ page with a few dollars too.

Regardless of whether you join in with AoC or not, please remember to always take as much pleasure as you can in your coding opportunities, however they may present themselves.