05: Advent of Code

What do coders do when they’re not coding for work? Sometimes they code for fun. (And sometimes they code for fun at work.) Hear why every December some of Spotify’s engineers become obsessed with the coding puzzles on Advent of Code, a website created in 2015 by an engineer named Eric Wastl.

Host and principal engineer Dave Zolotusky talks with Spotify’s chief architect and VP of engineering, Niklas Gustavsson (aka ngn), about competition and community, the utility of ugly hacks and garbage code, and how we can learn from play.

We also hear from Spotify engineers Sandra Dinsdale, Sophy Cao, and Tomas Aschan about who they’re really competing against, why they play, and why they can’t stop.

And lastly, Dave tries to find out the secrets to winning from the unbeatable Jimmy Mårdell — No. 35 on last year’s Advent of Code global leaderboard, the top player (by far) on Spotify’s internal leaderboard every year, and ngn’s nemesis (sort of).

We hope you enjoy this peek into one corner of Spotify’s engineering community and are inspired to join the global Advent of Code community in December. Until then, we leave you with this tweet from Advent of Code creator Eric Wastl (@ericwastl):

“If you're doing #AdventOfCode and learning stuff, but your code's a mess, you got the wrong answer, you're a few days behind, it took you several hours, you're in a language you're not familiar with…All I hear is that you're learning stuff. You're doing great!! 🌟❤️🎄🧑‍🎄”

Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com

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