loading . . . Advent of Code 2025 Advent of Code 2025
It’s time for the annual Carolina Code Conference Advent of Code Challenge again this year! You’ll have the opportunity to flex your brain and learn while you have the opportunity to win tickets for you and maybe some friends too!
Here are the details from last year’s challenge and the winners announcement in case you’re curious.
What is Advent of Code?
Direct from adventofcode.com…
Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like. People use them as interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, a speed contest, or to challenge each other.
As regular participant in Advent of Code for many years now, our own Eric Burden has even run a blog series annually discussing the event and what he loves about it so much.
How do I participate?
We’re going to have a little more brevity in this year’s announcement to simplify things. The Carolina Code Conference has created a private leaderboard for the event, which you can view right here. If you joined the board last year, you should already be on it.
Join the Private Leaderboard…
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Login to your Advent of Code account with Github, Google, Twitter or Reddit
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Visit the Private Leaderboard page
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Join using the code 3225403-6028c4d6
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Email [email protected] with a link to the Github Repo that you’ll be using for the challenges. In order to be eligible for prizes you must email me so that I know how to contact you.
This year, the prizes will be as follows…
“Wow…that person’s followers must be getting REALLY tired of hearing about the Carolina Code Conference…SWEET!” - Barry
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1st place will earn THREE tickets to the 2026 Carolina Code Conference
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2nd place will earn TWO tickets
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3rd place will earn ONE ticket
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Polyglot Raffle
Earn at least two Gold stars with different programming languages and you’ll be entered into a raffle to win ONE free ticket. Every Gold star earned with an additional language will earn you an additional entry.
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Weirdest Language
Earn a Gold star using a language that either nobody else was using OR is sufficiently low on assorted language popularity indexes and you could win a free ticket. This is entirely based on judges discretion.
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Best Visualization
Most years, Advent of Code will include some type of challenge that includes a visualization of some type. Email some photo evidence to us after your challenge to be considered by the judges.
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Annoyingly Proactive Social Media Promoter!
Are you participating in Advent of Code while constantly posting about the Carolina Code Conference on your social media platform of choice? AWESOME. Keep that up and tag us in your posts. We’ll give away at least one ticket on LinkedIn, X, Instagram and YouTube! Every post we see from you (up to 1 per day) will enter you in a raffle for that social media platform. Email us to let us know your username on the platform so that we know who’s doing it.
We want to see you posting about us so much that we think, “Wow…that person’s followers must be getting REALLY tired of hearing about the Carolina Code Conference…SWEET!”
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If you complete at least 10 of 50 stars, you will get early access to 2026 Carolina Code Conference tickets and a 20% discount.
Have Fun and Learn!
Remember, the point of these challenges is to have fun and learn. Many people use Advent of Code as a way to learn a new language. Others, just enjoy the brain puzzles.
But it’s a puzzle for your brain, not the computer’s. Please refrain from solving puzzles by copying other folks solutions or using AI to solve it for you. It’s against the spirit of the contest.
Checkout our podcast with Eric Burden who inspired this event by sharing his prior experiences with Advent of Code over the year! Happy coding! https://blog.carolina.codes/p/advent-of-code-2025
