[ghj]

I was tricked into writing a VM while doing Advent of Code last year and it really deepened my understanding of programming (e.g., on how to implement simple coroutines).

Advent of Code is supposed to be 25 daily programming puzzles leading up to christmas. I went in thinking they were going to be algo/datastructure tasks but half of them were actually about implementing and using a VM for a made up assembly language! The difficulty ramp was gradual enough that I did it with no background in compilers and it was lots of fun.

If you want to experience it, in last year's version https://adventofcode.com/2019 you write the VM in Days 2, 5, 7, 9 then apply it to solving problems in Days 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25.

I ended up loving the VM puzzles and ended up doing the AoC author's other challenges which have a similar theme: https://challenge.synacor.com/

[Marazan]

Pro tip: advent of code almost always ends up with you writing a VM of some sort.

[p4bl0]

Funny that VM related days are all prime numbers :).

EDIT: No they're not, I wasn't fully awake, sorry.

[Kwantuum]

they're the odd days except for 2.

[saagarjha]

Not all of them, but a lot seem to be.

[schemy]

A mathematician, physicist, and engineer are taking a math test. One question asks "Are all odd numbers prime?"

The mathematician thinks, "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime -- nope, not all odd numbers are prime."

The physicist thinks, " 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime -- that could be experimental error -- 11 is prime, 13 is prime, yes, they're all prime."

The engineer thinks, " 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, ..."

https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~riesbeck/mathphyseng.html

[p4bl0]

Haha right, I saw the list without really watching it and jumped to the conclusion before actually paying attention to all the days. It was before my morning coffee, if that's any excuse.