Santa's Challenge
It was already snowing when I was walking towards home last night. I did not expect that since it came too early this year. I also did not expect the Red and White truck with a beverage brand to swerve uncontrollably and to hit me hard, making my work backpack and me fly some hundred meters.
When I woke up I was in the middle of a snowy wasteland under a lone streetlight. It wasn’t just cold, I was freezing. I tried pulling myself up but my backpack was too heavy.
Suddenly I saw a light in the distance. It was snowing so hard that it was difficult to distinguish what it was, but at least I saw it coming towards me. So I wasn’t probably going to be stuck freezing to death in that wasteland. Soon I could see what it was: a fat man dressed in a santa suit on a Harley with skis and spiked wheels.
I muttered some profanities and awkwardly managed to remove my backpack, then I could stand. I checked what was inside and it was… coal? Lumps and lumps of coal.
He stopped near me, removed his motorbike glasses and saluted me with an “Ho Ho Ho! I was waiting for you”
I could only answer with my trademark “Ho Ho Ho! Holy Crap”
Then he gestured to me to mount on his motorbike behind him. I pointed at the backpack and he just shrugged “Oh, don’t worry, just leave it there, you will always have your coal with you”
“And that kid is the third of the billion reasons why you are here right now. You know it isn’t nice” (and he stressed “nice”) “to mock the Christmas spirit. But you know, we are going to work on it. And yes, my child, I am really that Santa Claus”
I was lost for words.
I don’t really know what happened, because we were sitting at a table in the middle of a cottage room, with a lit fireplace, a cup of hot dark chocolate and a really high pile of biscuits.
“Are we at the North Pole?”
“I could go on for hours telling you why, but everytime a programmer writes in Java and puts the code on a production server, God kills a mitten.”
“It just appears as the North Pole, but in truth this is a secluded dimension that’s powered by a force nexus, and now you are just imagining a Christmas scene. And no, you can’t imagine a tropical island surrounded full hot women because I am Santa Claus, and therefore this illusion will maintain its family-friendly Christmas theme.”
“Ok, but why am I here?”
“Because you need to pay for your crimes against coding.”
“What?”
“You write programs in the Java language, which is a crime by itself.”
Well, the old man wasn’t wrong, but…
“Kitten?”
“No, mitten.”
Eeerrr.
“And then how can I atone for my crimes?”
“I challenge you”, Santa told me “to enter this year’s Advent of Code and finish all the problems”
I rapidly thought at all the problems that could go wrong with this: memory that’s too tight for some Advent of Code problems, not having MD5 algorithms backed in the platform like a problem in 2015, having to manage 32 bit maths by myself.
I started sweating and answered “Ok”. Even if I love Advent of Code’s puzzles I never finished one year and mostly used them as a way to learn a new programming language.
“I will do this year using Rust? Is it ok for you?”
“Well Rust would be ok but no, you can’t just use a modern language. You need to go back at one thing you started one year at christmas time and then forgot about it. In fact the second crime you are being tried is the crime against new year’s resolutions”
I tried to think what he meant… then it dawned on me: : “Learning how to program on the Z80 on the MSX?”
Santa nodded.
Oh boy, that text file predated the eventual demise of Google+.
I muttered: “That would take me one year!”
“That’s ok, as long as you make progress”
“And I am not sure to be able to do them all”
“Nonsense, there’s always someone that does them in dot-bf”
I knew I he meant Brainfuck, but also that he could not say the full name because it would be naughty.
“Ok, can I solve the problems first in something else just to get the algorithm down and then on the Msx? Java?”
“That’s not forbidden, unless you run Java on a production server”
“Does it count if it runs on an emulator?”
He sighed. “Yes. The universe is a hologram therefore an emulated msx is good as the thing you would consider real. Now go”
I was going to ask other questions but he cut me short.
“One year from the first code problem” he said one last time.
I soon found myself on the road to home again, under the snow. In my pocket I found a little piece of coal.
When I woke up I was in the middle of a snowy wasteland under a lone streetlight. It wasn’t just cold, I was freezing. I tried pulling myself up but my backpack was too heavy.
Suddenly I saw a light in the distance. It was snowing so hard that it was difficult to distinguish what it was, but at least I saw it coming towards me. So I wasn’t probably going to be stuck freezing to death in that wasteland. Soon I could see what it was: a fat man dressed in a santa suit on a Harley with skis and spiked wheels.
I muttered some profanities and awkwardly managed to remove my backpack, then I could stand. I checked what was inside and it was… coal? Lumps and lumps of coal.
He stopped near me, removed his motorbike glasses and saluted me with an “Ho Ho Ho! I was waiting for you”
I could only answer with my trademark “Ho Ho Ho! Holy Crap”
Then he gestured to me to mount on his motorbike behind him. I pointed at the backpack and he just shrugged “Oh, don’t worry, just leave it there, you will always have your coal with you”
“And that kid is the third of the billion reasons why you are here right now. You know it isn’t nice” (and he stressed “nice”) “to mock the Christmas spirit. But you know, we are going to work on it. And yes, my child, I am really that Santa Claus”
I was lost for words.
I don’t really know what happened, because we were sitting at a table in the middle of a cottage room, with a lit fireplace, a cup of hot dark chocolate and a really high pile of biscuits.
“Are we at the North Pole?”
“I could go on for hours telling you why, but everytime a programmer writes in Java and puts the code on a production server, God kills a mitten.”
“It just appears as the North Pole, but in truth this is a secluded dimension that’s powered by a force nexus, and now you are just imagining a Christmas scene. And no, you can’t imagine a tropical island surrounded full hot women because I am Santa Claus, and therefore this illusion will maintain its family-friendly Christmas theme.”
“Ok, but why am I here?”
“Because you need to pay for your crimes against coding.”
“What?”
“You write programs in the Java language, which is a crime by itself.”
Well, the old man wasn’t wrong, but…
“Kitten?”
“No, mitten.”
Eeerrr.
“And then how can I atone for my crimes?”
“I challenge you”, Santa told me “to enter this year’s Advent of Code and finish all the problems”
I rapidly thought at all the problems that could go wrong with this: memory that’s too tight for some Advent of Code problems, not having MD5 algorithms backed in the platform like a problem in 2015, having to manage 32 bit maths by myself.
I started sweating and answered “Ok”. Even if I love Advent of Code’s puzzles I never finished one year and mostly used them as a way to learn a new programming language.
“I will do this year using Rust? Is it ok for you?”
“Well Rust would be ok but no, you can’t just use a modern language. You need to go back at one thing you started one year at christmas time and then forgot about it. In fact the second crime you are being tried is the crime against new year’s resolutions”
I tried to think what he meant… then it dawned on me: : “Learning how to program on the Z80 on the MSX?”
Santa nodded.
Oh boy, that text file predated the eventual demise of Google+.
I muttered: “That would take me one year!”
“That’s ok, as long as you make progress”
“And I am not sure to be able to do them all”
“Nonsense, there’s always someone that does them in dot-bf”
I knew I he meant Brainfuck, but also that he could not say the full name because it would be naughty.
“Ok, can I solve the problems first in something else just to get the algorithm down and then on the Msx? Java?”
“That’s not forbidden, unless you run Java on a production server”
“Does it count if it runs on an emulator?”
He sighed. “Yes. The universe is a hologram therefore an emulated msx is good as the thing you would consider real. Now go”
I was going to ask other questions but he cut me short.
“One year from the first code problem” he said one last time.
I soon found myself on the road to home again, under the snow. In my pocket I found a little piece of coal.
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