Having only started using python in the last few months (and always alongside agents to help me learn the new language) I am enjoying this opportunity/invitation to challenge myself to write the code from scratch, because it is helping me reinforce my understanding of the fundamentals of a language that is new to me.
On the one hand I do love how (in general nowadays) I can tell an agent to “implement a grammar parser for this example input stream” yet on the other hand, it’s too easy to just use the code without bothering to understand how it works. Likewise, it is so pleasantly easy these days to paste an error message into a chat window instead of figuring out for myself what it means / how to fix it. I love being able to get help (from agents) with that kind of stuff, but I also love being able to do it on my own.
Thank you to the folks who organize this event, for giving me that extra motivation to tie a ribbon around my understanding of various topics enough to be able to write python without help from agents or reference guides.
I’d also like to add that having never participated when the global leaderboard existed, I cannot compare this to that, other than to say that I appreciate how this way encourages me to come up with “personal challenges” like not using an IDE with autocomplete, or not looking up any info from reference sources, or not including any libraries beyond the core language functionality.