Advent of Code
One of my new favorite activities around Christmas time is a programming challenge website called Advent of Code. Some of the problems are easy, but they rapidly get difficult. Because each one requires using different techniques and some require fairly high level algorithms, it is a great way to get the brain engaged in new ways of problem solving and code writing. There isn't a lot of framework required, because each problem is independent (at least as far as the code is concerned). This means I can use relatively straight-forward code and just solve the problem at hand.
I have already completed all of the problems in years 2015 and 2016, so to keep this engaging for me, I will be solving these problems again in F#. I'll blog about each day and maybe explain some of the algorithm or code decisions I made originally in C#, and the difficulties I encounter in learning F# to solve the problems.