Advent of Code is a yearly programming challenge that’s a great way to keep your skills sharp. You can solve problems from past years at any time, which makes it a perfect ongoing exercise. To get the most out of it, I like to turn off anything in my editor that might give me hints or shortcuts. That means no Copilot, and even no synta...

Ruby's "spaceship" operator (<=>), AKA the three-way comparison operator, lets you compare two values. If the value on the left-hand side is less than the value on the right-hand side, it will return -1; if the value is greater, it will return 1; and if the values are the same, it will return 0: 1 <=> 2 # => -1 2 <=> 1 # => 1 1 <=> 1 #...

In Ruby, a conversion function converts to the type indicated by the function name, if possible. Technically, it is a method on the Kernel class, but it starts with a capital letter and is used like a function. Integer("1") # => 1 Float("3.14") # => 3.14 Why would you use this over the more common methods such as to_i and to_f? One rea...