When I said "useful", I meant "useful to me". I figure I'd prefer to solve some problem to scratch a personal itch, or play some instrument, or make a funny game, whatever. Even spending that time on resting would probably be useful. Solving a technical puzzle is nice, but my point was that collecting stars to finish the advent calendar isn't particularly useful or rewarding on its own, and if I need to be motivated internally to do it by adding some artificial challenges, then I can find more enjoyable ways to make myself busy as well.
But that's just me. I just don't think AoC could motivate me into learning something I wouldn't learn otherwise. It just doesn't provide enough incentive to keep going. Tasks are mostly too easy to be rewarding on their own, but some are too hard to just do casually. I can't imagine spending as much time as I did on it - about 30 hours in total, not counting time spent on golfing and browsing other people's solutions etc. - if I had a regular job at the time, and once you skip days it just becomes a random set of challenges that could be tackled at any time anyway.
When I said "useful", I meant "useful to me". I figure I'd prefer to solve some problem to scratch a personal itch, or play some instrument, or make a funny game, whatever. Even spending that time on resting would probably be useful. Solving a technical puzzle is nice, but my point was that collecting stars to finish the advent calendar isn't particularly useful or rewarding on its own, and if I need to be motivated internally to do it by adding some artificial challenges, then I can find more enjoyable ways to make myself busy as well.
But that's just me. I just don't think AoC could motivate me into learning something I wouldn't learn otherwise. It just doesn't provide enough incentive to keep going. Tasks are mostly too easy to be rewarding on their own, but some are too hard to just do casually. I can't imagine spending as much time as I did on it - about 30 hours in total, not counting time spent on golfing and browsing other people's solutions etc. - if I had a regular job at the time, and once you skip days it just becomes a random set of challenges that could be tackled at any time anyway.