4 Ways to Participate in Advent of Spin - A Wasm Coding Challenge
Tags: programming, webdev, opensource, webassembly
Published: 2023-12-04 20:43:04

**‘Tis the season to learn something new 🎄**

The holiday season is here, and it’s time for this year’s Advent of Spin challenge. Each year, we at Fermyon put together a series of challenges designed to familiarize you to building serverless WebAssembly apps. 

We built (and [open-sourced](https://github.com/fermyon/spin)) [Spin](https://developer.fermyon.com/spin) to make the developer experience easier, and we want to show you this through Fermyon's [Advent of Spin](https://www.fermyon.com/blog/advent-of-spin-2023). You will be presented with fun coding challenges that'll help you learn to build with Spin and WebAssembly.

> You can do Advent of Spin challenges in JS/TS, Rust, Python, Go and other languages. I did Challenge 1 in Python, and it took me just over 90 minutes to complete (Disclaimer: It's the first time I've written Python in 7 years)

Whether you’re a newcomer to the WebAssembly World, or a seasoned Spin developer, these challenges will provide your brain with a stimulating little project each week. And each challenge you complete puts you in the running for a special Fermyon prize pack.

![Advent of Spin Prizes](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j70v1u43n77b2kguyepx.png)

Here’s the Advent of Spin promo video for extra hype:

https://youtu.be/SimzyKar6eg?si=UWZszNJsuxgIhOvu

### Here are 4 ways you can be a part of Advent of Spin

### 1. Play Advent of Spin!

The easiest way to participate is to start playing. Go to https://github.com/fermyon/advent-of-spin and start with Challenge number 1. All the instructions are in the Readme file. 

> Each challenge has a different goal and uses different libraries. But the challenge also lets you bring your own way of doing things.

To participate you need to have the following installed:

- [Spin](https://developer.fermyon.com/spin/v2/quickstart)
- [Hurl](https://hurl.dev/docs/installation.html)
- A [Fermyon Cloud](https://cloud.fermyon.com/) account (it's free! All you need is a GitHub account!)

Once you’ve solved a challenge, if you want a price you need to [fill in this Typeform](https://fibsu0jcu2g.typeform.com/to/gkqwYEqG?typeform-source=www.fermyon.com) to tell Fermyon folks that you’ve finished it. That’s how we know to send you some swag 🎁

If this is the first time you’re using Spin, you can start with our [Quickstart tutorial](https://developer.fermyon.com/spin/v2/quickstart) which we estimate it should take you exactly <add random funny number> to build and deploy your first Spin app. 

### 2. Follow the challenges on our livestream

We livestream Wasm coding every Tuesday at 2130 IST / 1700 CET / 1600 GMT / 1100 EST / 0800 PST. Swing by our YouTube channel for Live Code Tuesdays where the previous week’s challenges are solved and new challenges are unveiled. 

Here’s this past week’s Live Code Tuesday where Challenge 1 was unveiled:  

https://www.youtube.com/live/WqltnlpguOY?si=sze5mgiTpTSeiwlN

### 3. Join our Discord (and chat with other players)

Nobody must code alone!  

We’re all around in the [Fermyon Discord server](https://www.fermyon.com/discord). Come hang out, ask questions, and help others out as we work through the season’s challenges. All questions are valid! 
This is also a great opportunity to meet others in the community as well as the engineers behind the Spin project and  Fermyon Cloud.

We’ll also post on [X/Twitter](https://twitter.com/fermyontech) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/fermyon), dropping some helpful resources and videos.

Yes, the main goal of Advent of Spin is to get you solving problems and winning prizes. But we also hope that you’ll find inspiration in these projects to build something on your own. If that inspiration happens to strike, let us know. 

We love hearing about the amazing things you build!

### 4. Try out last year’s challenges for practice

Want to build some muscle before hitting this year’s challenges? We’ve got your back. You can try the challenges from last year as they validation endpoints are still active. 

Here are the 2022 Challenges: https://github.com/fermyon/advent-of-spin/tree/main/2022

Don’t forget that there are prizes for every challenge. We'll also have awards for a few bespoke categories, too! Prizes include exclusive swag such as a Fermyon denim tote bag, a Phippy puzzle set, a Fermyon Fanny Pack and more.