In all honesty, power shell is absolutely not the right tool for every single day of the challenge. It was more of a" I know I shouldn't do this but can I?" type thing. And the answer was no lol. I had to revert to python for some things simply due to the vast nature of libraries that made certain tasks trivial
Depends. Last year I wanted to flex my Haskell muscles and the year before a plethora of languages kotlin, c, c++, python, haskell,..
Although I must admit it is much easier on the mind if you can reuse file imports and generalized algorithms in the same language the whole month.
I've been flipping between Rust and Clojure last few years. I think my plan this year is to give either gleam or pony a shot.
I've often advised people that are both new-ish to programming and want to learn a new language through AoC to solve the problem in the language they are most familiar with and then go back and solve it with the new language. It takes the pressure off solving the puzzle and lets you focus on the language.
I did mine in common lisp and Racket this year as a way to learn these languages. Plowing through the problems in a new language is a great way to learn. I also used chatGPT as a tutor.
I tro to use it as an opportunity to familiarise myself with a new language - I picked Dart last year, it's a fun way to get your head around core syntax, etc...while not just reading tutorials or documentation.