Oh yeah. This is quite fun, though once you hit level 4/5 some problems require fairly advanced algorithms / mathematics. One of the problems I gave up on solving on my own required knowledge of Polyas enumeration theorem to solve. Fortunately or unfortunately you can find some answers online, otherwise I would’ve never even known such a theorem existed.
For the tougher problems, expect a lot of graph theory / combinatorics, which I guess is the nature of Googles challenges as a search engine.
For Python, VS Code and Jupyter Lab. I used Sublime Text 3 previously but have found VS Code to be easier to set up and better supported over time. I do miss how fast and lightweight Sublime is this compared to VS Code though so I still use ST4 as a general text editor.
For Excel VBA (ugh), pretty much have to use the built in one as there doesn’t seem to be any alternative.