Python Solution - Advent of Code 2022 - Day 12 - Part 1 - Hill Climbing Algorithm

Solution to part 1 of 2022's Advent of Code's Day 12's problem. You might have different data to deal with. However, hopefully the code still works the same for you as it does for me.

Bradley Sward is currently an Associate Professor at the College of DuPage in suburban Chicago, Illinois. He has earned a Masters degree in Software Engineering from DePaul University, a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and two Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Molecular Biology from Benedictine University. Prior to teaching, Bradley worked for five years in the field of casino gaming on a variety of video slot machine and poker games. The Village People have been permanently etched into his brain.

[JrisNL]

Thank you for sharing your solution. I was wondering why do you cast to tuples when my understanding is that the variable would already always be a tuple (for example in line 31 and 46)?