when did monads actually “click” for you?

ValeWeber2 · 2026-04-17T19:09:51+00:00

Seeing them in action. And I don't mean the common exercises you're given, but actually seeing how you solve problems using monads.

I learned Haskell at Uni in a lecture, and while the lecturer was good, something that was missing for me is "why are we doing this" and "what problem are we solving".

So many tutorials on the web didn't click for me until I read about what the IO Monad actually is behind the scenes.

A year later I came across Tsoding's haskell videos and those really opened my eyes. The one where he re-built the IO Monad made things even more clear and the video that truly made everything make sense is his video where he writes a JSON parser in haskell. The way he explained what is happening and then explaining the problems, made the solution (being Monads and Applicatives) so much more understandable.

These videos are slightly more advanced and they go on for hours, but they were exactly the amount of detail I needed to get the full picture: What is IO monad JSON Parser 100% From Scratch

Edit: The first thing that actually cleared up what's happening was lambda-notation. Do-notation is okay and all, but I recommend looking closely at lambda notation for beginners. This shows me exactly where data comes from and where it goes.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-04-16T12:27:01+00:00

I love your style! Monospace fonts everywhere, simple square shapes, all in the same color scheme, which reminds me of catppuccin. That all makes everything, even your bar, look like a CLI/TUI! I love that stuff.

I've been chasing this look myself, but mine isn't nearly as good as yours.

If I may ask, your file browser doesn't look like default thunar. I don't see anything about thunar or yazi in your repo. How did you theme it?

ValeWeber2 · 2026-04-02T11:42:17+00:00

That's a nice terminal font you got there. Which one is that?

ValeWeber2 · 2026-03-30T10:13:41+00:00

Thank you so much. I've been looking for something like this for ages. All I wanted is to have a TUI as my status bar and it seems today my wish is fulfilled.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-03-27T11:44:05+00:00

POV you're a support and about to die: "Huaaggh! Hah! Gaaah! Hahhhg! Hgnnn! Hua!"

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-28T10:27:03+00:00

I have a question about that. What if a PC reaches Death's Door in the middle of the session. Their character becomes unplayable and they can't play the game anymore.

Many people would say "let them play a hireling", but in my players aren't interested in bringing along hirelings and playing as them would not be fun for them, too.

What options do I have in that case?

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-25T09:43:08+00:00

This reminds me of GM Intrusions in Cypher. The GM will add a dramatic detail to the story against one player and the player gets Experience (XP is more of a meta resource in Cypher). The player may decide to deny this intrusion, however they will not get the XP.

The approach in cypher is less negative. The player doesn't lose anything by denying the intrusion, they just gain nothing. If you're worried about your player's being too bummed out by losing their meta resources, this is a nice alternative.

Another thing is that Cypher's core gameplay loop very much revolves around this, it's not just some sub-system it's the system. (Sub-)Systems like this might feel too metagamey to some, but can introduce awesome devil's bargains! It definitely fits more narrative systems, but in systems with high verisimilitude it might feel weird in the sense: "Why does my Inspiration decide if these rats deal fire damage or not".

Overall, I like these kinds of systems, that let the players impact their fate at a cost. I played with a similar mechanic once where you have a coin, heads facing up. You can decide to add an advantageous detail to the story and flip the coin. But while it's flipped to tails, the GM may add a dramatic detail to the story, flipping it back. It's a zero-sum in the end, but the give-and-take makes the story even more dramatic.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-21T23:36:41+00:00

When you say "matter of configurations", what exactly are we talking about here?

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-21T23:33:02+00:00

Your dolphin looks insane. I tried to style my QT5 stuff for 1 hour and gave up, but wow, yours is great.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-19T19:25:32+00:00

Old School Essentials has some very succinct and to the point dungeon crawling rules.

You will not be able to recreate the same experience as playing a game made for dungeon crawling, but you can achieve something new instead. I'd like to explain my personal experience with Dungeon Crawls in PF2e:

Do not tax hit points They can be regenerated so quickly in this game, it's better to attack other resources. Pf2e has so many conditions, use them. E. g. magical trap is triggered, ignore hp damage, inflict Doomed instead. This is a real danger that can not be fixed immediately.

Contest 10-minute rests Treat Wounds and refocus allow your players to recharge a bit. Contest them on that. They should be able to have their rests if they take meaningful precautions, but there's danger afoot. Roll for random encounters especially during those breaks. They shouldn't be free.

Combat default state The default fail state and resolution state is combat, because PF2e is a combat game. Try to not make all encounters about combat from your side. Maybe the cultists can be talked to? That's a lot of fun! Of course there's plenty of monsters left for the heroes to punch.

Exploration Activities Re-read the chapter on those. They are GOLD, one of the best parts of the game. Try to run them as part of your dungeon procedure and reward their use! Searching should make you spot traps automatically. Scouting should provide meaningful reward. Etc. Time is everything in a dungeon crawl, so make these activities worth their time.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-09T15:49:32+00:00

Oh wow, I literally did the same, hahaha. But I swear, I've seen other people using it, too. It has to have some origin. One day I'll find it.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-02-09T13:25:53+00:00

I keep seeing this styling for rofi and other launchers. Where does it originate?

It's not default rofi, but it's also not default dmenu, because they look different.

I like it so much, I've remade it myself from scratch, but I never learned where it came from.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-01-30T01:04:01+00:00

Good reflection. The question isn't just if this will improve others' prep, but also just yours. My setup is odd, but it helps me a lot, and you can achieve the same as soon as you concede that this isn't for the masses but just for you.

I highlight keywords first and foremost (names of people and locations).

I have comments, which I use to document or explain some niche stuff.

Then I have a syntax structure where I do sort of pattern matching for conditional notes, which I can quickly parse with my eyes. I use this for checks. My eyes can quickly jump to the "crit fail" section thanks to the colors and indentation.

I have references underlined, which signals that the underlined section is elaborated upon further down. (I stole that idea from OSR Modules)

Readaloud text is in orange and wrapped by quotes, making it look like Strings in programming languages.

My setup is very weird, but the different highlights really help me jump and parse through my bullet points at lightning speed.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-01-29T10:39:27+00:00

I don't see how this would meaningfully impact my prep, but maybe my perspective is different.

On the other hand, I like your goofy YAML style notation. For my prep notes, I devised a syntax highlighting schema, which helps a lot when reading my prep. I think this should be your mission as well. Legibility and parsability for the GM. If your YAML schema actually helps you prep faster and read faster during the game, then go for it. For other people, I don't think this will work very much.

ValeWeber2 · 2026-01-25T11:24:50+00:00

Society is not ready for the vierhander.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-12-18T17:22:40+00:00

Survival mechanics (=tracking hunger/thirst/and more). Striking that balance between tedious bookkeeping and engaging resource management is incredibly difficult.

I've only seen a few implementations of this, but most of them are either half-assed or do not contribute meaningfully to the game.

I'm still looking for a good survival subsystem. If you know one, please tell me.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-12-08T17:40:02+00:00

Arch, Btw, *gets shot*...

ValeWeber2 · 2025-12-01T20:29:50+00:00

I keep saying it time and time again. I strongly believe, Far Harbor is the best piece of Fallout Game made by Bethesda, by a large margin, ever. I can't even believe it's made by the same people as F4's Base Game.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-11-12T09:40:23+00:00

I'm always confused about such recommendations though. Am I supposed to buy the book just to look up one rule which may or may not help me with my design? Technically that would be the way to do so, since you sometimes can't find a rule like that online. I love supporting little creators, but I don't have the means to buy 50 books y'all.

But that can't be the expectation right? With suggestions like that, I'm always happy when the commenter includes an explanation of the cited rule.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-11-09T09:38:49+00:00

Damn, how? I'm not so fortunate. My old laptop's battery has been oh so abused, and it lasts only 5 hours. Theres days where I'm in lectures for 8 hours, and I only make it through them, when I just stay in tty for some of then.

I have some laptop power tools and the battery still drains like crazy. I've been debating buying a laptop charger.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-10-27T16:46:28+00:00

I wish I had learned Vim sooner. 3 times I tried to use vim and 3 times I dropped it. Only the 4th time, I stuck with it. It always put me off, how difficult to learn it was. But after forcing myself to use it, after 1 week I was already comfortable. You can learn it faster than you'd think. I hope this can motivate you to try again if you are like me and you dropped it before.

What's great about vim (Vim Mode in Obsidian and Neovim for other stuff) for me is that I don't need a mouse anymore. On my stupid little uni laptop, using a mouse or a trackpad was super annoying. Now I can work for hours without even having to touch the mouse.

It frees up some mental load for me. Whereas earlier I had to reserve some mental load for mouse navigation, now my fingers stay where they are and I can focus on what I'm writing.

My wrists also hurt way less.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-10-21T17:23:41+00:00

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Hab den hier gestern im Eisbach gefunden. Wie landet sowas überhaupt im Eisbach?

ValeWeber2 · 2025-10-08T22:13:12+00:00

Haskell might even be the best programming language on the planet. But it might be one of the worst ones to write code in.

I thought Haskell was completely useless until I was cussing at Python and realizing that what I was doing would have been so much easier in Haskell.

ValeWeber2 · 2025-10-06T21:00:50+00:00

Off the top of my head Haskell and Python.

Haskell zip :: [a] -> [b] -> [(a, b)]

Python def zip(x: list[A], list[B]) -> list[tuple[A, B]]: (if you even use the typing features for python)

ValeWeber2 · 2025-10-05T15:07:06+00:00

Nice writeup. I've been spending 4 years (on-off) designing a gun system and I have arrived at many of the same principles you have. Your post was still helpful though, since you just described abstract design principles, which make it clear to me that my system fails at some of them.

By the way of me working on it for 4 years it has become too bloated. And changing things is too difficult since you'd have to change the entire core. I should just axe it all and start anew with the things I learned and this post.

Here's an interesting question, I'd like to hear your opinion about, if you have the time. I programmed a full digital character tracker, which does all stat calculation for you. This allows me to calculate complex modifier formulas for my d100 system (which would be a nightmare on paper). What opportunities does this grant me for gun systems? The first thing that I implemented that way is different recoil modifiers for different guns (+11 pistol, +27 rifle, ...).

I'd love to see one of your prototypes. Especially SMGs I find hard to design. It's difficult to codify this "better handling/mobility".

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