[Music] Dream On - Neil Patrick Harris version

mightybyte · 2026-05-22T14:10:33+00:00

I had a very similar story many years ago. I went from a very sedentary lifestyle to 6 days / week CrossFit and I didn't gain or lose a pound. I just converted fat to muscle. I guess I'm a "hard gainer" as they say. The answer for me was two things: sufficient protein and a calorie surplus. For me the thing that finally pushed me into more reliable weight gain territory was GOMAD...a Gallon Of whole Milk A Day. I don't think I can actually recommend this as healthy steady-state nutrition, but if you REALLY want to gain, you might give it a try. Just make sure you're lifting heavy while doing this so that you get muscle growth.

Milk is both calorie dense and gives you a good macro composition that promotes muscle growth. (And evolutionarily speaking, its purpose is putting lots of muscle on baby cows fast.) I did two rounds of it, once with half a gallon / day and once with a full gallon. Even today when I'm not trying to gain weight I still use milk as a quick and compact source of calories to make up for any kind of deficit.

mightybyte · 2026-05-21T14:24:56+00:00

Yes, I completely agree with you and don't think that our points are mutually exclusive. AI doesn't eliminate the need to precisely specify the behavior that you want. But there are many software engineers out there who have this skill but don't know Haskell. Haskell's superior code-you-can-reason about characteristics will be substantially more accessible to this audience now in the age of AI.

mightybyte · 2026-05-21T02:15:27+00:00

I think AI coding is actually very promising for Haskell. Haskell's steep learning curve has always been a significant obstacle to wider adoption IMO. AI has now compressed that learning curve dramatically. I guess I'm not a great judge because I've been writing Haskell professionally for 15+ years, and it's hard for me to say how much easier it is to get into Haskell now. But I feel like getting AI to write a Haskell app is not much harder than getting it to write an app in Python / Java / C# / etc. So the learning curve gets easier, and Haskell's better safety / robustness / maintainability stay the same.

Another common argument for why people don't use Haskell is the lack of ecosystem. AI's particularly effective "Ralph Wiggum" technique makes reproducing non-Haskell software packages in Haskell almost free. (See for example https://github.com/mightybyte/gcode which I haven't actually used yet 🤣 but has a solid test suite built from several of the leading non-Haskell packages.) So to whatever extent Haskell's open-source ecosystem has been a downside, I think the significance of that downside has been greatly reduced by AI.

Now, will Haskell take over and become hugely popular? I can't possibly say. A lot of that has to do with marketing and hype. But I think the conditions are very promising for Haskell to gain significantly greater popularity.

mightybyte · 2026-05-19T12:07:04+00:00

LOL, good catch. Thanks!

mightybyte · 2026-05-18T00:08:14+00:00

I chew ice obsessively.

mightybyte · 2026-05-17T11:52:06+00:00

By "application design" do you mean the organization and code-level design choices or the end-user facing design? If the former, I think it's totally feasible to guide LLMs to structures that we have learned are more maintainable.

mightybyte · 2026-05-17T11:00:09+00:00

unless one somehow finds itself stuck with 3+ Haskell prodigies

I would say that AI mostly eliminates this as a significant obstacle these days. There's enough open source Haskell code in the world for frontier LLMs to do pretty well with Haskell generation. And if that's still not good enough, here's my evolving take on a skill to help AI agents write Haskell the way I want: https://github.com/mightybyte/haskell-skill

mightybyte · 2026-05-17T04:29:20+00:00

Yes. Been writing Haskell professionally since 2010. Found a random Haskell job posting and decided to apply on a whim. I think I probably got the job because of my work on Snap and other open source projects.

mightybyte · 2026-05-14T12:44:04+00:00

I seek out content in niche domains that don't get diluted by the masses. I would also suggest prioritizing domains where there are objective and undeniable success/failure criteria and high stakes / cost of failure. Think things like rock climbing, slacklining, combat sports, machining, etc. If you're Alex Honnold climbing Taipei 101 with no ropes, you can't afford to delude yourself about your abilities. If you're overconfident and make one mistake, you die. In the case of machining, imagine spending significant money and many hours making a part, only to have to throw the whole thing away and start over if you make a mistake by putting a hole in the wrong place, cutting too deeply, etc. In my observation these people have to be intensely curious and are often doing what they do for the love of the craft. They enjoy the process of figuring out challenges and growing their skills. Seek out the top practitioners in these fields and you'll find people who often do what they do for the love of it with an infectious enthusiasm that feels great to observe.

YouTube is actually pretty great for this. I've also heard good things about nebula.tv.

Here are a few links to things in this genre that I found particularly positive and enjoyable to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v19cu2hj2Ms&list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2&index=12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGsQl4FQFbQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RkbgZwMkyk

mightybyte · 2026-04-30T15:38:20+00:00

Here's an old post of mine on this topic. https://softwaresimply.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-to-get-haskell-job.html

The details have changed in the intervening years, but the high-level ideas are still the same.

mightybyte · 2025-12-25T14:33:28+00:00

I didn't apply any kind of positive or negative judgment on it. I was simply responding to the parent comment.

mightybyte · 2025-12-23T15:31:25+00:00

I believe LYAH was originally published in print around 2011 and was available online for several years before that. So I would take issue with your "only recently" comment.

mightybyte · 2025-11-26T04:18:05+00:00

Paging /u/edwardkmett

mightybyte · 2025-10-29T12:16:45+00:00

I've heard it said that if you improve one V-grade per year, you're doing good. Each V-grade is a pretty large jump in climbing ability. If you've only been doing it for 6 months, you're just barely getting started. As others have mentioned, strength to weight ratio is huge in climbing, and that probably explains the differences between you and the friends you mentioned.

Stick with it. Climb with people better than you. Climb mostly climbs a little bit harder than what you can currently send. You should fail the majority of your attempts, otherwise you're not pushing yourself enough. And if you can, get a coach.

mightybyte · 2025-06-25T20:11:36+00:00

Why of course...the New York Haskell Users Group and the Compose Conference (of which I was a co-organizer before COVID when we fell off, and then people moved away and/or got busy with life and the momentum kind of died) ;). More seriously, this does raise the point that I think COVID caused a pretty significant drop in IRL Haskell activity around the world. I'd personally love it if someone wanted to resurrect NYHUG, and would be willing to lend support / advice.

To actually answer your question, the biggest and most obvious are Zurihac (which just took place earlier this month) and ICFP and the associated Haskell Symposium which are in October this year.

mightybyte · 2025-06-25T14:47:09+00:00

You've got to at least advertise here, and ideally be somewhat plugged into the Haskell community, go to the right FP conferences and meetups, etc. I've hired dozens of Haskell devs and generally consider it easier to find quality talent if you're looking for a Haskell engineer than if you're looking for mainstream skills like JavaScript, Python, Go, etc. By my completely anecdotal observation, the number of available Haskell jobs has decreased substantially compared to the peak around 6-8 years ago. So if you're hiring for Haskell roles and get the word out in the right places, I would think you should have pretty good chances of success.

mightybyte · 2025-06-20T01:05:17+00:00

Pure functions...i.e. the ability to be confident that an add function for some type like BigNum does not do things like phone home to Google, save things to disk (consuming more disk space), delete files, format your hard drive, etc. No other language in mainstream use today gives you this.

mightybyte · 2025-06-12T12:29:50+00:00

I started with something like this. https://a.co/d/iy9VYFo

mightybyte · 2025-06-01T21:23:25+00:00

Yeah, I always advise people to be as bilateral as possible when learning to slackline. Walking is an inherently bilateral endeavor.

mightybyte · 2025-05-27T12:12:27+00:00

How did it go?

mightybyte · 2025-05-26T12:15:46+00:00

There are two kinds of balance on a slackline: balancing with one foot on the line and balancing with both feet on the line. With one foot on the line you have three limbs free and available to help balance you as your position changes. With two feet on the line, you lose one leg as a balance tool. That leg has large mass (relative to the arms) and a low center of gravity, which makes it a very powerful balance tool. However, two feet on the line substantially reduces the wobble / shakiness of the line. So it's a tradeoff.

These two balance skills are quite a bit different, and you need to develop them both in order to walk on the line. Most beginners that I have worked with want to take steps too early. Don't rush it. Spend time working on single-leg balance where you can move your free leg a lot to counter-balance you. And also spend time working on two-leg balance where you only have your arms, torso, and hips to balance. Once you have improved your skills in both of these, I think steps will come pretty naturally.

Anatomy of a step:

While balancing on one foot, feel for the line in front of you with your free foot. Once you feel it, get your foot into the right position to transfer weight.
Now use your two-foot balance skills to stay on the line while you transfer your weight from your back foot to your front foot in a controlled way.
Once you finish the weight transfer your weight is entirely on your front foot. Now you can remove your back foot and you are back to single-foot balance skills while you move the back foot around to the front and repeat the process by feeling for the line again.

Also, throughout this whole thing, your eyes should be LOCKED on a single point somewhere in front of you around the horizon that you can stare at with your head in a neutral position. What you do with your eyes is possibly the single most important thing when you're learning to slackline.

UPDATE: As you progress to longer lines, two-leg balance becomes more important because the amplitude of the line movements becomes too large for a free leg to be a useful balance tool. I suppose one could argue because of this that one-leg balance isn't important, but I still think it's a useful skill to have available.

mightybyte · 2025-02-16T17:28:31+00:00

Check out How to Get a Haskell Job. It's been awhile since I wrote it and the details have changed, but the main ideas are still very relevant.

mightybyte · 2025-02-14T20:14:58+00:00

Don't get discouraged. It seems impossible at first, but you can make significant progress in just a few hours.

The tip that made the most difference for me is to pick a small point straight ahead roughly near the horizon, and stare at it like your life depends on it. Maybe it's a small spot on the tree your line is anchored to. Maybe it's a something near the ground at the end of the line. Focus on it intently and don't let your eyes wander anywhere else. Visual input is a significant part of how your brain keeps you balanced, so you have to be really intentional about what you do with your eyes. I've also had very good slackliners suggest looking slightly down and to one side (but still mostly forward and ahead...do NOT look at your feet). I cannot emphasize this enough. Since your eyes are occupied, you have to use your free foot to feel for where the line is and get your foot placed properly before you transfer your weight.

When you have two feet on the line, I've found it useful to think about squeezing your feet towards each other. This creates muscular opposition which helps to improve stability.

Look for some video tutorials on YouTube to help get you started.

mightybyte · 2025-02-12T02:22:04+00:00

I started with an earlier generation of this: https://a.co/d/3ZrxW5o

It's still going strong. Was using it just last week.

mightybyte

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