Ok, so in part one we got the first part of the first day of last year’s Advent of Code puzzle working in Haskell. This post will be an exploration of the second part.

Each day of the Advent of Code has a puzzle with two parts; usually the second part will be a twist on the first part; sometimes, it’s simply a scale issue, where the first part solution was naive, and you can leave your solution running over night, or choose a more efficient solution for both parts. But sometimes, it blows everything up and you need to rethink your entire approach.

I’m going to try and complete the Advent of Code puzzles this year, in Haskell, without bouncing off of those stupid interpreter problems that have always driven me away in the past. Encouraged by a fellow poster on lobste.rs, I’m going to try and blog my attempt here.

I don’t have a lot of extra time, but I would like to be better at blogging, and also at Haskell, so let’s hope that this works out. I’m hoping to build the habits here over the next couple of weeks that will enable me to solve the puzzles in a timely fashion, and write up a description of my solution. I’ve done a bit of Haskell, largely in this Advent of Code context, so I’m not entirely a beginner, but I’m nothing like a “Haskell programmer” yet.