The feed of updates to Amir Sharif
Alpha School The Pitch: Condense a full day’s academic work into just two hours using AI . Alpha School operates on a provocative premise: traditional school is horribly inefficient. Co-founded by MacKenzie Price—an education innovator based in Austin—Alpha claims students can learn 2.6x faster than their peers by using adaptive AI software that functions like a “ turbocharged spreadsheet” for…
If you find yourself in a position where you need to talk to one of your reports because they’re missing your expectations, here’s a simple framework to guide the discussion. A sketch of the script goes as follows: Hi [name], I’m noticing that recently I don’t feel I’m getting the level of output that I know you are capable of. I’m curious so I wanted to ask you which of the following you think…
When working with AI coding agents, one of the things that they can’t do very well is interactively use the shell. A common problem is add/removing keys in the Rails credentials files, since it typically involves opening an editor. I added a small script to bin/rails-credentials to help with that. It’s used like this: bin/rails-credentials add environment key value bin/rails-credentials remove…
This week I’ve been thinking about Mental Toughness and the definition put forth by Alex Hormozi . He breaks it up into 4 components which have a great easy-to-remember acronym. F: Fortitude : How strong your reaction is once you reach your limit A: Adapability : How your new normal changes after recovery R: Resilience : How fast you recover after the reaction T: Tolerance : The amount of stress,…
In the last few weeks I did product work, my designer ran some SQL queries for a data analysis (with Claude) and my PM shipped code. The future of work with AI appears to be assembling T-shaped people on a unifying mission. When I head to the gym in the morning no one is on the roads and the world is still dark. By the time I leave, drenched in sweat and exhausted, I get to catch the sunrise. It’s…
The speed and accuracy of the parakeet model from Nvidia in superwhisper is my daily STT driver. I’ve been really enjoying motivational YT videos from sanchez during my morning workouts. Andrew Huberman’s breakdown on directed neuroplastiticty: Memes that made me smile:
What the hell is going on with our brains? It seems like the algorithms have already taken over and the scientific literature is catching up with the actual impact technology is having. Here are some of the more surprising results I’ve read: Having your phone in the same room while doing cognitive work reliably drops your memory, attention, and overall cognitive performance. People are forgetting…
I wanted a primer/cheatsheet for myself from the book Clean Code , and generated it to be tailored to Ruby. Table of Contents Meaningful Names Functions Comments Formatting Objects and Data Structures Error Handling Boundaries Unit Tests Classes Systems Emergent Design Code Smells Meaningful Names Descriptive & Intention-Revealing : Use clear, expressive names that reveal intent. Avoid one-letter…
Ruby Weekly : This is an awesome newsletter that gives me a good variety of blog posts, gems to use, and tips and tricks. I read it weekly. The Ruby on Rails guides themselves are an awesome place to get started (I refer to the Active Record / Models section all the time). GoRails is good if you want to watch videos instead of read. Here are some my favorite primer videos. Ruby on Rails…
George Pólya’s “ How to Solve It” is a classic guide to problem-solving, originally published in 1945. The book presents a systematic four-step framework for tackling problems, particularly mathematical ones, though the principles can be applied to virtually any type of problem. The Four-Step Problem-Solving Framework 1. Understand the Problem Clearly identify what you’re being asked to do Restate…
What benefit is a clear artery if the mind remains clogged with worries? Train both vessel and virtue - Not Seneca I’ve been trying to meditate on and off for over a decade. I’ve tried a bunch of things; I’ve put them all here. After a blood panel in early 2025, I was investigating ways to reduce my LDL cholesterol. To my surprise, meditation seems to have as strong of an effect as medication ,…
I’ve noticed that anything is easier once you get some momentum, but the “ activation- energy” is hard to come by. The hardest part about going to the gym is getting my body into the car to go there. Once I’m there, I’ll easily get a good workout. Even on harder days, it’ll usually take 15m of warm up and then I can’t believe how hard it was earlier to make the trip. Likewise for waking up early;…
Giving Feedback The COIN Conversation Model can be used when you want to give feedback to someone in a professional (or personal) setting. C ontext: This involves setting the stage for the feedback by providing relevant background information and context. O bservation: This involves stating specific behaviors or actions that were observed, rather than making judgments or assumptions about the…
1. Pin the mock / use AI for pixel perfection I use Cleanshot to take a screenshot of a mock and Pin that while developing. It’ll create a fixed floating window that stays on top of other windows. It’s often easier than alt-tabbing or if you don’t have/want the screen real estate of keeping your IDE , browser window, and Figma window all open at the same time. Keep working until your code looks…
Take a large chunk of your writing. Lucky for me, I have all my blog posts and journal entries. Unfortunately, it’s a ton of code examples as well, AI would probably infer the wrong thing if I just threw all my files at it. My files How do I get all of these *.md and turn them into just prose? I asked ChatGPT to make a Bash 1 liner for me and I ran it in the folder. for f in *.md; do cat "$f";…
This question is part of my Career Advice series. Original question: https://neetcode.io/problems/count-subsequences 1. Problem Breakdown: The task is to determine the number of distinct subsequences of string s that are equal to string t . A subsequence is a sequence derived from another sequence by deleting some or no elements without changing the order of the remaining elements. Clarifying…
The rule of thumb is that it takes approximately 25 minutes of focus without distraction to reach a state of flow. If you’re checking your Twitter notifications every 20 minutes, which seems harmless, you prevent your brain from reaching that state and therefore prolong the time required to complete your task. No more “ good intentions” - we need habit and ritual. Practice != deliberate practice -…
While hiring for Halo I wanted to reach out to people who were at top tier Ruby on Rails companies. However, it was difficult to find a list of all the companies so I made a list below by aggregating different data sources. Company Domain Employee Count Funding Stage Tesla tesla.com 125,665 (2024) Public Stripe stripe.com 10,001 (2025) Series H / Late-stage VC Figma figma.com 8,197 (2025) Series E…
Questions are useful prompts for the brain. Tim Ferris got me thinking about questions when he shared 10 questions that changed his life (he’s since released 17 more ). There are entire sites dedicated to collections of questions. Below are some of the questions that I’ve “ saved” and I review them time to time. On Business The following are from Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new,…
Core takeaways from the book, Learned Optimism: How to Change… by Martin E. P. Seligman and how I’ll be changing my behavior. The book introduces the concepts of “ explanatory styles” - how people explain the causes of events and setbacks to themselves. Pessimistic explanations tend to be permanent, pervasive and personal, while optimistic ones are temporary, specific and externalized. To train…
Sorbet has been a great addition to the Ruby ecosystem. It helps me write code faster and more correctly. However, it has some gotchas, so I’ll be adding those here along with remediations. Upgrade ActiveModel::Type::ImmutableString to support Enums By default, it’s tempting to want to do: class EventName < T::Enum enums do SPECIAL = new end end MyModel.where( name: EventName::SPECIAL) # throws: #…
Sorbet has been a great addition to the Ruby ecosystem. It helps me write code faster and more correctly. However, it has some gotchas, so I’ll be adding those here along with remediations. Upgrade ActiveModel::Type::ImmutableString to support Enums By default, it’s tempting to want to do: class EventName < T::Enum enums do SPECIAL = new end end MyModel.where( name: EventName::SPECIAL) # throws: #…
Lots of people mix up the words “ complex” and “ complicated.” They think they mean the same thing, but they’re actually quite different. Think about a beehive: it’s complex. But making a paper airplane is complicated. Building a big Lego castle is complicated. Figuring out how to keep our planet healthy is complex. Writing code for a simple computer game is complicated. Creating a robot that can…
If you find yourself asking a question, whether to an expert or your team, use this list as a prefilter before you ask it. The cost of a bad question can be high: You won’t get a good answer, or any answer at all. You waste the time of the person who is attemping to answer it for you. Checklist for Experts When asking an expert: Write the question out fully. Research the answer and include the…
The major email providers have all put out a blog post on this, so I’m aggregating them here. This is aggregated across every Industry and type. The variance between industries is quite high, anywhere from 0.07% to 0.46%. Blog Post Unsubscribe Rate CampaignMonitor 0.17% Hubspot 0.24% Mailchimp 0.26% Benchmark 0.19% The general recommendation is to keep unsubscribe rates below 0.5%. You should dig…
David Goggins was asked, “ What do you say to yourself when you’re in that moment failing?” He replied: “ What if …” He then expanded on this and completed it with a few examples: “ What if… I can become someone that no one thinks that I can be.” “ What if… I can pull off a miracle.” That didn’t resonate much with me too much, but I had heard the question posed to Andrew Huberman as well: His…
Here’s a set of things I read that make me feel nice. For now . I am happy. For now. I am miserable. For now. I am healthy. For now. I am injured. For now. For now is a shortcut to emotional moderation. From Alex Hormozi: The most important epiphany of my life was realizing I could feel one way and still do an opposing action. I can feel… Angry & act kind. Impatient & wait. Afraid & move.…
If you’re not buying healthy foods, stop buying ones you know are bad for you. I have little self control: if I see cookies, I eat cookies. Buying unhealthy food is like investing in a depreciating asset. Also see… My supplement stack
These were the main ideas I tookaway after reading Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. I like Dan, he’s got some great content , but I’d give this book a 3/5. Leadership Transactional leadership is bad and looks like this: tell the person what they do, check that they did it, give them the next ask. Transformational leadership is focused around an outcome. Instead of telling them what to do, you…
Grip Strength Grip strength isn’t just about how well you can hold onto something—it’s a powerful indicator of your overall health and longevity. Emerging research consistently links grip strength to a range of critical health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and even cognitive decline. Studies show that individuals with lower grip strength are at significantly higher…
Scenario: I have a file I recorded. It has background noise I want to remove (fans, clicking, etc.) Works good for fans but a little less well for clicking. Extract the audio file from the video ffmpeg -i <path> -vn -acodec copy output-audio.aac Pipe it through a rnn model. ffmpeg -i <audiopath> -af arnndn=<path to model> For path to model I just downloaded the std model from…