Ian McLean

Paul Frazee 💥 @pfrazee.com [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 16:36 UTC

Being a programmer isn't about meetings or writing code or fixing bugs. It's about running a job in your terminal and watching IP addresses stream down the screen with a progress bar so that you feel like a sick hacker

57 replies 41 reposts 622 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 16:38 UTC

My experience of military service members is that nearly all of them take that ‘oath to defend the Constitution’ thing very seriously. I think the fact that he took a similar oath and clearly doesn’t give a shit about it probably bothers them.

0 replies 1 reposts 6 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 16:29 UTC

It does make me question ‘electability’ arguments, though. If this man - a criminal, boorish idiot with no values beyond his own self-interest - is an ‘electable’ candidate, why is anyone confident of what the word even means?

0 replies 0 reposts 6 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 14:53 UTC

Yep. Popular with the same people who decided that ‘spend’ was a noun, because they’re too busy and important and modern to say ‘expenditure’.

2 replies 1 reposts 2 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 22:02 UTC

We coded up an early alpha of Representative Democracy, put it in production, and only later realized there was no viable update path for most of the fundamental systems.

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Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 29, 2024 at 23:26 UTC

Good luck! And, from experience... it gets easier. Either you figure out that you're comfortable doing less prep work, or you get a lot of practice doing the prep work and get good at it. Or both!

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Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 29, 2024 at 21:12 UTC

I'm not sure what the alternative to for-profit news organizations is, but they sure are making a case for it.

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Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 29, 2024 at 03:26 UTC

You probably know this, but... the 'be honest when you don't know stuff' strategy works with clients, too. Most have been burned at least once by someone who said 'We know everything', and didn't. 'We'll figure it out together' is a better message!

0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 21:45 UTC

"And you never considered replacing it?" "Oh, we *considered* it a bunch of times. We didn't do it, because without it, about 80% of the data from before 2016 becomes unreadable, and we only understand three of the reasons that happens." "...how many reasons are there?" "At least four"

2 replies 0 reposts 19 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 28, 2024 at 20:40 UTC

From the people that brought you 'what if a computer could be stupid?', give a big round of applause for 'what if programming could be unavoidably nondeterministic and unknowable?'

0 replies 4 reposts 37 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 17:55 UTC

Wtaf. Security is hard. ‘Don’t put credentials in the codebase FFS’ is not the hard part.

0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 26, 2024 at 12:30 UTC

Yeah, there's a lot of media I have this problem with. It has a cast of characters every one of which is an annoying asshole, but I'm expected to care about what happens to them, and I don't see any reason to.

0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 19:04 UTC

They have a very specific derangement caused by extended exposure to Boston roads, Boston cyclists, Boston pedestrians, Bostonian traffic patterns and, of course, other Boston drivers. It’s all an interdependent, self-perpetuating system.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 18:29 UTC

I for one would very much prefer we not try to return to the era of ‘to use this website, download and install a binary’. It was several kinds of terrible.

1 replies 0 reposts 10 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 23, 2024 at 05:39 UTC

It is frustrating to have finally reached a point in life where I could afford at least a few Nice Things, only to discover that each one requires becoming an expert in that specific kind of Thing to figure out if it's even still possible to get a Nice one. And sometimes it just isn't!

2 replies 9 reposts 63 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 22, 2024 at 16:34 UTC

My grandfather invented the attic fan - a fan to push hot air out of the attic, so when you open a window, air flows in. He tried to explain it to a colleague, and the man just couldn’t grasp how it worked. The colleague was Albert Einstein.

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Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 22, 2024 at 13:30 UTC

Very little! Unless you're doing something staggeringly wasteful like so-called AI or crypto nonsense, a significant majority of the energy you use to mess around on websites is the energy required to run your personal computer.

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Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 21, 2024 at 19:31 UTC

Having been in a similar, albeit lower-profile, situation, I’ll go ahead and say I’m not finding it surprising at all. Company leaders love to talk about their values, but *hate* when employees expect them to live up to those values.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes

Ian McLean @mrthewalrus.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 21, 2024 at 19:13 UTC

There are no Constitutional restrictions on who the President may nominate - the norm and tradition is that they should be experienced jurists, but anyone who can get nominated and confirmed can have the job.

0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes