Mike McQuaid

Mike McQuaid 7 February 2026 at 13:08
“This new technology will replace developers!” is not a new thing.
Nice look at what some previous claims were (and how they resulted in more developers and more software).
https://www.caimito.net/en/blog/2025/12/07/the-recurring-dream-of-replacing-developers.html

www.caimito.net
Why We've Tried to Replace Developers Every Decade Since 1969
Every decade brings new promises: this time, we'll finally make software development simple enough that we won't need so many developers.
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Mike McQuaid 7 February 2026 at 13:06
Great take about the cultural requirements to create “10x engineers”
https://randsinrepose.com/archives/sometimes-your-job-is-to-stay-the-hell-out-of-the-way/

randsinrepose.com
Sometimes Your Job is to Stay the Hell Out of the Way
I wrote a piece a long time ago about the mythical 10x engineer, except that they aren't a myth.
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• 

  What happened to RubyGems and what can we learn?

  31 January 2026
  Lessons for non-Ruby projects on non-profits, governance, money and access in open source, drawn from the RubyGems dispute.
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  Package Management Learnings from Homebrew

  31 January 2026
  Homebrew 5.0.0 released in 2025. Walk through the major changes in 5.0.0, improving expectations based on other package managers and what they can learn from Homebrew's approach.

Mike McQuaid 28 January 2026 at 19:27
All the “faster Homebrew in Rust” projects are a bit like parsing HTML with regex.
The simplest use-cases seem to work, it’s easier and there’s just edge cases to fix.
Fixing these edge cases requires recreating Homebrew and using Ruby (which will be slower again).
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• How Homebrew Became Mac's Package Manager with Mike McQuaid

  27 January 2026

  Interviewed by Screaming in the Cloud

Mike McQuaid 22 January 2026 at 10:40
This analysis was both helpful and hurtful.
Another reminder to focus on a single task and ship to completion whenever possible.
https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/one-bottleneck-at-a-time/
www.theengineeringmanager.com
One bottleneck at a time - The Engineering Manager
Companies are systems, and systems always have a bottleneck.
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• The Most Important Skills Going Forward with CTO + Homebrew Maintainer Mike McQuaid

  16 January 2026

  Interviewed by freeCodeCamp Podcast

Mike McQuaid 15 January 2026 at 13:33
“The Failure Mode of Clever (is asshole)”
Applies to some OSS commenters I’ve seen…
Great take from John Scalzi (who also writes GREAT sci-fi books).
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-clever/

whatever.scalzi.com
The Failure Mode of Clever
So, apropos of nothing in particular, let’s say you wish to communicate privately with someone
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Mike McQuaid 13 January 2026 at 13:38
Anil has a decent framework here for thinking if you’ll actually be happy in a job.
https://anildash.com/2026/01/12/will-that-job-crush-your-soul/
anildash.com
How to know if that job will crush your soul - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
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Mike McQuaid 13 January 2026 at 13:30
Great and nuanced take from creator of Redis.
If you’re still in the “these tools are useless” camp or “these tools are unethical so I won’t use them”: you’ve not understood how things have already changed.
https://antirez.com/news/158
antirez.com
Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
I love writing software, line by line.
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• My Parenting "Screen Time" Philosophy

  13 January 2026

  Like many people who now work with computers, I was told as a child I spent “too much time on screens” and then built a career out of it.

Mike McQuaid 7 January 2026 at 15:09
I like this take on how to get promoted.
My experience has been that promotions come from finding and doing important work.
Being spoon-fed is fine for juniors but a negative signal for those seeking e.g. staff+ promotions.
https://andrew.grahamyooll.com/blog/Try-to-Take-My-Position/
andrew.grahamyooll.com
Try to Take My Position: The Best Promotion Advice I Ever Got
My CTO leaned back in our 1:1 and said "You want to get promoted? Try to take my position."
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Mike McQuaid 7 January 2026 at 15:03
I find myself referring too often to the “is it worth the time?” xkcd.
This works best when the person doing the automation is also the person saving the time.
https://xkcd.com/1205/

xkcd.com
Is It Worth the Time?
How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you're spending more time than you save?
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Mike McQuaid 6 January 2026 at 10:51
It’s that time of year again to look at your calendar like Marie Kondo and ask:
“Does this (meeting) spark joy?”
If not: try to cancel or shorten it.
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Mike McQuaid 31 December 2025 at 12:44
Would love it if people expressing strong opinions about open source declared what project(s) they’ve maintained and for how long. Would help weed out the uninformed.
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Mike McQuaid 30 December 2025 at 13:07
Strongly agree with “The Move Faster Manifesto”. This matches my experiences at GitHub, Homebrew, Workbrew. You can also be fast and sustainable.
https://brianguthrie.com/p/the-move-faster-manifesto/

brianguthrie.com
The Move Faster Manifesto
Lessons for shipping software quickly by skipping the grind
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Mike McQuaid 29 December 2025 at 8:56
I agree with Sean here. The industry default seems to be “idealistic about engineering, cynical about management”. Things work better if you’re a little cynical about both.
https://www.seangoedecke.com/a-little-bit-cynical/

www.seangoedecke.com
Software engineers should be a little bit cynical
--
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Mike McQuaid 27 December 2025 at 12:05
This analysis of Valve’s approach to hardware was really interesting. I have bought all their hardware and will likely buy all the new stuff and this helps explain why.
https://www.garbagecollected.dev/p/valve-the-reverse-apple

www.garbagecollected.dev
Valve: The Reverse Apple
How a video game company built an empire by inverting the playbook
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Mike McQuaid 18 December 2025 at 13:13
Using Docker for local development on macOS is like putting a shipping container in your garden instead of buying a cupboard from IKEA.
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• POSSE, Blog and Feed Updates

  18 December 2025

  I’ve been following what Justin Searls has been doing with his blog for some time. He’s been leaning into the “POSSE” (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) philosophy more and more. In practice, this looks like building your own version of a single-serving social network on your own site and exposing RSS/Atom feeds to other services to consume. Justin recently released POSSE Party which makes this easier by cross-posting to various social networks. I’ve complained for a while about (anti)social networking so I’m always up for new ways to use social networking less.

Mike McQuaid 17 December 2025 at 21:11
I’ve added “thoughts” to my website. If these work correctly, they will be cross-posted to various social networks. Thanks to Justin Searls’ POSSE Party for enabling this.
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• Software Estimation Choices

  09 December 2025

  The process of software estimation is frustrating for software engineers and those who consume their estimates. Consumers often ask “why can these software engineers not just tell me when it will be done?”.

• Good Things Take A Long Time

  24 October 2025

  In tech, 3 years is often considered a “long tenure”. We maintain open-source projects for 2 years, then burn out. We start habits, lose momentum and quit.

• Homebrew and macOS Package Management with Mike McQuaid

  21 October 2025

  Interviewed by Software Engineering Daily