Dan McKinley
Math, Programming, and Minority Reports

Reverse Job Advertisement
March 24th, 2007

I figured this was worth a shot.

I am:

• Someone that has been hacking since childhood.
• Someone that has spent most of his Saturday doing problems in a Haskell textbook for fun.
• Someone that thinks programming is very similar to art, if one is sufficiently good at it.
• Compelled by forces beyond my control to refactor code until it is elegant.
• Equally comfortable debugging disassembly, arguing with you about math, and frantically scribbling on your whiteboard.
• Able to debug your problem. Trust me.

You are:

• An early stage startup led by software people.
• Located in Manhattan or Brooklyn, or your idea is so incredibly exciting that I am willing to relocate to participate in it.
• Not using Java, Visual Basic, or other such variants of COBOL.
• Able to pay me, so that I can continue to pay my rent and avoid subsisting on boiled newspaper. This either means that you are funded, or you have a very clear idea of how you are going to make money.
• Not an egomaniac.
• If you think that you fit this description, please contact me at mcfunley at (google’s mail service).

New Axe
February 25th, 2007

That’s my ‘65 Gibson on the left, and my new Martin HD-28V on the right. Plays like a dream.

The Reports of my Madness may not be so Exaggerated
February 19th, 2007

Sometimes I think my quest to get my functional programming skills up to snuff is turning me into a raving lunatic. I keep writing code that inflicts physical pain when kept to myself. Here’s a fresh cut and paste out of my emacs:

applyAll [] = id
applyAll fs = foldl1 (.) fs

After writing that, I immediately opened up all of my instant messenger programs in search of an imperative programmer to accost. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how beautiful this is?” I would say. They almost never see.