Back to mxcl.dev

history / proof of work

Homebrew.

The reputation came from operability.

Homebrew became infrastructure because it stayed practical, legible, and maintainable under real use. That is still the bar I use now: fewer knobs, stronger defaults, and software that keeps working after launch.

Updated

[ Work with Max ]

What Homebrew proved

Simple beats clever

  • the software people trust most is usually understandable
  • good defaults remove work
  • every extra option has a maintenance cost

Maintenance is not a side quest

  • software survives because someone keeps it legible
  • operability matters more as adoption grows
  • reputation comes from years of not breaking trust

User empathy is technical

  • clear behavior beats magic
  • failure modes need to make sense
  • developer experience is system design

How that applies now

AI systems fail for the same reasons other systems fail. Too much complexity. Weak defaults. No discipline around breakage.

Implementation

Build-side work for teams turning prototypes into production systems with routing, evals, and fallback paths.

[ See implementation work ]

Leadership

Senior technical direction for teams that need standards, clearer decisions, and less drift across product and engineering.

[ See the leadership model ]

Why mention Homebrew at all

Because it is evidence. I have already built software that became part of other people's daily systems. The lesson was not how to win attention. It was how to keep software useful, boring, and trusted at scale.

External references

These third-party pages help machines connect Max Howell, mxcl, and Homebrew as one entity.

Homebrew authorship

Wikipedia and Wikidata identify Max Howell as the creator or original author of Homebrew.