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Ben McCormick
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- https://benmccormick.org/2026/01/01/ring-out-wild-bells-to.html
Jan 2, 2026 · original
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out th - Coding is deciding
Aug 23, 2025 · original
We often talk about computer programs purely as collections of “code”. Lately I’ve been thinking about it a bit differently: a computer program is the encoding of a huge series of nested decisions, made intentionally or otherwise. - https://benmccormick.org/2025/07/25/this-is-a-good-summary.html
Jul 25, 2025 · original
This is a good summary of the state of AI takes right now I think No one knows anything about AI AI is important. But we don’t yet fully know why. AI currently has all the “noise” and incentives to hype that crypto had a few years ago, but underneath that is clearly much more “real”. It makes things hard to evaluate for now. - Retraining our Brains To Review LLM-augmented work
Jul 22, 2025 · original
Something I worry about with generative AI in business and commercial use: almost no one fully reads anything in those environments. Now imagine when even the author hasn t read what was written… yikes. How does AI writing and reading impact this reality? Steven Sinofski has an interesting post here about “slop” at work . I think about this in terms of heuristics. Our brains are lazy and we all naturally develop “shortcuts” to evaluating a piece of work. Historically seeing a PRD or tech spec that was fully fleshed out with diagrams and clear explanations of context was a good indication that some serious work and discovery had gone into the document. A PR full of detailed test cases indicated attention to detail, and that thought had gone into all the possible edge cases. But with LLMs it is easy to take a few half thought through bullet points and make them look credible, or generate p - 2024 Lifting Recap - A better year
Feb 9, 2025 · original
After a frustrating second year of consistent lifting , 2024 brought much better progress, though mostly along some different directions than I d been focused on the first 2 years. My goals were more focused on health/consistency/functional strength and less on pure powerlifting strength and I read/ran a lot of stuff from Dan John and Pavel and it took my training in a different direction. What I did I ran 5 programs at various points this year 5/3/1 FSL Easy Strength General Gainz Mass Made Simple Deadlifts & Kettlebells - with a heavy KB Press focus added on In the spring I saw good progress on shoulder health running an easy FSL program and doing a lot of direct shoulder rehab work. I then ran easy strength for a few weeks with an intent to focus on fat loss. The weight loss didn t happen and this time was probably a net loss for my powerlift numbers, but I was able to make significan - https://benmccormick.org/2025/02/09/the-first-great-fact-which.html
Feb 9, 2025 · original
The first great fact which emerges from our civilization is that today everything has become “means.” There is no longer an “end”; we do not know whither we are going. We have forgotten our collective ends, and we possess great means: we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere. Jacque Sellul This quote has been haunting me all weekend. It describes and explains so much of the tension in modern life. - Lifting Program Review: Easy Strength
Aug 26, 2024 · original
I spent the last 2 months running Dan Jon and Pavel Tsatsouline s Easy Strength Program. It s a fundamentally very simple program that Dan still managed to write a huge ~200 page book about . The high level goal is to pick 5 exercises and to run them every workout for 40 workouts without doing more than 10 reps on any of the individual exercises. The idea is that it is a minimalist program thats run before your other activity , a sport or walking for fat loss. Dan recommends running it 5x a week so that it takes 2 months total, and allows for some variation in exercise throughout the month. I ran it that way, while focusing on walking 8500 - 12000 steps a day (sometimes but not always doing a long walk immediately after the workout). My goals were fat loss, improving pullups, and improving my pressing. I switched my exercises at the halfway point. For the first half I ran: Push Press (In - Lifting in the first half of 2024
Jul 10, 2024 · original
I ran a mix of 5/3/1 and Easy Strength from January to June and while I continued to work through a shoulder injury in Q1 I did set some new PRs: Squat: 350 - 375 1RM DL: 400 - 435 1(and 2)RM Chins: Max of 3 with poor ROM - 8 clean Shoulder health is significantly improved but still bothering me on bench press and pushups. Overall made minimal pressing progress so far this year even though improving my press was a primary goal. I also focused more on easy conditioning with a decent amount of walking and easy runs, and that s been a positive change. I m down 12lbs from the beginning of the year. Overall I m happy with the progress even if the pressing is frustrating. If I make similar progress in shoulder health / conditioning and the lower body lifts the back half of the year I will be very pleased. - A Simple Path To Building Trust
Jun 25, 2024 · original
Being trusted is a superpower at work and in life. When we re trusted things move faster. Communication is more open, people become more cooperative, and work becomes more enjoyable as relationships can grow deeper. I ve found that there s a very simple 1 formula to building people s trust. Here s the formula: Identify a need Say you will meet the need. Say when you ll do it by and with what quality. Go and do it the way you said you would Tell people you did it Repeat That s the whole process. Do that enough as an individual and you will develop a reputation for reliability and trust. You ll find that people tell you things and give you more opportunities. If your team does that you ll find that other teams become easier to work with. A few notes: Misses count more than makes Fairly or unfairly, one missed commitment is more memorable than 4 that were completed on time. If you re operat - https://benmccormick.org/2024/06/17/the-intended-takeaway.html
Jun 17, 2024 · original
The intended takeaway from all this is exactly where we started in the introduction: creating quality is context specific. Be wary of following the playbook you’ve seen before, even if those playbook were tremendously successful. They might work extremely well, but they often don’t unless you have a useful model for reasoning about why they worked in the former environment. Loved the thoughts on quality here from Will Larson: lethain.com/quality/ - https://benmccormick.org/2024/06/09/over-a-year.html
Jun 9, 2024 · original
Over a year old, but new to me – I thought this series of posts was a great roundup of some of the issues that make tech a less happy place to work than in the previous decade: Software and its Discontents - https://benmccormick.org/2024/06/09/very-helpful-writeup.html
Jun 9, 2024 · original
Very helpful writeup on LLMs in production: What We’ve Learned From A Year of Building with LLMs - https://benmccormick.org/2024/05/09/reality-has-a.html
May 9, 2024 · original
Reality Has A Surprising Amount Of Detail This is an old piece, but new to me. What a great turn of phrase, and accurate insight about doing hard things. - 2023 Lifting Recap: Frustration & Learning
Jan 28, 2024 · original
2022 was the year I began lifting at home , and it was a year of consistent progress and wins. 2023 was… different. I switched from a Starting Strength based Linear Progression to a 5/3/1 based program , and was also fully self-programming with no coach, and it was a year of ups and downs. In the end I learned that I had a lot to learn, and feel ready to get better in 2024. My quantifiable lifting improvements for the year are minimal compared to 2023 though. What I did At a high level I used 4 5/3/1 templates throughout the year. Jan-April: Classic 5/3/1 Boring But Big This was the first thing I saw with 5/3/1 and what most people seemed to do so I tried it. This is a lot of sets of 1-5 reps and even more with 10 reps with lower weights than I got used to from starting strength. April-Early June: Krypteia (aborted early)" Krypteia is a heavily super-set focus variant of 5/3/1. It s inte - https://benmccormick.org/2023/08/20/last-year-when-i-started.html
Aug 20, 2023 · original
Last year when I started powerlifting as my main form of exercise I set goals of being able to do 5x325 High bar squat 5x400 Deadlift 5x150 Overhead Press 5x250 Bench Press 10x body weight pull-ups (I’d never been able to do more than 2) BP and Pull-ups are still struggling, but I’ve now managed 3/5 - https://benmccormick.org/2023/08/12/diving-back-into.html
Aug 12, 2023 · original
Diving back into (Neo)Vim this week for the first time in a few years (have done my core work with VS Code for a while). Telescope Plugin + Language Server Providers are nice additions to the landscape, and it all feels so powerful, but everything is still so fiddly to setup :/ - https://benmccormick.org/2023/02/22/really-enjoyed-these.html
Feb 23, 2023 · original
Really enjoyed these reflections on LLMs: medium.learningbyshipping.com AI, ChatGPT, and Bing…Oh My - Setting Expectations: 4 key areas for performance management
Feb 12, 2023 · original
Performance management processes have been different at every company I’ve worked in, ranging from “basically non-existent” at a 15 person startup to “months of work for managers each review period followed by clear expectations that growth feedback will be given throughout the year” in big tech world. Some of these differences are good and bad, most are more about the context of the company. I’ve found that regardless of process there are 4 things that it’s important for a team member to align with their manager on throughout the year. Hopefully there’s process supporting this, but if not both the team member or the manager can take the initiative to make it happen. Focus - Where should the teammate be putting their energy? Depending on seniority and the level of change within the organization, this might be something to resync on every 6 months, monthly, weekly or even daily[^1]. Basel - https://benmccormick.org/2023/02/11/i-am-human-and-nothing.html
Feb 11, 2023 · original
“I am human; and nothing human is alien to me” - Terence - https://benmccormick.org/2023/01/24/really-enjoyed-the-narnian-by.html
Jan 25, 2023 · original
Really enjoyed The Narnian by @ayjay — left contemplating what I find delight in. 📚
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