Richie McLaughlin

I'm a software developer with a long-standing habit of thinking too hard about the things I build. I've spent years working on the web — writing code, debugging systems, and occasionally wondering whether the abstractions we rely on are as solid as we assume.

This blog started as a way to think out loud. Not to teach — there are better teachers — but to work through ideas in public, where the act of writing forces a kind of clarity that thinking alone rarely achieves. If something I write is useful to you, that's a bonus. If it prompts you to disagree, even better.

My interests tend to cluster around a few themes: the gap between how software is described and how it actually behaves, the mental models that make complex systems legible, and the quieter questions about craft — what it means to write code that's worth reading, and why that's harder than it sounds.

Outside of software, I'm interested in the science of how the body and mind interact — particularly the research connecting emotional patterns to physical health. That curiosity led to my book, Repressed Anger Causes Cancer, which examines the scientific evidence behind Louise Hay's approach to disease. The supplemental section — a deeper dive into the neuroscience, biochemistry, and molecular biology — is available as a free download on this site.