Alex Mclean
Generalist at Then Try This
Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlex Mclean is a multidisciplinary generalist with 19 years of experience blending software development, research and creative practice across music, algorithmic systems and civic tech. Based in Sheffield, he currently holds a UKRI-funded fellowship at non-profit Then Try This investigating "algorithmic patterns" and contributes to notable open-source projects such as the JavaScript port of TidalCycles (Strudel). His background spans academic posts (PhD in Arts and Computational Technology) and applied roles from postdoctoral research at Deutsches Museum to curator/organiser of the Festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement, showing a knack for translating theory into public-facing creative systems. He brings full-stack technical chops—implementing core JS functionality, UI work and unit tests—alongside long experience in interdisciplinary collaboration and teaching. Colleagues describe him as someone who comfortably moves between code, craft and curation, often surfacing unexpected musical or social insights from technical projects.
18 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Arts and Computational Technology, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Arts and Computational Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London
Github Skills (6)
web-audio-api10
javascript10
testing10
react9
html8
music8
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
tidalcycles/strudel
Jan 2022 - Jan 2023
Web-based environment for live coding algorithmic patterns, incorporating a faithful port of TidalCycles to JavaScript
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:2 releases, 17 reviews, 420 commits in 1 year
Contributions summary:Alex contributed to the development of Strudel, a web-based live coding environment for musical patterns, primarily through the implementation and testing of core functionality. Their commits included changes to core JavaScript files, the modification of HTML and JavaScript code for UI elements, and the creation of unit tests. Furthermore, they actively worked on integrating features, composing new functionalities, and adjusting code related to the musical pattern logic of Strudel.
synthesizerjavascriptlivecodingalgoraveweb-audio
iclc/iclc.github.io
Dec 2014 - Oct 2022
Website for the International Conference on Live Coding
Contributions:199 commits, 12 PRs, 146 pushes in 7 years 10 months
international-conferencejavascriptreactlive-coding
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