Kylie Mcclain
Boone, North Carolina, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKylie Mcclain is a pragmatic systems-minded engineer with 12 years of hands-on experience in Unix, Linux distribution development, and open source tooling, currently based in Boone, NC. She pairs university-level student tech support and hardware repair experience with deep contributions to projects like the Kakoune editor and the Nix home-manager ecosystem, where she improved syntax highlighting and added modules that streamline user environments. Known for fixing tricky platform and build issues, she focuses on reliability, maintainability, and clear communication—often translating technical repairs into plain language for nontechnical users. Her background in philosophy gives her a thoughtful approach to problem decomposition and documentation, and colleagues often hand off Linux machines to her when a nuanced fix is needed.
12 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts - BA, Philosophy, Bachelor of Arts - BA, Philosophy at Appalachian State University
English
Github Skills (29)
editors10
c-language10
text-editor10
nix10
scripting10
configuration-management10
nixos10
dotfile10
editor10
vim10
regular-expression10
console-application10
modal-dialog10
script10
kakoune10
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
mawww/kakoune
Aug 2015 - May 2021
mawww's experiment for a better code editor
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 31 commits, 27 PRs in 5 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Kylie primarily contributed to enhancing the Kakoune text editor by adding and improving syntax highlighting for various file types and configurations. They focused on creating highlighting rules for configuration files like those used by Exherbo, Paludis, and various Unix system configurations. Additionally, the user addressed build issues and corrected formatting, demonstrating a focus on editor functionality and platform compatibility.
vimkakounec-plus-plusmodal-editingconsole-application
nix-community/home-manager
Mar 2022 - Dec 2022
Manage a user environment using Nix [maintainer=@rycee]
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:9 reviews, 5 commits, 11 PRs in 8 months
Contributions summary:Kylie primarily contributed to the `home-manager` Nix configuration repository by implementing new features and fixing bugs. Their work includes adding new modules for services like `autorandr`, `sctd`, and `vdirsyncer`, indicating a focus on user environment customization. They also addressed issues related to existing modules, correcting typos and improving functionality for programs such as `htop`, `qutebrowser`, and `sxhkd`.
nix-dotfilesnixosmaintainerhome-managerdotfiles
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