Ben Fry
Lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBen Fry is a lecturer at MIT and the founder of Fathom Information Design with 26 years of experience blending design, computation, and teaching. He co-created Processing, a widely used open-source framework for visual arts and education, and stewarded its community for over two decades. His background spans academia and industry—PhD from MIT Media Lab, postdoc at the Broad Institute, visiting roles at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard, and applied design work at companies like Netscape and Oblong. Beyond leadership, he contributes code and documentation to Processing projects, including Android mode improvements and maintaining legacy docs, showing hands-on fluency from UI to build tooling. Known for translating complex data into accessible visual narratives, he brings a rare combination of research rigor, practical engineering, and craft-driven design practice.
27 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Media Laboratory, Aesthetics & Computation Group, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Media Laboratory, Aesthetics & Computation Group at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyBachelor's Degree, Graphic Design (major), Computer Science (minor), Bachelor's Degree, Graphic Design (major), Computer Science (minor) at Carnegie Mellon UniversityHuron High School
Github Skills (27)
preprocessing10
android-sdk10
language-processing10
java10
post-processing10
javas10
parallel-processing10
php10
android10
document-processing10
data-processing10
html10
file-processing10
multiprocessing10
documentation10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
processing/processing-docs
Feb 2013 - Aug 2021
[Deprecated] Processing reference, examples, tutorials, and website
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:104 commits, 6 PRs, 71 pushes in 8 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Ben's contributions primarily revolve around updating and maintaining the documentation for the Processing project, a deprecated repository for the Processing reference, examples, tutorials, and website. They are responsible for updating the download links, adding new releases, and ensuring the accuracy of information on the download page, including links to different versions and releases of Processing. Their work involves modifying the HTML and PHP files to reflect the latest updates.
javareferencegraphics
processing/processing-android
May 2014 - Sep 2015
Processing mode and core library to create Android apps with Processing
Role in this project:Mobile Developer (Android)
Mobile Developer (Android)Contributions:18 commits, 1 PR, 7 pushes in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the `processing-android` repository by addressing warnings, fixing parameterization, and resolving issues related to Android-specific functionality. They made changes to classes such as `Permissions`, `AndroidEditor`, `AndroidRunner`, and `SDKDownloader`, indicating a focus on improving the Android mode for Processing. The commits involved modifying code related to UI elements and build processes.
android-appandroid-appscore-libraryandroidmobile
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