Ben Hockey
Staff Software Engineer at Dojo Foundation
Erie, Colorado, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBen Hockey is a Staff Software Engineer with 17 years of experience, currently at Google and a long-standing Dojo committer focused on modernizing JavaScript tooling and UI libraries. He has a strong front-end pedigree—contributing bug fixes, feature work, and tests to high-profile projects like Knockout, Dojo, Virtual DOM, and TodoMVC—and has deep experience improving test infrastructures in projects such as Intern and Sinon. Ben’s work spans full-stack performance and correctness: optimizing virtual-dom diffing, refactoring core libraries for AMD/RequireJS compatibility, and hardening test suites for reliable CI. He brings practical leadership from senior roles at SitePen and as Lead Developer at Gener.us, plus an unusual background in live production touring that honed logistical problem-solving under pressure. Based in Erie, Colorado, he combines academic training in electronics and IT with pragmatic OSS craftsmanship, often contributing subtle but impactful fixes—like Date serialization and event-firing edge cases—that improve developer ergonomics at scale.
17 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics), Bachelor of Information Technology, Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics), Bachelor of Information Technology at Queensland University of Technology
Stackoverflow
760reputation
42kreached
19answers
0questions
Github Skills (42)
algorithm10
unit-testing10
algorithms10
knockout10
javascript10
virtual-dom10
webdriver10
tool-kit10
sinon10
testing10
css10
ui-design10
requirejs10
amd10
databinding10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
dojo/dojox
Jul 2009 - Apr 2015
Dojo 1 - extras library. Please submit bugs to https://bugs.dojotoolkit.org/
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:68 commits, 2 PRs, 5 pushes in 5 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the refactoring and conversion of dojox.math and dojox.encoding modules to the AMD format, a significant undertaking for adapting the library to modern JavaScript development practices. They addressed type and syntax errors, ensuring the modules conformed to the expected AMD build transform. The commits reflect a focus on modernizing and improving the integration of these specific dojox libraries within the broader Dojo Toolkit framework.
dojoextrassubmit
Matt-Esch/virtual-dom
Mar 2014 - Apr 2015
A Virtual DOM and diffing algorithm
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:26 commits, 7 PRs, 3 pushes in 1 year
Contributions summary:Ben primarily focused on optimizing the virtual-dom library's performance and functionality. Their contributions included refactoring the diffing algorithm, specifically focusing on efficiently patching properties and children. They improved the testing infrastructure, using min-document, and added tests to prevent unnecessary reordering and verify correct rendering, particularly around widget interactions and key management. They also worked on improving reordering and preventing unnecessary calls to `replaceChild`.
virtualdomvirtual-domjavascriptdom-manipulationdom
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