Benjamin Wheeler
City Councilor at Ada & Leo
Somerville, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top School
Top expert inFont and Web Development Technologies
Benjamin Wheeler is a multifaceted software engineer, educator, and civic leader with 12+ years of experience building user-facing products, curricula, and engineering teams across startups, education, and high-frequency trading. Currently serving as a City Councilor in Somerville and founder of Ada & Leo, he spent five years shaping Scratch’s learning platform—leading database sustainability work and shipping front-end and mobile improvements used by millions of kids. He co-authored NYC’s citywide Computational Media curriculum, led large-scale teacher PD, and has taught at Columbia and numerous nonprofit code programs, blending pedagogy with production engineering. Earlier roles include algorithm development at Hudson River Trading and product engineering for clients like Twitter, demonstrating comfort across low-latency systems and creative learning tools. Known for pragmatic technical leadership, he pairs hands-on contributions to open-source projects (e.g., Scratch GUI and ScratchJr analytics) with a master’s in learning design from Harvard and a CS background from Columbia.
12 years of coding experience
23 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts - BA History and Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts - BA History and Computer Science at Columbia UniversityMaster's degree Learning Design Innovation and Technology, Master's degree Learning Design Innovation and Technology at Harvard Graduate School of EducationHigh School, High School at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School
Spanish, French, Georgian, Sign languages
Stackoverflow
7,046reputation
3.1mreached
85answers
41questions
openssl
top-5%
word-wrap
top-5%
react-router
top-5%
python
top-5%
javascript
top-5%
Github Skills (25)
firebase-analytics10
debugging10
debug10
javascript10
ios10
lib10
css10
user-interface10
android-development10
front-end-development10
react10
mobile-development9
python9
openssl9
mobile-web9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
scratchfoundation/scratch-gui
Aug 2018 - Sep 2022
Graphical User Interface for creating and running Scratch 3.0 projects.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:17 reviews, 483 commits, 217 PRs in 4 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Benjamin's contributions primarily focused on enhancing the graphical user interface (GUI) for the Scratch-gui project. They made improvements to the project title editing functionality, including styling and file name safety. Additionally, the user implemented various UI-related changes by adjusting padding and margins in the layout, adding features for account navigation, and creating new components and styles for the menu bar and alerts. These changes indicate a focus on improving the user experience and overall design of the GUI.
graphicalscratchuser-interfacegraphical-user-interface
scratchfoundation/scratchjr
Mar 2020 - Oct 2020
With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) can program their own interactive stories and games.
Role in this project:Mobile Developer (Android/iOS)
Mobile Developer (Android/iOS)Contributions:1 review, 22 commits, 15 PRs in 6 months
Contributions summary:Benjamin primarily focused on integrating analytics tracking into the ScratchJr mobile applications for both iOS and Android platforms. They implemented event logging using Firebase Analytics, adding specific event triggers within the application's editor and UI components, such as when a scene is added or a text sprite is created. Furthermore, the user added functionality to set user properties related to initial options and user preferences. In addition, the user refactored the grid functionality, ensuring analytics events are triggered based on user actions.
agesgamegamesinteractive-storiesjavascript
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