Colin Alworth
Co-Founder at Vertispan
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolColin Alworth is a seasoned software engineer and entrepreneur with 15 years of experience, currently co-founding and leading product development at Vertispan in Minneapolis. He brings deep back-end expertise from roles at Sencha, BigMachines, and startups, with a strong track record of shipping robust systems and improving build and tooling processes. An active open-source contributor, Colin has contributed significant fixes and feature work to high-profile Google projects like Closure Compiler and J2CL, improving JavaScript optimization, module handling, and Java-to-JS transpilation edge cases. His hands-on background spans encoding, dependency management, and build refactors—areas that often determine long-term maintainability but rarely get noticed. A Kalamazoo College computer science graduate, he pairs pragmatic engineering with entrepreneurial instincts to turn complex technical problems into reliable products. He’s known for quietly strengthening foundations—test coverage, build systems, and compatibility—that let teams move faster.
15 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science at Kalamazoo College
Stackoverflow
18,091reputation
671kreached
582answers
3questions
extjs
top-5%
java
top-1%
dependency-injection
top-5%
gwt
top-1%
javascript
top-5%
guice
top-5%
Github Skills (24)
closure10
javascript10
testing10
google-closure-compiler10
gwt10
java10
javas10
compiler-compiler10
transpiler10
compiler10
type-checking10
optimization10
extjs9
json9
guice9
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
google/closure-compiler
Nov 2017 - Nov 2022
A JavaScript checker and optimizer.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:12 reviews, 19 commits, 13 PRs in 5 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Colin contributed to the Closure Compiler project by implementing features, fixing bugs, and improving the build process. Their work included supporting "let" in persistent mode, removing incorrect extern types, and refactoring build configurations. They also addressed issues related to module handling and dependencies within the project's build system, ensuring compatibility and efficiency. Furthermore, the user worked on updating externs for browser-related features.
checkerjavascriptoptimizationtypecheckingoptimizer
google/j2cl
Mar 2020 - Dec 2022
Java to Closure JavaScript transpiler
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 5 commits, 8 PRs in 2 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Colin primarily focused on improving the Java to Closure JavaScript transpiler. Their contributions involved fixing bugs related to character encoding and typos, enhancing the codebase's robustness. They also addressed issues by allowing sources to come from any jar file and added more edge cases to long testing to improve test coverage. These changes reflect a commitment to code quality and improving the functionality of the transpiler.
j2cljsinteropjavascriptcompilertranspiler
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