Josef Heinen
Research Associate
Duren, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Summary
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RockstarJosef Heinen is a research associate with 14 years of software engineering experience based in Düren, Germany, combining academic rigor with hands-on engineering at Forschungszentrum Jülich. He is a seasoned open-source contributor in the Julia ecosystem, notably implementing the GR graphics backend for Plots.jl to enable core plotting features—lines, scatter, heatmaps, surface plots—and advanced capabilities like annotations, legends and logarithmic axes. Josef also maintains build and release automation for GR within JuliaPackaging/Yggdrasil, streamlining binary builds and dependency updates across versions. His work sits at the intersection of scientific visualization and reproducible software distribution, reflecting a practical focus on enabling researchers to produce and share robust, high-quality plots. Not obviously visible from his title, he brings deep expertise in both low-level backend implementation and build-system reliability, making him a bridge between research needs and production-ready tooling.
14 years of coding experience
Github Skills (10)
automation10
automations10
pbuilder10
back-end-development10
plot10
julia10
3d-graphics9
heatmap8
dockers5
docker5
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
JuliaPlots/Plots.jl
Dec 2015 - Nov 2022
Powerful convenience for Julia visualizations and data analysis
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 reviews, 257 commits, 147 PRs in 7 years
Contributions summary:Josef focused on implementing a new graphics backend, "GR.jl", for the `plots.jl` Julia plotting library. Their work involved creating the initial GR backend files, implementing core plotting functionalities for lines and scatter plots within the GR backend, and adding support for features like logarithmic axes, legends, annotations, and various plot types including histograms and heatmaps. Further contributions encompassed porting and implementing aspects of the Plots.jl API to the GR.jl backend, including support for a variety of plot types such as surface plots, and added features such as annotations, a colorbar, and control over the legend.
data-analysisjulia-languageconveniencevisualizationsdata-visualization
JuliaPackaging/Yggdrasil
Sep 2020 - Jan 2023
Collection of builder repositories for BinaryBuilder.jl
Role in this project:Automation Engineer / Build & Release Engineer
Automation Engineer / Build & Release EngineerContributions:32 commits, 71 PRs, 65 comments in 2 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Josef primarily contributed to updating the GR (GR is a scientific plotting library) binary build process. They frequently updated the `build_tarballs.jl` script, modifying version numbers, source code references, and dependencies. The user's work focused on integrating and maintaining the necessary build configurations and dependencies for various GR versions.
repositoriesbinarybuildermonorepobuilderjulia
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