Joshua Sunshine
Associate Professor
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJoshua Sunshine is an associate professor and computer scientist with 14 years of experience focused on programmer productivity, API and language design, and tooling for secure software construction. Based at Carnegie Mellon, he leads research and undergraduate programs while building practical systems—ranging from a framework that turns plain mathematical notation into polished diagrams (contributing front-end and core optimizations to the popular Penrose project) to tools for gradual program verification and visual problem-set authoring. His work bridges language design, DSLs, and human-centered software engineering, emphasizing measurable usability improvements for libraries and frameworks. Known for debugging tricky optimizer and rendering issues, he combines deep research credentials (PhD, CMU) with hands-on full-stack development experience and a knack for turning formal concepts into usable developer tools.
14 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma, High School Diploma at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day SchoolPhD Software Engineering School of Computer Science, PhD Software Engineering School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon UniversityB.A. Computer Science, B.A. Computer Science at Brandeis University
Stackoverflow
488reputation
17kreached
1answer
2questions
Github Skills (17)
autodiff10
programming-language10
visualization10
diagram10
visualizations10
javascript9
math9
typescript9
mathematics9
typescript-types9
typescripts9
ruby-on-rails6
jls6
sqlite6
java6
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
penrose/penrose
Nov 2020 - Jan 2023
Create beautiful diagrams just by typing notation in plain text.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:41 reviews, 53 commits, 27 PRs in 2 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Joshua primarily contributed to the front-end and core functionality of the Penrose diagramming language, with a focus on adding features and fixing bugs related to rendering and optimization. The commits demonstrate the implementation of `strokeDashArray` for various shapes, addressing NaN errors in the optimizer, and improving the performance of symbolic differentiation. Further contributions involved adding signed distance functions for shapes and integrating the timeline functionality.
diagramssvgeulermathematicsjavascript
plaidgroup/plaid-lang
Feb 2012 - Jul 2012
Contributions:204 commits in 5 months
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