Mike Bostock
Founder at observablehq
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar
Top expert inFront-End Development and JavaScript EcosystemFull-Stack JavaScript Development
Mike Bostock is the founder and creator of D3 with 15 years of experience building creative, reliable computational and visualization tooling from low-level runtimes to polished plotting APIs. Based in San Francisco, he co-founded Observable and architected its reactive runtime while continuing to design and implement core pieces of the D3 ecosystem—ranging from geographic projections and topojson to zoom behavior and scale formatting. His work spans full stack engineering: performant back-end algorithms for async queues, parsers and numeric math, plus front-end SVG and DOM ergonomics for exploratory graphics. He is recognized for obsessively robust implementation and test coverage—often refactoring for correctness and smaller, simpler code—and for shipping pragmatic features like line marks, projection transforms and interactive gestures. Mike combines deep mathematical intuition with practical engineering, turning complex spatial and dataflow problems into elegant, reusable primitives. He even makes his surname part of the brand: pronounced BOSS-tock.
15 years of coding experience
Github Skills (60)
asynchronous10
algorithm10
data-visualizations10
algorithms10
javascript10
visualization10
dataflow-programming10
lib10
number-formatting10
runtimes10
event-handling10
dataflow10
template-literals10
async10
es6-promise10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
observablehq/plot
Oct 2020 - Jan 2023
A concise API for exploratory data visualization implementing a layered grammar of graphics
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & UI Designer
Back-end Developer & UI DesignerContributions:34 releases, 1107 reviews, 1500 commits in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Mike made several commits focused on implementing the "Line" mark in the plotting library. This involved creating a Line mark, defining the necessary transform functions, and making it usable across various chart types. The changes also included improvements in the data processing, and adjustments to the UI rendering, highlighting the user's focus on both the backend and frontend aspects of the visualization library.
chartsapiexploratorydata-visualizationvisualization
d3/d3-scale
Jun 2015 - Sep 2021
Encodings that map abstract data to visual representation.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:54 releases, 2 reviews, 527 commits in 6 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Mike primarily contributed to the development of the `d3-scale` library. Their work involved implementing and testing new features, specifically focusing on the `linear.ticks` and `tickFormat` functionalities. The commits demonstrate a deep understanding of data visualization principles and the application of D3.js for creating scalable visualizations, including refinements of the underlying math.
representationencodingsmapvisual-representation
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