Peter Pinch
Director Of Application Development
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolPeter Pinch is a seasoned technology leader with 13+ years delivering large-scale web and interactive learning products, currently serving as Director of Application Development at MIT after a decade leading Open Learning application teams. He combines hands-on engineering (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Perl) and agile product management with deep expertise in usability, accessibility, and web standards to enable education at scale. Peter has improved core Open edX platform UX and documentation—contributing backend fixes, clearer error handling, and release docs for a widely used open-source LMS—while also overseeing high-traffic operations like MIT OpenCourseWare. A practiced public speaker and grant-writer who started in media and nonprofit tech, he brings a rare blend of production management, instructional design insight, and technical authorship that helps translate educational goals into robust, user-friendly systems.
13 years of coding experience
28 years of employment as a software developer
New York State Regents Diploma, New York State Regents Diploma at Franklin D. Roosevelt Senior High SchoolBA History and Science, BA History and Science at Harvard UniversityMasters of Education Technology in Education, Masters of Education Technology in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education
French, Chinese
Stackoverflow
181reputation
9kreached
0answers
1question
Github Skills (15)
error-handling10
rs10
openedx10
python10
releasenotes10
documentation10
webservice9
backend9
data-service9
django9
markdown-it9
markdown9
unit-testing8
youtube6
youtube-api6
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
openedx/openedx-platform
Jul 2014 - Mar 2022
The Open edX LMS & Studio, powering education sites around the world!
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:74 reviews, 70 commits, 124 PRs in 7 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Peter primarily focused on improving the error handling and user experience within the Open edX platform, particularly concerning codejail exceptions in the capa module. They refactored code to display more user-friendly error messages, improved the clarity of feedback, and fixed issues related to mismatched parentheses in formula inputs. Additionally, they contributed to enhancing the calculator library by updating functions for complex number support and expanding its capabilities with tensor notation.
lmsopenedxbackend-service
openedx-unsupported/edx-documentation
Aug 2020 - Dec 2022
[DEPRECATED] documentation for Open edX; please see docs.openedx.org
Role in this project:Technical Writer & Documentation Specialist
Technical Writer & Documentation SpecialistContributions:60 reviews, 9 commits, 8 PRs in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Peter primarily contributed to the repository by updating and maintaining the Open edX documentation. Their commits focused on release notes, incorporating information from various sources such as wikis and confluence, and correcting typos. The contributions involved updating links, adding new sections related to new features and deprecations, and ensuring the documentation reflected the latest changes in the Open edX platform.
openedx
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