Thorsten Wissmann
Wissenschafler at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Forchheim, Bavaria, Germany
Summary
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RockstarThorsten Wissmann is a research-focused software engineer and postdoc in theoretical computer science at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg with 18 years of professional experience. He combines rigorous academic background with hands-on systems engineering, notably as creator and core contributor of the popular herbstluftwm manual tiling window manager for X11. His open-source work spans both back-end and UI design—improving core window-management logic, robustness, and command-line ergonomics—and extends to full-stack contributions in projects like qutebrowser where he enhanced keyboard-driven UX and test coverage. Based in Forchheim, Bavaria, he brings a pragmatic approach to complex problems, often smoothing edge cases and crash scenarios that others overlook. Colleagues value his ability to bridge formal research perspectives with production-quality code and thoughtful user-facing details.
18 years of coding experience
Github Skills (15)
c-language10
pyqt10
cprogramming-language10
qt10
python10
x119
command-line-interface9
vim9
qtwebengine8
browser8
qwebengine8
webpages7
web-content7
testing7
json3
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm
May 2011 - Oct 2022
A manual tiling window manager for X11
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & UI Designer
Back-end Developer & UI DesignerContributions:241 reviews, 2078 commits, 1076 PRs in 11 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Thorsten made significant contributions to the `herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm` repository, primarily focused on enhancing the window manager's core functionality and user experience. They implemented features like handling window closing via client messages, improved the visual layout, added more flexibility to the frame attributes, and expanded the feature set for the command-line interface of the system. The user also made contributions to the object tree by improving handling and printing of frames, and fixed a number of crashes and edge cases.
xorgx11linuxtiling-window-managerwindow
qutebrowser/qutebrowser
Jan 2015 - Apr 2020
A keyboard-driven, vim-like browser based on Python and Qt.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 28 commits, 9 PRs in 5 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Thorsten contributed to the qutebrowser project by addressing issues related to the user interface and core functionality. They fixed a bug related to progress bar height in the status bar and modified the completion widget's appearance. The user also enhanced the tab-focus behavior, aligning it with Vim's functionality, and improved search engine integration by handling slash encoding and introducing flexible quoting options. Additionally, they added and extended test cases.
pythonqtwebenginebrowservimvim-like
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