Vitaly Kushner
Founder at Astrails
Berlin, Germany
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolVitaly Kushner is a seasoned founder and software engineer with nearly two decades building production web applications, developer tools, and low-level systems, currently leading Astrails from Berlin. A Rails early adopter since 2005, he co-authored The Rails 4 Way and continues to use Rails as his primary platform for MVPs, rapid prototyping, and rescue projects. His background spans assembler and Linux kernel work to scalable web backends, giving him rare full-stack depth that helps teams move from idea to reliable deployment. An active open-source contributor, he’s improved notable projects like the RailsApps composer gem and the Obsidian Dataview plugin, contributing both backend fixes and front-end APIs. He also mentors startup teams and accelerator cohorts, focusing on product prioritization and pragmatic engineering trade-offs. Colloquially, he’s the kind of engineer who soldered mini-PCI boards early in his career and now guides companies to avoid building features they don’t need.
18 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
B.Sc. (last year dropout), Computer Sciense, 90+ average, B.Sc. (last year dropout), Computer Sciense, 90+ average at Technion-Machon Technologi Le' IsraelM.Sc. (unfinished), Experimental Physics, Thermoelectricity, 99% A, M.Sc. (unfinished), Experimental Physics, Thermoelectricity, 99% A at Chernivci National 'Juriy Fedkovyc' University
English, Russian, Hebrew
Stackoverflow
9,387reputation
593kreached
68answers
29questions
ruby-on-rails
top-5%
oop
top-1%
activerecord
top-5%
instance-variables
top-1%
coffeescript
top-1%
Github Skills (33)
oop10
ruby-rails10
javascript10
coffeescript10
typescript10
rails10
instance-variables10
plugin10
ruby10
query-language10
typescript-types10
typescripts10
api-design9
testing9
devise9
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
RailsApps/rails_apps_composer
Aug 2012 - Sep 2013
A gem with recipes to create Rails application templates for Rails starter apps.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits in 1 year
Contributions summary:Vitaly contributed to the RailsApps Composer gem, focusing on enhancing its functionality and addressing bugs. They implemented features like supporting the inclusion of gems in default configuration files and allowing specification of PostgreSQL and MySQL user/password preferences. The user also fixed issues related to Devise integration, incorrect comments, and production web server handling. Furthermore, they introduced a feature to skip the `rake db:seed` task based on user preferences.
ruby-on-railsrecipesrails-apirailsrails-application
blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview
Oct 2021 - Mar 2022
A data index and query language over Markdown files, for https://obsidian.md/.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:5 commits, 3 PRs, 23 comments in 5 months
Contributions summary:Vitaly contributed to both the front-end and back-end aspects of the `obsidian-dataview` plugin. They implemented a new JavaScript API function, `dv.el`, along with the refactoring of existing functions to use this new function. Additionally, the user improved testing infrastructure by adding a BDD runner, enhancing the vault mock, and fixing test failures related to the latest index changes. Further, the user addressed async rendering of list and table, ensuring asynchronous operations at the call site.
queryindexquery-languageobsidian-mdperformance
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