Will Crichton
Assistant Professor at Brown University
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolWill Crichton is an assistant professor and former postdoc who blends programming language theory with cognitive psychology to make programming more usable, learnable, and powerful. With 14 years of software experience and a PhD from Stanford, he builds practical tools and research prototypes—ranging from IDE plugins like Flowistry to contributions to Rust’s Cargo and high-scale video analysis backends. His work spans full-stack engineering and backend systems, and he frequently bridges user-facing UX (interactive Rust visualizations, consent/telemetry in experimental books) with rigorous compiler and data-flow analyses. An active open-source contributor, he has improved widely used Rust ecosystems and added ergonomics features (e.g., iterator progress in indicatif, example scraping in Cargo) that reflect his dual focus on tools and human factors. Based in Boston, he prefers email for contact and emphasizes reproducible, user-centered research.
14 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, 3.86, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, 3.86 at Carnegie Mellon UniversityDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science at Stanford University
Chinese
Github Skills (35)
javascript10
c-language10
cargo10
flow-control10
dataflow10
testing10
video-processing10
typescript10
data-structure10
front-end-development10
control-flow10
typescript-types10
data-structures10
iterator10
typescripts10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
cognitive-engineering-lab/rust-book
Jun 2022 - Mar 2023
The Rust Programming Language: Experimental Edition
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:4 reviews, 349 commits, 134 PRs in 9 months
Contributions summary:Will primarily contributed to the `js-extensions` directory, integrating features related to feedback and consent forms within the experimental Rust Book. Their work involved developing React components for highlighting, tooltips, and modal interactions, as well as setting up telemetry to gather user data. They also made improvements to the styling and appearance of the consent form and dashboard. Their contributions appear to be focused on enhancing the user experience and gathering usage data for the experiment.
rustcompilertlaplusprogramming-languageinterpreter
willcrichton/flowistry
Mar 2021 - Jan 2023
Flowistry is an IDE plugin for Rust that helps you focus on relevant code.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:19 reviews, 528 commits, 31 PRs in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:Will appears to be a backend developer working on a Rust-based project, as evidenced by the focus on Rust code and the use of data structures relevant to backend development. The user's commits focus on implementing core functionality and data flow with the creation of a control dependencies algorithm and associated features. Their contributions involve modifying and expanding the program's internal data structures and implementing the code for analyzing and implementing features using the borrow checker.
rustvscodeide-pluginidedataflow
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.