TECHNO-

Social

Technology means expanding what's possible

• benjiwheeler
• benjamin-wheeler
• benjiwheeler
• lastname dot benjamin at gmail

• Bio

  I am a software developer in Brooklyn. I helped grow a high-frequency trading company into one of the top 10 firms in the world for volume, I built the tech for the first online property bought by MTV, and I've done software engineering for Twitter. My work has been published in The Best of Make Magazine, and Columbia University awarded me for excellence in teaching engineering.
• Dayo

  

  Daily weather on your lockscreen

  Tells you the weather like a human does, by the time you wake up.

  Lead developer and co-product lead. Still actively working on this. Used it to learn Parse platform. Experimenting with algorithmic content generation and the lockscreen/push notifications as content medium.

  Tech I used: obj-c, js, Parse service
• Underground

  

  Pseudonymous group messaging app: "Share thoughts with people like you"

  Co-developer, co-creator. A labor of love, but never clicked with users. Biggest rails backend I've built, with decent testing framework and worker queue. There’s lots here that I’m still waiting for a more prominent product to deliver.

  Tech I used: obj-c, rails
• eHighlighter

  

  eBook-style highlighting for real-world books

  Updated this app to address 2 years of UX/UI issues and feature requests. Used it to learn ios. The big stumbling block to this being better is the so-so proprietary OCR we’re using.

  Tech I used: obj-c
• Hudson River Trading

  Algorithmic trading

  I was an algorithm developer, coder and trader for 6 years, as the company went from 10 people to 100+. I learned a huge amount about problem solving and data science, and how much more important steady application of intelligence is to hard problems than genius. I give myself a B at this job — i was never that into finance, but loved working with smart people.

  Tech I used: c++, perl, python, shell scripting

• Intro/summary for recruiters
• Consulting/freelance: $150/hr. No surprises.
• Rate for nonprofits: $100/hr.
• Recommendations:

  "Ben engineered an ace online video platform that made our show's website interactive in a way no one had ever done before, and helped us get the show picked up by MTV.” --Morgan Spurlock

  "Benjamin has been a crucial asset to the Presidential Administration... I recommend him without reservation." --Mikheil Saakashvili, former President of Georgia

  "Thanks for doing the impossible, with a smile." --Ryan Troy, Twitter Live Global Lead

Key: one icon for each year of experience;
color indicates how positive or negative I feel about the language.

• My github gists
• The Maker’s Pledge: a proposal
• Quiz game circuit project for kids (from The Best of Make Magazine)
• What I tell recruiters
• How Product Hunt really works
• Using the Colemak keyboard layout
• On utopian languages and keyboard layouts
• What's the story behind the West Village's DIY electric car? (from Make Magazine)
• What to try when typing hurts
• On the nature of tech product work
• Programming is Supposed to Be Messy (from TechStars' Startup Institute)