Ken Cooper

Software Engineer

Seasoned architect and developer, broadly experienced in app and framework development across multiple domains and platforms.

Technical cofounder with successful exit to Microsoft. Contributed many patents. Provided key contributions to ASP.net, Expression Blend, Windows Presentation Foundation. Codesigned the UI pattern MVVM.

Projects
A mobile AR hunt app (iOS and Android).

Used extensively by educators to create vivid and engaging physical learning experiences.

Made use of computer vision image matching and geolocation, included rich animation. Implemented offline syncing of data and media for connectivity-poor environments.

Both clients were written natively, the iOS version more than 100 KLOC of Objective C.

The back end was Node.js, Parse Server, and mongoDB, hosted on Heroku and AWS.

An open source SPA reactive Javascript framework similar to Vue.js and AngularJS, written in 2006.

Built with the intent of providing a standard API across multiple client platforms (web, desktop, mobile).

It included a virtual DOM, bidirectional databinding, optional programmatic layout, drag and drop, a compiled template language, and an extensive suite of UI components.

During a seven year period, helped drive innovation through prototyping to inform external teams.

Contributed many patents in architectural work on the web development platform ASP.net, as well as the Windows Presentation Foundation and its designer tool Expression Blend.

Highlights:

Prototyped a next generation version of Windows, that looked remarkably like Android, inside and out.

Codeveloped the commonly used UI pattern MVVM.

Designed and implemented a dynamic policy driven layout framework for traditional UI (very similar to what is now used in Android).

Designed and prototyped the server-based hierarchical UI component framework used by ASP.NET.

Built a code completion engine for C# and Visual Basic.

The Java UI framework and office application suite that prompted Microsoft's purchase of Cooper & Peters.

In addition to offering a strong competitor to Sun Microsystems' Swing UI framework, Eyeopener included a word processor, spreadsheet, charting package, and diagram editor, all written in Java and deployed through the browser.

The popular Smalltalk UI designer for Windows and Macintosh, built before these were common (pre-Visual Basic).

WindowBuilder is now used by Eclipse for Java GUI design.

The OO framework, UI library and interface builder for Smalltalk that inspired Eyeopener and WindowBuilder.

In addition to providing a rich framework to build components with, it included a broad range of UI components, including text editors and menuing written without OS support.

Featured switchable visual and behavioral skinning for Macintosh, NeXT, and our own look and feel.

An attempt to bring the joy of Smalltalk-style code browser editing to the file based world of Visual Studio. Written in C#, using Visual Studio's programmatic API. Difficult technical/culture fit and tricky platform support, but a moderate success.
A programmer's editor for the Smalltalk environment.

Provided syntax color highlighting, customized code formatting, key bindings, and a slew of refactoring and programming conveniences to Smalltalkers.

a real time discussion group for the financial blog Calculated Risk.

Used heavily customized Drupal to build a Slack-like interface before searchable web chatrooms were common.

Extensive client side javascript, server side PHP/Apache SOLR/MySQL.

Education
Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science.

Phi Beta Kappa.

. Learned to build rocket simulations1 on the Xerox STAR as one of the Smalltalk kids. Pictured here explaining one of them to my colleagues.

1Well, that's what my mom called them anyway.