Michael James
Founding AI Researcher at Sailplane
New York, New York, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMichael James is a Founding AI UX Researcher with 12 years of software engineering and research experience, currently building human-AI collaborative programming tools at Sailplane. He combines a PhD-level grounding in programming languages and HCI from UCSD with hands-on systems work—shipping full-stack features and backend robustness at companies like Uber, Jana, and early startups. Michael has a track record of improving developer tools and debuggers, from creating a time-traveling debugger for Elm to hardening the Elm compiler and contributing synchronization fixes to the Maestral Dropbox client. His work sits at the intersection of program synthesis, reliability, and practical developer UX, including a Microsoft research internship on automated API migrations. Based in New York, he brings a research-driven mindset to production problems, often surfacing subtle runtime and timing issues that unlock more reliable developer workflows.
12 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
University of California, San DiegoBachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science at Tufts University
English
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (20)
markdown10
filesystem10
javascript10
blogger10
website-development10
python10
file-operations10
elm10
markdown-it10
fileio10
blogpost10
error-handling10
website-design10
blogspot10
macos8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
elm/compiler
Jul 2014 - Sep 2014
Compiler for Elm, a functional language for reliable webapps.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:62 commits, 3 PRs, 3 comments in 2 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on debugging and improving the Elm compiler's debugger functionality. Their commits introduced features like the ability to continue paused Elm programs, trace back execution, and fix time-related issues within the debugger. These changes involved modifying the `runtime/Debugger.js` file, adding a timer offset and hooks to the `Time.js` library for more accurate time tracking during debugging, and refactoring code for clarity and functionality.
compilerelm
elm/elm-lang.org
Aug 2014 - Sep 2014
Server and client code for the Elm website.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:19 commits in 29 days
Contributions summary:Michael contributed significantly to the Elm website's blog section, creating and refining an article introducing Elm Reactor, a debugging tool. Their work involved writing Elm code for the blog post, incorporating Markdown for content formatting, and integrating external resources like iframes. They also focused on grammatical and style updates to improve readability and incorporated updated images. The user's contributions demonstrate expertise in front-end and content creation.
elm
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