Ben Vinegar
Hey! I’m Ben Vinegar, General Manager of Syntax.fm at Sentry, and Sentry’s former VP of Engineering. I’m also the co-author of Third-party JavaScript, a contributor to O’Reilly’s Beautiful JavaScript, and an occasional conference speaker.
You can also find me on Bluesky, Twitter, GitHub, and LinkedIn.
Work
Syntax is a popular web development podcast hosted by Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Twitter, and YouTube.
Sentry is a source-available SaaS product that helps software teams understand how their application code is performing in production. Sentry is funded by Accel, NEA, and BOND, and our customers include leading technology companies like GitHub, Instacart, Riot Games, and many others.
Projects
Counterscale
Counterscale is a simple open source analytics tracker and dashboard designed to run on Cloudflare’s developer cloud. It’s easy to deploy, zero effort to maintain, and costs pennies to run even at high levels of load.
Writing
Third-party JavaScript 
Released in 2013 by Manning Publications and co-authored with Anton Kovalyov, Third-party JavaScript teaches readers how to build embedded JavaScript applications like widgets and analytics scripts. It has been translated and sold in several languages, including Standard Chinese, Japanese, and Portugese.
Beautiful JavaScript 
From 2015, Beautiful JavaScript is a collection of 15 discrete chapters contributed by leading JavaScript programmers like Angus Croll, Jenn Schiffer, Nicholas Zakas, and Ariya Hidayat. I contributed a chapter on abusing JavaScript constructors to seamlessly introduce the factory design pattern.
Selected blog posts
- Distributed Tracing 101 for Full Stack Developers Sentry blog, 2021
- How we grew Sentry’s MAUs by rethinking invitations Sentry blog, 2020
- Four reasons why your source maps are broken Sentry blog, 2018
- Three tips for getting a talk accepted at Fluent Medium, 2016
- What the heck is “Script error”? Sentry blog, 2016
- How to write bulletproof function wrappers in JavaScript Sentry blog, 2016
- Capture and report JavaScript errors with window.onerror Sentry blog, 2016
- Debuggable JavaScript in production with source maps Sentry blog, 2015
- We need a modern, open source performance book Perfplanet, 2015
- The best tool for the job, isn’t always Medium, 2014
Speaking
Podcasts
- Reflecting on ladders, acquisitions, and personal trajectory at Sentry Engineering Unblocked, 2023
- Ben Vinegar × Distributed Tracing and TypeScript Migrations Syntax, 2022
- The new definition of frontend development Code[ish], 2020
- Why error monitoring must be close to your code The New Stack Podcast, 2020
- Debugging third party JavaScript JavaScript Jabber, 2020
Talks
- Navigating the JavaScript error-handling minefield VueConfTO, 2019 🇨🇦
- JavaScript errors demystified Destination:Web @ Uber, 2019 🇺🇸
- Source maps through the looking glass JSConf EU, 2017 🇩🇪
- JS error reporting and why we can’t have nice things JSConf UY, 2016 🇺🇾
- Re-evaluting front-end performance best practices Full Stack Toronto, 2015 🇨🇦
- Backbone at Disqus: a postmortem BackboneConf, 2014 🇺🇸
- Seamless iframes: the future, today HTML5DevConf, 2013 🇺🇸
- Modern iframe programming TXJS, 2011 🇺🇸
Panels
- Static to dynamic and back again Future of Frontend, 2020 (moderator) 🌐
- Build process Edge Conference London, 2014 (moderator) 🇬🇧
- Third-party scripts Edge Conference NYC, 2013 🇺🇸
Contact me
The best way to reach me is over email.
Please note I do not respond to solicitations from recruiting agencies, outsourcing firms, product salespeople, etc.