I’m James Long, and I love building products. You might know me as the creator of Prettier, absurd-sql, Actual, or maybe something else.

I left Stripe in October and am currently looking for my next role (email me at [email protected]). Please get in touch if I can help you!

About me

"Design engineer" is probably the best description of me. I love being creative and working closely with designers to build products, and bending web browsers to create great experiences. I'm more of an engineer than designer, but always looking to get better at design.

I obsess over ideas. There’s nothing better than creating something from nothing. Sometimes I can’t go to sleep until I’ve figured out a problem. I sweat the details in all of my work. I love working on foundational problems that require deep technical expertise. I’ve implemented a custom CRDT sync engine, built a SQL engine for the web, dissected the chromaticity diagram, and many other things.

• Location: Richmond, VA
• Online: Twitter/X

My work

Read more about my work over here.

Projects:

• Prettier
• absurd-sql
• Actual

Podcasts/talks:

• Discussion about local-first on localfirst.fm
• CRDTs for Mortals
• My History with Papers

Posts:

• A case study of complex table design
• Verlet integration demo