JAMES LONG
POSTS TALKS

JAMES LONG

is a developer & designer with over a decade of experience building large-scale applications. He created Prettier, the standard of JavaScript code formatting, led a long-term effort to port Firefox developer tools to React at Mozilla, is founder of Actual, and explores new ideas for programming through blog posts. He focuses on solving real problems for users with a great user experience. Let's work together

PROJECTS
Actual
The personal finance system of your dreams
A product I've been working on for the last 3 years, launched in January, and working on scaling up to become my full-time income.
Check it out →
Prettier
An opinionated JavaScript code formatter
I created Prettier which has become the default JavaScript code formatter. Other maintainers have taken over the project.
Blink
A video editor — make memes and lyric videos on iOS
Helped a client explore new social video formats using advanced typography and augmented reality overlays.

POSTS

Thinking about growth and profit
January 9, 2020
A deep dive into the relationship between growth and profit after my last post about profit forecasting.

Analyzing churn rates, free trials, and other metrics
January 7, 2020
I sit down and learn how to get insights from churn rates, conversion rates, and more to answer some important questions about my product.

A Review of Actual in 2019
January 2, 2020
A look back on Actual's progress in 2019.

The Secret of Good Electron Apps
June 25, 2019
Some people really hate Electron apps. They eat up memory, boot slowly, and aren't very responsive. What if I told you there's a secret that automatically minimizes these problems? They key is doing the bulk of your work locally in a background process, and doing so has some fantastic development benefits.

I'm Bringing My Blog Back
June 10, 2019
The last couple of years I've been building Actual. It's taken a lot out of me. Building, marketing, and trying to bootstrap a product yourself is ridiculously hard. I'm bringing my blog back to write about the path to profitability.

TALKS

CRDTs for Mortals
dotJS, Dec 2019

Go Ahead, Block the Main Thread
React Conf, Oct 2018

My History with Papers
Papers We Love, Sep 2017

A Prettier Printer
Revolution Conf, May 2017

A Prettier Printer (lightning talk)
React Conf, Mar 2017

Debugging Your Debugger
React Rally, Sep 2016

Abstracting Just Enough
ReactiveConf, Nov 2015

Cleaning the Tar: Using React within the Firefox Developer Tools
Strange Loop, Sep 2015

Unshackling JavaScript with Macros
JSConf, May 2014

High-Performance WebGL Apps with LLJS and asm.js
CascadiaJS, Nov 2013