James Long @jlongster Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

@imtransito

@TeamNightwolf

@Gornik_Konin

@fatmaesen0

@theweepingjoker

@kyajaded

@Quiu_bagan

@OfModok

@BenisKen

@1luuh_ky

@EmpNicholasII

@megaphoneau

@bokeplokalmalam

@PK50K

@roikamiskiya

@capybaroness

@petitbrain

@crypto_jfl

@SignalMass

@sflut

@Papuaviral1

@ha_lanti

@_justleuxmas

@ericamauter

@bokeplokalmalam

@takodasingen

@Kh_Atif1997

@crypto_scale0

@dsny3xOG25

@jandakembangstw

@600V_601

@bokeplokalmalam

@SlapCity6

@Horki_44

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

One of the biggest cultural shifts in my experience from Mozilla to Stripe is code review speed. At Mozilla you'd often wait days and have to hunt down people to review PRs. At Stripe my PR is often reviewed within 10 minutes. That makes a _huge_ difference for shipping fast

72

236

3K

James Long

@jlongster

2 years

I'm open-sourcing Actual. I'm sad that I couldn't make it work as a sustainable company, but I've seen the magic of open-source before and I'm excited about what can happen here. Read more!

Actual is going open-source

We're opening up the code and making it free. Read more about how this effects you.

actualbudget.com

106

282

2K

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

🎉 It's finally ready! I've been hacking on something for the past couple months and it's absurdly great. It's time for more powerful web apps. Announcing "A future for SQL on the web":

62

507

2K

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

I've: * Never used TypeScript. Used Flow once. * Never used Parcel, or any other newer bundler (mainly CRA now) * Never used Elm, did a little bit of ClojureScript * Never done serverless * Never used Vue I don't feel behind. I chose my stack and I'm shipping with it.

48

303

2K

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

I'm tired of demos. It's time to see if this async version of React really works. I flipped it on in my (changed 5 lines of code) and this is the difference. It completely changes the user experience. There's a lot of little things left to do, but this is huge. Awesome work.

16

308

2K

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Math is amazing, there’s no side effects or build tools

25

102

924

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

I've got some big news. I'm joining @stripe ! 🎉 You might be wondering what this means for @actualbudget . I wrote about it here:

68

24

926

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

I regret writing Actual’s backend in node

100

49

888

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

useReducer is awesome. Never using useState again.

45

91

849

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

I've implemented full undo/redo in @actualbudget . Any action can be undone/redone, even across any screen. Totally changes how you use the app - no fear of mistakes. Will be released Monday.

20

47

741

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

I almost want to never write TypeScript again because of how condescending people are. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been in this field for over 15 years. There are other approaches, ya know? Some of you need to try other types of languages.

71

40

728

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

I like TypeScript, but I’m still not convinced it’s worth it when exploring architectures. I’ve ripped out and completely reshaped something 3 times. Would have completely wasted time trying to type it first.

130

58

724

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Found this old DM from @dan_abramov haha

8

40

629

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

Announcing Prettier! Blog post: "A Prettier JavaScript Formatter"

49

303

617

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

We just released 1.0 of prettier!

20

281

606

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Pretty proud of this drag & drop functionality I built (in react native!)

23

33

602

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

It's ridiculous that we don't pay for open-source software. I find a good quality package that handles a lot of complex logic that I don't have to write myself, giving $20 is a no-brainer. Maybe $100. Maybe more.

26

58

539

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

Discovered an app was using redux, need to debug it, so I injected a console.log to log all actions :D

8

105

519

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

I wanted to take some notes on the airplane so I pulled up Notion but it wouldn’t load because of lack of internet. This stuff kills me, it’s not acceptable

32

8

515

James Long

@jlongster

2 months

I was forced to use vscode for something and while I'm typing THREE boxes popped up. How is this possibly useful to people?

136

12

517

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Fun fact: in 2011 I applied to work at MailChimp. I sent them this picture of me as a kid with my resume. I never heard back.

8

20

506

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

Excited to announce that Facebook is sponsoring 2 weeks of my development on Prettier! Starting Monday.

18

54

499

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

Cool, got it working. This is _not_ using the server for syncing at all, this is the entire backend running in a background process with SharedWorker. All tabs connect to the same worker and share the same app. Makes for lightweight clients, all in sync, flexible workflows

12

41

493

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

How the heck is this better than str => str[0].toUpperCase() + str.slice(1) I feel bad for newbies

Simon Høiberg

@SimonHoiberg

3 years

JavaScript Tip 💡 Quick way to capitalize the first letter of a string. ...Without using 'splice' or other annoying methods no one remembers 😜

34

81

552

56

35

488

James Long

@jlongster

1 year

I'm going to be learning AI from scratch. No hype. No grand vision. Just learning the fundamentals of how it works without any end goal in sight. It's clear we'll need to know this. Interested in following along? I might start a newsletter

40

7

479

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Would you write JavaScript to make interesting reports about your finances?

31

36

483

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Installed VS Code, typed a few characters and got hit with about 10 different visual exclamations. how do you all live like this?

51

20

480

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

Lazy tweet: snapshot testing (for UIs) was a mistake

33

35

472

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

We had a baby! Charlotte Ruth Long. Everyone is doing well.

44

0

473

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

Never tweet about TypeScript

45

18

468

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

The most critical skill you can develop as a maker is to learn how to take a product/feature/etc and cut it into 1/10 the size, and fearlessly ship it. Find the tiny bit that still makes it useful and only build that.

10

105

467

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

📢 Excited to finally launch Actual for real! Like budgeting? Totally free, go download at . I'd love any thoughts over at Product Hunt!

Actual - Product Information, Latest Updates, and Reviews 2024 | Product Hunt

Actual is a personal finance tracker with a powerful budgeting system. Only budget money that you have and see exactly how much you're saving each month. Track all your accounts in one place. It's...

www.producthunt.com

20

77

442

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

New post: "How I Became a Better Programmer"

23

206

436

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

I seriously need to sit down and blog about the architecture of Actual. It's so cool. * Local app, with a syncing layer that gives stuff like undo for free * It runs on the web too. The whole node backend is compiled and run in a worker * Uses sqlite, compiled to wasm on web

24

13

440

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

Fun fact: I created Prettier solely for @actualbudget . I was so tired of being bogged down with formatting. @Vjeux pushed me to open-source it and helped make it a standard tool. Solving your own problems is the best!

12

39

432

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

New Post: "Why I'm Frequently Absent from Open Source"

28

150

431

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

I have other things I should be working on.

14

63

383

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

I've spent the last couple months quietly building a mobile app for @actualbudget , and more importantly, rebuilt the database layer to be syncable. I'm so excited about how all this works, here's a quick demo of two desktop clients syncing in near real-time:

22

37

382

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

Don't ever laugh at JavaScript again

14

100

370

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

✍️ New post: The Secret of Good Electron Apps

The Secret of Good Electron Apps

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...

archive.jlongster.com

7

78

364

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

Oh, just debugging my node app with Firefox's new debugger...

8

136

358

James Long

@jlongster

8 months

My 5 year prediction: we'll realize it was a mistake to write all of our high-level tools in a language built around systems-level memory safety (Rust)

34

23

357

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Would anyone be interested if I open-sourced Actual?

51

7

356

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

Excited to announce that I'll be joining my wife for lunch today!

9

12

340

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

Interesting thing about Electron is you can always dig into any app's source code. Here is all the code for Slack:

19

67

328

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

You should *absolutely* study why something gets popular though. But you don't have to change anything unless it really provides enough value to you to be worth it. Who cares about hype.

9

48

319

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

Prettier hit 10,000 stars on github! 💫

8

47

323

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

📢 Big announcement: I will officially be launching Actual tomorrow! Sign up here:

Product Hunt – The best new products in tech.

Product Hunt is a curation of the best new products, every day. Discover the latest mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone's talking about.

www.producthunt.com

18

45

319

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

🤔 What is this? Actual in a browser? Hey, it works! In Firefox, even! It's amazing that the UI only needed a few tweaks to work in other browsers. The backend is compiled with a virtual FS and runs in a web worker.

9

15

305

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

Excited to announce Actual, a personal budgeting system I've been working on: Sign up you're interested in it!

34

49

305

James Long

@jlongster

2 years

Just started watching the React documentary. Here's my contribution to the early hate. I was at JSConf when they announced it.

7

10

305

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

AWS is such a complex mix of having awful documentation and APIs and being such a fantastically reliable service

8

45

300

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

Long time coming, but the Firefox console will finally be sourcemapped! (Thanks intern Jaideep for pushing through!)

10

156

290

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Unpopular opinion: console logging is a more powerful form of debugging than stepping

Stephanie 🔮 Web Witch

@seaotta

5 years

Y'all, if console.log is your jam, that's fine. I've been talking to devs as I work on the DevTools and this aligns with things I've learned from devs and mostly why I shared this. You do you.

8

0

92

18

28

289

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

I think symmetry is more important than abstraction in code. It’s way easier to get right and serves a similar purpose. A large system is easy to understand if you see the same patterns everywhere.

12

78

284

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Sometimes I think about the fact that every time webpack is run it uses 1000x more resources than was needed to crack enigma

7

65

282

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

🗒️ New post! "A case study of complex table design" Please share!

16

37

281

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

Creating things has this "interesting" property where by the time you're finished you hate it

16

24

278

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

My talk about CRDTs is up! Probably one of the most interesting talks I've given.

11

43

268

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

My wife accidentally lost allll of my browser tabs that I've been building up for 2 weeks. I'm a free man now

8

17

267

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

hot damn I love this kind of stuff

9

16

255

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

Hitting scaling issues with PostgreSQL. Yes! The best kind of problem! Now I need to figure out how to make a query on 11644420 rows take less then 3 seconds.

29

7

252

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

Big announcement! I'm leaving Mozilla to start a contracting business.

Leaving Mozilla

Last week I was in Hawaii for a Mozilla work week. I saw many great friends, but I also kept faintly recognizing people without remembering how I knew them. Sometimes I even thought I knew them from...

archive.jlongster.com

42

241

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

I enjoy my current setup (working from home, seeing kids a lot), but the worst part about working on something alone is there’s nobody to get beers with after a good launch

13

11

238

James Long

@jlongster

2 months

I owe all of my success to one simple thing in morning routine: Every single morning, in the shower, I let a little bit of shampoo slowly drip into my eye. The sting makes me feel alive and increases my productivity for the next few hours 5x

30

10

225

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

Somebody should fork Mozilla

10

21

214

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

This phenomenon is so fascinating: you build something, find extremely negative comments about it (from randos), reply and engage with them kindly and they become super interested in what you’re doing and almost apologetic. It’s crazy.

12

15

210

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

"Clean code" is often mis-interpreted as small, quick to understand, or worse aesthetically pleasing

6

77

208

James Long

@jlongster

9 years

Reason #2 I won't respond to your pull requests or issues:

23

1

205

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Native selects really are awesome. They can expand past the window (see the screenshots). Did you know they also autocomplete? If you typed "big p" below it would end up highlighting "Big Projects". Make sure you really need that custom autocomplete.

13

37

206

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

🌟 Just launched a fresh new version of my personal website: And I wrote a new post about why. I'll be writing about everything I've learned building Actual and trying to bring it to profitability over the next year:

I'm Bringing My Blog Back

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...

archive.jlongster.com

22

15

207

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

The responses to this are amazing. I still can't believe it's become such an ecosystem standard. Props to all of the Prettier maintainers who made it go mainstream.

11

7

201

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

Been thinking for a looong time that it’d be awesome to go to therapy. Why not debug yourself? How do you even start something like that?

33

9

200

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

Whoa Swift bringing out the shade today

15

25

199

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

One takes timezone into account One has zero-based months One API to confuse them all and in the darkness bind them

6

29

202

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

The only good thing that came out if that thread was someone linked to this great blog post:

Explorers and Architects

How does the famous divide in the writing community apply to programming?

raptori.dev

7

13

201

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

. @Vjeux is crawling through the tc39 test cases and finding things we never knew were possible.

4

75

200

James Long

@jlongster

2 years

Not one person commented on the animated header in my post that I spent a week building 😡 Not really angry but I care about weird things.

33

3

200

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

I've been wanting to give that talk for a long time, thanks @dotJS ! Just explained how to practically use clocks and CRDTs to implement local apps that sync. Slides coming soon. Here is the example app that includes all the code (~800 lines of JS!):

GitHub - jlongster/crdt-example-app: A full implementation of CRDTs using hybrid logical clocks and...

A full implementation of CRDTs using hybrid logical clocks and a demo app that uses it - jlongster/crdt-example-app

github.com

5

34

196

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

So tempted to write more about why I really left Mozilla. Do those kinds of posts do any good?

51

2

198

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

😂 Apple rejects your app if you mention android. These games are hilarious to me.

11

6

194

James Long

@jlongster

8 years

This is happening. Finally happening. gh-pages was such a kludge!

6

128

193

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

Did you know that if you use regexp capturing with `string.split` in JS you get the content back in the array? Very useful for certain use cases.

5

33

194

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

Nothing shows the state of the JS ecosystem better than the fact that there are two packages, `node-uuid` which generates insecure uuids (dangerous!) and `uuid` which generates secure uuids (yay!). It's basically a coin flip.

10

29

192

James Long

@jlongster

1 year

Main thing that makes me sad about React is the lack of solutions for offscreen rendering, animations, child->parent communication, better events etc. All client-side stuff. Current focus feels very different from what a lot of people want

13

10

190

James Long

@jlongster

4 years

This is shaping up to be a great release, so I'm going to do something I should do more often: a thread of features and UI polish in the next release of @actualbudget : First, the coolest feature: the ability to float the sidebar (thanks @NotionHQ for great UX ideas)

6

11

190

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

Granted, I've studied all of these things, some of them deeply (ClojureScript, Flow). My point is it feels like the frontend space moves fast but it really doesn't have to feel that way. What I'm using worked the same 2 years ago. And it works really well.

4

18

185

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

A clear sign if your tests are good or bad: after refactoring something significant, what is the experience like getting the tests passing? Do you spend days/weeks frustrated doing grunt work w/out finding anything interesting? Or do you spend that time discovering new problems?

10

33

190

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

I should really just announce this so I can stop saying "personal reasons": my wife and I are expecting out 3rd baby in May! 🐣

James Long

@jlongster

7 years

I'm extremely excited to be a part of this! Check out all the exciting workshops already available: I would be giving more workshops soon but have personal stuff going on until August.

0

1

12

21

1

190

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

I finally tried Parcel and... wow

4

185

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

This is the kind of thing why I love Catalina. Denied. Why are y'all complaining about this?

8

16

183

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

The gap between a weekend hack project and a product ready for production is so large. Larger than I thought. There are so many little things you need once you want to have real users.

7

22

184

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

Recently tweeted about creating a discord to manage my life. Well I did it. I made a bot that obeys my command and it's freaking amazing. I'm connecting all my stuff to it (github notifications, subscribe to rss, etc.) It can also write out: example, this channel writes to Roam

13

7

182

James Long

@jlongster

3 years

New year, new site! Not a blog. I'm killing my blog. let's focus more on a graph of ideas using Remix, this reads directly from my Roam graph and publishes that content. reading is slow, but a simple Cloudflare cache in front solves the issue completely

14

8

176

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

Want to inspect your production minified build to make sure the right optimizations are being applied? Just run prettier on it to make it readable!

3

36

173

James Long

@jlongster

6 years

Tip: don't let callbacks with dynamic args get you down in React. You can still retain identity across renders to avoid rerenders by memoizing the curried form. In plain terms: the same function will always be passed in so you don't break pure checking.

2

31

170

James Long

@jlongster

5 years

The modern version of the lonely "finding a forum post describing my exact problem with no replies": finding a github issue describing a real problem with many replies confirming it, only to end it an automated bot closing it due to inactivity.

3

22

170

James Long

@jlongster

9 years

React Motion + live reloading works like a breeze / @_chenglou http://t.co/OfEzTaxYL2

3

87

171

James Long

@jlongster