James Friend is a software engineer with 13 years of experience building front-end and full-stack web and mobile applications, currently based in New York and working at Clay after a long UI engineering tenure at Facebook. He specializes in React and React Native, having architected production experiences and improved developer tooling, build processes, and cross-platform components. James is an active open-source contributor, notable for work on Bootstrap (improving Node.js compatibility and build tooling) and several React Native libraries where he added features, tests, and cleaner separations of concern. His background spans Rails, Redux-driven apps, and mobile-first design, enabling him to bridge product-facing UI with robust build systems. Colleagues describe him as pragmatic and detail-oriented—he not only ships features but also refactors and tests to reduce future friction. A quirky GitHub bio aside, his contributions show a focus on maintainability and developer experience that often goes unnoticed.
12 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
BMMedia Interactive Digital Design Computer Science, BMMedia Interactive Digital Design Computer Science at Murdoch University
Deprecated. A pull-to-refresh ListView which shows a loading spinner while your data reloads
Role in this project:
Mobile Developer (iOS)
Contributions:80 commits, 8 PRs, 41 pushes in 1 year 11 months
Contributions summary:James primarily worked on the `react-native-refreshable-listview` repository, fixing bugs, and improving the component's functionality. They added tests, and also split the codebase to improve separation of concerns. The user also made code style changes. Furthermore, they integrated features like the pull-to-refresh functionality by adding props.
A React Native component which renders HTML content as native views
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Contributions:114 commits, 32 PRs, 65 pushes in 5 years 4 months
Contributions summary:James primarily contributed to the development of the React Native HTML view component. They focused on enhancing the rendering of HTML content by modifying the HTMLView.js file to incorporate features like adding line breaks and rendering list elements. Furthermore, they addressed a dependency issue by updating the code to use Linking instead of LinkingIOS. Additionally, the user integrated ESLint and implemented testing capabilities, ensuring code quality and functionality.
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