I’m Sacha Greif, a designer, developer, and entrepreneur.

I’m originally from Paris, France but these days I live in Kyoto, Japan.

Say hello, or keep scrolling.

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Bio

A little more about me.

I’ve always loved spending way too much time on the computer, and spent my teens tinkering with Photoshop and building crappy websites.

But after getting a computer science degree, I realized writing compilers wasn’t for me and decided to switch majors completely and learn Mandarin instead.

Yet as it turns out, my path would lead back to computers: after moving to China in 2006, I ended up quitting my language studies and getting a job in Beijing as a web designer.

After coming back to France in 2007, I became a freelance UI designer, working with companies such as Hipmunk, Intercom, and Le Monde.

A few years later, I decided what I really wanted was to create my own products, and set out to re-learn web programming.

After moving to Japan in 2012 for my wife’s studies, I now live in Kyoto and work on running developer surveys.

Code

The duct tape that keeps the world together.

An open-source full-stack app framework based on React, GraphQL, Meteor, and MongoDB. A.k.a. the “Rails for JavaScript”.

I learned the Meteor JavaScript framework to build Telescope, and decided to reinvest the knowledge I had just acquired to co-author a book together with Tom Coleman.

I got tired of all this talk of “JavaScript fatigue”, so I created a survey to get more data about recent trends in the JavaScript community.

The State of JS survey’s little sister, all about CSS and HTML.

Projects
  1. Get Idea; 2. Launch; 3. ???; 4. Profit.

My daily newsletter of the five best design links, now with over 35000 subscribers.

I co-organize the local Hacker News meetup here in Osaka.

I wrote a free guide to help people build successful communities.

In a past life, I was a UI designer. You can find a collection of my client work here.

Writing

Like coding, but with fewer bugs.

More On Medium

My ultra-popular guide to learning JavaScript.

I went on Fiver to see what kind of logo you get for just $5. The results were surprising (or maybe not…).

A blueprint for being an entrepreneur, from being a consultant to building consumer products.

How to organize your products in a way that makes sense (and makes cents, too).

A long-form essay about the never-ending battle between flat design and skeuomorphism.

My first ebook, a surprise success that set me on the path of the solo entrepreneur.

Podcasts

Now featuring 20% more French accent.

Episode 40: Learning Through Projects

43 The State of JavaScript and React Native

5 episodes covering various aspects of Meteor

Episode 39

EP63: How things get popular

Discover Meteor.js

Episode 12 - MeteorJS and Side Projects

#10: Facebook IPO’d, The Toolbox launches, Parse for iOS and Android, and Say Hello to Octicons

Graveyard

You gotta learn to let them go.

Screenings
2015

An attempt at building a directory of design talks. On life support due to a lack of updates.

BJJBot
2015

A directory of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu videos that never quite took off.

A directory of design resources. The domain expired, and then got a second life thanks to a new owner.

The previous version of this site, a now-abandoned WordPress blog.

Folyo
2011

My first “startup”. After many years trying (and failing) to make it work, sold the site to the talented Workshop crew.

Patternify
2011

A simple pattern generation tool, and one of my first ever side projects. Still works!