Chris Blackwell

Confessions of a programmer

Chris Blackwell

Why Profit Matters

Business

I’ve been seeing an increasing number of founders discussing metrics like users, conversion rate, MRR (monthly recurring revenue). Missing from these metrics is profitability. A business’s goal is to make a profit. You may run the business for lifestyle reasons, financial reasons. However, if your business is not turning a profit, you won’t be in business for very long.

Some large startups like Shopify can survive for years without turning a profit (they still haven’t yet). Eventually even Shopify must turn a profit, or the company will inevitably fail. Justin Jackson has done a great quick presentation here to show you why profitability matters, and how to calculate your profitability percentage.

Work Rewards

Quotes

If you work for the rewards, the rewards will not be good. If you do good work, the rewards will be good.

In Response to #NoTDD

Opinion

I follow people online who write in a variety of different languages, using a wide variety of platforms. One of the blogs I follow is the MSDN blog. This can be a great source of information of upcoming web standards, or even new platforms Microsoft is trying out. I don’t always agree with everything I read, but I always take the time to reflect on a different viewpoint.

The viewpoint I’ve been reflecting on lately is the #NoTDD article that Eric Gunnerson wrote a few weeks ago. It’s very easy for one to throw up their arms in disagreement with such a bold statement. Let’s instead take a minute to reflect on the points Eric makes. [Read more…] about In Response to #NoTDD

Choosing Ember over React

Programming

Two years ago I chose Ember over Angular as my primary framework. At the time it was a hard decision. There is a much larger community around Angular, and React was starting to pickup steam. Ember uses Convention over Configuration, which really helps our team manage larger projects.

The team over at instant2fa wrote up a great explanation on why they chose Ember over React. It’s interesting to read their take on the decision. I’m hoping this will help educate people that React is just a view layer, and Ember is so much more.