I build the unglamorous software a business runs on.

I am Juan, a developer working out of the Philippines. Most of what I do is quiet: a till that adds up, a stock count that matches the shelf, a site that opens before the customer gives up on it. None of it is exciting to look at. All of it is the difference between a business that knows what it has and one that guesses.

It started, not very seriously, with two weeks of sick leave and a spare laptop that became a home server. I wanted to know how the things I used every day actually worked, so I rebuilt them — streaming, photo backup, DNS, monitoring — and then could not stop adding to it. That server is still running, and it is where I break things before anyone is depending on them.

The work that followed came from the same instinct. A bakery supply business was running its stock on a desktop program tied to one machine, which meant nobody outside that room could see what any branch held. I rebuilt it as something all five branches share, with the till, the deliveries and the purchasing in one place. It is live, it is used every day, and I still get the call when it looks wrong.

I write about that on the blog — usually the parts that went badly, because those are the parts worth reading. Some of it is also about the mental-health side of building things, which has always doubled as a way to stay occupied and steady.

How I like to work

Small scope, written down, priced before it starts. I would rather build the one thing that is costing you money this month than a plan for everything you might want in three years. If a project is not a good fit for me, I will say so early — that is cheaper for both of us than finding out in week six.