I build the unglamorous software a business runs on.

I am Juan Montano, 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.

Building things has also been a way to stay occupied and steady. The home server remains a place to learn: streaming, photo backup, DNS filtering and monitoring all give me something concrete to understand and maintain.

How I like to work

I like working on a specific problem and following it through from the first version to everyday use. With the stock system, that means design, development, hosting and ongoing support — not just getting it online. The homepage profile brings together the skills and evidence; this page is the longer context behind them.