What 15 Years of Building Software Actually Taught Me

I have been building software for about fifteen years now, most of it for other people's businesses. I started as a developer, ended up running a development team, and eventually went out on my own so I could work with clients directly from here in Hull. Along the way I have shipped things I am proud of and plenty I would do differently. These are the lessons that actually changed how I work, written for the business owners I build for as much as for other developers.

The tech is the easy part

When I was younger I thought being good at this job meant knowing the most about the tools. Newer, cleverer, faster. Fifteen years in, I know that the frameworks change every couple of years and it barely matters. What lasts is understanding the problem you are being paid to solve. I have watched brilliant technical builds fail because they solved the wrong thing, and plain, simple ones succeed because someone took the time to understand the business first. The code is the easy part. Knowing what to build is the hard part, and it is where I spend most of my thinking now.

Most problems are communication, not code

The projects that went wrong in my career almost never went wrong because of a bug. They went wrong because someone assumed something that was never said out loud. The client pictured one thing, the developer built another, and nobody found out until it was expensive to change. So the most useful skill I have picked up is not a language, it is asking dull questions early and repeating back what I have understood in plain words. When I quote a job now, half of that conversation is just making sure we are both imagining the same finished thing.

Boring and reliable beats clever

Early on I liked clever. A neat trick, a smart abstraction, something that made other developers nod. These days I actively avoid it. Clever code is code that only one person understands, and when that person is on holiday and the site is down, clever is the last thing anyone wants. I would rather write something a little longer and completely obvious, so that in two years, when something needs changing, it takes an hour instead of a day. Boring is a feature. For a small business paying the bill, boring and reliable is worth far more than impressive.

Say no to the wrong work

It took me a long time to learn that taking on work I was not the right fit for helped nobody. If a job needs deep ecommerce or Magento work, for example, that is a specialism, and I will point people toward my ecommerce site at Headless Digital rather than pretend it is my day-to-day here. Turning down work that is not mine to do feels wrong when you are starting out and worrying about money. But every time I have said no honestly, the person has come back later with something I could genuinely help with, or sent someone else my way. Being straight about what you do well builds more trust than saying yes to everything.

The best tool is the one you will still understand next year

I have a stack I reach for, and I am open about why: it is the set of tools I know well enough to fix at speed when something breaks. Chasing whatever is trending this month is fun for a hobby project and a bad idea for a client who needs their site to still work, and still be maintainable, long after I have handed it over. When I choose what to build something with, the question is not what is newest, it is what will still make sense to me, and to the next person, a year from now. That single question has saved my clients more money than any optimisation trick.

Working direct changed everything

The biggest shift came when I left agency life and started working with people directly. In an agency there is a layer between the person with the problem and the person solving it, and things get lost in that gap. Working direct, I hear the actual problem from the actual person, and they get answers from the one who is doing the work rather than an account manager relaying messages. It is more exposed, because there is nowhere to hide when something is my fault. It is also far better work, because nothing is lost in translation and I own the outcome start to finish.

Where that leaves me now

Fifteen years in, I care less about the tools and more about doing honest, useful work for people I can actually talk to. That is the whole idea behind working with me directly here in Hull and East Yorkshire. If you want to know more about how I got here and how I work, there is more on the about page, and if you have something you are trying to build or fix, get in touch and we will have a proper conversation about it. No account manager, no jargon, just a straight answer from the person who would be doing the work.