Hi, I'm Jesse Skinner.
I've been building web apps that last since 2001. I offer fixed quotes with flexible scope. I'm still helping clients that emailed me back in 2007.
I'd love to hear what you're working on. Feel free to contact me.
Avoid the Rewrite: Rescuing messy software
Do you have old software that no developer wants to touch? It worked fine for decades, your company relied on it and still does. But every time you have someone take a peek, they come out sweating, talking about rewriting it all from scratch? What happened? The messy basement Imagine you're invited to help a struggling business. You walk into the storefront and everything looks great....
Web apps that last
When you're building a new web application, or even a new feature, how can you ensure that you're not creating a nightmare code base that will need to be rewritten completely in a few years? Some people will say it's hopeless to even try and write code that will last. I've even heard people suggest that you should aim to rewrite all your code every few years. That sounds like a...
How I empower my clients to make changes
When a client asks me to make a change to a website, I have two choices. I can go and make the change. Or, I can set things up so that the client can make the change themselves. It's not always obvious which of these two will be a better use of my time. If it's a one-time change that will never need to happen again, of course it's better if I go make the change. But sometimes it's...
Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers
We've all worked with a rockstar developer. They joined the team years ago, full of energy. They had great ideas about new tech, new paradigms, new architectures. Their cutting-edge ideas left everyone else feeling a bit behind and outdated. They rewrote most of the company's core architecture. They introduced new build processes, new tools, new languages. They rejected most pull...
Debugging a slow web app
I got an email today from one of my clients, letting me know that one of his web apps was down. He said he was getting an error and asked me to take a look. In the end, I was able to fix it and get it running faster than ever. What caused it turned out to be a huge surprise to me. I thought I'd outline the steps I went through here, to try to help others trying to solve similar problems in...
Chrome broke my client's web app
The great thing about the web is that web pages from thirty years ago still work fine. So you can imagine how surprised I was when a new version of Chrome broke my client's web app in production. Business as usual The web app is a data visualization tool with a colourful d3 SVG map. Hovering over a country brings up a tooltip, and clicking a country brings up a larger panel with data....
If an error is logged in the cloud, does it make a sound?
If a user sees an error message on your web server, how do you find out? Does the user report it directly, if they're friendly enough? Do you read about it on social media, if they're frustrated enough? Or do you receive a notification directly from the server? I remember one of my first jobs at Strato, a web hosting company in Germany. When we deployed a new version of our content...
A rabbit hole in 5 commits
When I'm working with a client, I respect their time and energy by keeping things simple and easy for them. I make as many decisions as I can, and try not to bog them down with every complex decision I have to make. I've learned to trust my instincts, and to escalate important choices only when the trade-offs are truly business decisions. This is a story of when this instinct led me in...
Contact Jesse
Need help with a project? Any questions? I'd love to hear from you.
Email me at [email protected]
