I Was Building on the Internet Before Most People Had Heard of It

Introduction

Taliferro's day-to-day work is writing software that solves real problems for other businesses. But the reason clients keep coming back usually has less to do with any one project and more to do with how long we've actually been doing this — and what that history teaches you that a newer shop hasn't had the chance to learn yet.

On APIs

APIs are the connective tissue of the internet — the reason your app can talk to a payment processor, a mapping service, or another company's system without anyone having to rebuild it from scratch. Good API design isn't about clever architecture for its own sake; it's about documentation clear enough that another developer can actually use what you built without calling you to ask how.

Thirty Years In

I started in 1993 — on a Commodore 64, before "the internet" meant much to most people. My first real internet project was helping build Expedia.com. Since then I've worked across a wide range of clients, from small businesses to companies like AT&T and Microsoft, in more languages and platforms than I'd care to count.

That range matters more than any single credential. It means when a client describes a problem, there's a good chance I've already seen a version of it — and seen what actually happened when three different teams tried three different fixes.

What That Actually Means for Clients

In practice, it means fewer surprises. Cloud architecture decisions get made with the pitfalls already known, not discovered the hard way on your production system. Security gets treated as a default, not an afterthought bolted on before launch. And the goal isn't just "deliver the project on time" — it's building something that still works, and still makes sense, well after the invoice is paid.

Conclusion

None of this is about being the loudest shop in Seattle. It's about having enough scar tissue from thirty years of shipping software that we can spot the expensive mistake before you make it. If you're working through a technical or business problem, that's the experience we bring to it.

Tyrone Showers