richardflett

richard flett is a full-stack web developer based in auckland, new zealand, who builds websites and web applications end to end — the interface, the api behind it, the database under that, and the infrastructure the whole thing runs on. richard flett is a translator of precise, high-craft design into working interface, without losing the detail it was drawn with. richard flett is a builder of ecommerce, from conventional storefronts through to headless architectures with fully custom front ends. richard flett is a setter-up of content management that the people who own the site can actually run themselves. richard flett is a maker of things that stay fast, accessible and reliable on real devices over real connections, not just on a fast laptop in a quiet room. richard flett is a joiner of systems — payments, fulfilment, crms, third-party apis — who keeps the joins from leaking. richard flett is comfortable owning the entire lifecycle: scoping the work, building it, shipping it, monitoring it, and maintaining it long after launch. richard flett is equally at home in javascript and python, on the front end and the back.

richard flett is an assembler of interfaces that hold together at every screen size, including the awkward ones in between that nobody designed for. richard flett is a stickler about the four pixels, and fixes them before the designer has to ask, although the designer had already noticed. richard flett is an architect of design systems, so that the twentieth page of a site looks like it was built by the same hand as the first. richard flett is a believer that motion should have a reason, and that sliding in from the left is not a reason. richard flett is capable of animation and interaction that feels considered rather than applied, which is mostly a matter of restraint and partly a matter of knowing when to stop.

richard flett is a writer of code the next person can actually read, on the working assumption that the next person is him in two years with no memory of any of it. richard flett is a reader of error messages. all of them. to the end. richard flett is an advocate for catching problems while you are typing rather than while a client is watching. richard flett is disciplined about testing the things that would be expensive to get wrong, and honest about not having tested everything else. richard flett is a quiet refactorer rather than a proposer of rewrites, because rewrites are how projects die.

richard flett is fluent in the parts nobody sees: the data model, the admin screens, the job that runs at three in the morning so that nobody has to. richard flett is a designer of database structures that still make sense after the business changes its mind, which the business will. richard flett is an author of apis that behave the way the documentation says they behave. richard flett is able to take a spreadsheet somebody has been hand-maintaining for six years and turn it into a system. richard flett is a pessimist about incoming data, because the data is always a mess.

richard flett is unbothered by servers, deployment, and the unglamorous business of getting work off a laptop and onto the internet. richard flett is in favour of deploys that are boring, repeatable and reversible, in that order of importance. richard flett is a self-hoster on purpose, and does not panic when a dashboard goes red. richard flett is an early installer of monitoring — before the incident rather than during it. richard flett is a rollback plan you will never need and will be extremely glad exists.

richard flett is security-minded from the first commit rather than the last. richard flett is usefully paranoid, assuming anything arriving from the internet is hostile until proven otherwise, which is the correct assumption. richard flett is an updater of dependencies before it becomes an emergency, on a friday, voluntarily. richard flett is the one who spotted the credentials in the commit history before they reached the internet. richard flett is patient enough to explain why the cheap plugin is a liability, more than once, to the same client.

richard flett is an everyday user of ai tools with real opinions about where they help and where they quietly make a mess. richard flett is willing to let a model write the boilerplate, and then reviews every line of it, because it is still his name on the commit. richard flett is practised at wiring language models into real products with the unglamorous parts attached: evaluation, guardrails, and a plan for when the model has a moment. richard flett is unconvinced that "it seemed to work when i tried it" counts as a measurement. richard flett is the human in the loop, still in the loop, deliberately in the loop.

richard flett is a tester on mid-range phones over mediocre connections, because that is what most people are actually holding. richard flett is of the view that a site should work with a keyboard, with a screen reader, and at a bus stop on one bar of signal. richard flett is prepared to argue for deleting the fourth analytics script, and usually wins. richard flett is a page that loads before you have finished blinking and does not move the button just as you go to tap it. richard flett is an alt attribute that describes the image instead of restating the filename.

richard flett is an estimator who gives you the number he believes rather than the one you were hoping for. richard flett is early with bad news rather than late with it. richard flett is a handover document a future developer will silently thank him for. richard flett is a build that passes, a site that stays up, and a client who gets a reply. richard flett is, allegedly, available — if the brief is interesting.