You talk to me, and I am on the build
No account managers, no handoff to someone junior. The person you talk to is the person responsible for the answer.
About
Hi, I’m Steve
I run Data Digital from Vancouver, Washington. For twenty years I have been the engineer founders hand their vision to and get working software back from.
You deal with me directly, start to finish. Behind me is a team that builds alongside your people. Here is how I work, what I have shipped, and how I build.
How I work
Three things that do not change
Plain words in, developer terms out
Describe what you want the way you would to a friend. I write down what the people building it need to know.
Scope and price agreed before anything starts
A fixed price, in writing. If the scope changes, the price changes in writing too.
What I have shipped
Twenty years of turning other people’s ideas into working software.
- 2023 – now
AI media platforms for major broadcasters
Architect for the systems that create on-air content and deliver emergency alerts.
- 2021 – 2023
Website builder for franchises
Led engineering on a platform any franchise can run, deployed for one with thousands of members building their own sites. Head office supplies approved assets, members add their own, and everything passes review before it goes live. Nobody puts up random things.
- 2016 – 2021
Campaign software used by millions of brands
Built the tools marketers use to run giveaways, contests, quizzes, and landing pages: a platform serving millions of brands and creators, over a billion entries, and expected to stay up through all of it.
- 2015 – 2016
Software that teaches kids to code
Built the interface for a course that teaches computer science through game development. Code-alongs that were ahead of their time, videos that stop for a quiz you have to pass to continue, and a teacher portal for setting up a class and following every student’s progress.
- 2010 – now
Website and technical support for small businesses and nonprofits
I have spent years helping arts groups, schools, and people trying to make the world a little better. Many of them are still clients.
How I build
Boundary-First Development
This is my philosophy, and it is how I build every time. Think of your product like a building. The foundation, your customer data and business rules and who is allowed to do what, gets built once to a written spec. Everything people see sits on top of it, and any of it can be replaced without the rest noticing.
I have built this way for a long time. Lately I have been writing it down and giving the pieces names, so that what I know about building things that last and do not break is something you can read, not something you have to take on trust.
What people see · change it anytime
Your websiteSwappable
Your mobile appSwappable
Your staff dashboardSwappable
An AI assistantSwappable
+ whatever you try nextWho cares
The boundary
The foundation · built once, to spec
- Your customer data
- Your business rules
- Payments and permissions
- One source of truth
In practice
What that means for you
Try new things without fear
A redesign, a new app, an AI experiment. Each plugs into the same foundation, so trying costs days, not a rebuild.
Mistakes get caught before customers see them
Every change is checked automatically against what was written down. Nobody has to remember to.
Security is not a later phase
Logins, permissions, and backups are there from day one, not bolted on after something goes wrong.
The team gets faster, not replaced
Senior engineers and people building with AI tools both ship safely, because the foundation holds either way.
No half-finished work
Big projects are cut into pieces that each ship complete, instead of one big thing shipped half-done.
No lock-in
Any piece can be replaced without the rest noticing. That includes vendors, tools, and me.
For your engineers
Read the rules on Codeberg →The rulebook
Boundary-First is open source: numbered rules, a pull request checklist, lint presets, and a tool that checks them in CI. Your developers can read it before you and I ever talk.
Typed input and output at every boundary. Every result is ok, data, or error, with enumerated error codes.
All business logic and validation live on the server. The frontend is a static display layer.
Every record carries a status and an updated time. Clients sync on the server clock. Deletes are soft.
Casing translated at the boundary, UTC everywhere, one argument per function, lint gates on hooks.
A public API that never breaks, and an app API free to move with the product.
List stores and detail stores, a stored copy and a working copy, components that never call the API.
Unit tests for pure functions. Integration tests at the boundary for everything else.
Every component can be deleted and rewritten from its contract alone. Nothing ships provisionally.
Release branches, whole merges, tagged production, and the gates in the pipeline.