I Was Building Software Before I Called It Code

In 2014 I worked in the finance department at Grupo Hemocat, a medical device distributor in Salvador. The finance manager updated a planning spreadsheet by hand, copying information from a printed system report almost every day.

I asked her if I could try to automate it. That became my first technical project: learning how the system's database worked and connecting Excel directly to the local SQL database.

In July 2025, software development became my main occupation. A lot of the work that led me there happened in finance, logistics and business consulting.

Connecting the spreadsheet to its source

The spreadsheet already existed. The task was to let it read from the system instead of depending on someone to copy the figures across.

That changed what a discrepancy meant. If a value was wrong in the spreadsheet, we could trace it back to the source instead of wondering whether it had been mistyped during the update.

It did not remove the need to check the numbers. Errors in the system still needed someone to investigate them. What it removed was the repeated work of extracting and transferring the information.

I was learning about databases by working with one that people already depended on.

Then came logistics

In 2015 I became logistics supervisor at the same company, working with inventory, distribution, purchasing and imports.

I modelled stock availability and built a Power BI dashboard to support purchasing and distribution decisions. A unit in stock is not one thing. It can be available, committed, in transit, in customs or on consignment. Treating all of those as the same number is how you promise a hospital something you cannot deliver.

The model had to reflect those differences so that purchasing, sales and logistics could work from the same view. Getting the data onto a screen was only part of the job; deciding what it represented mattered just as much.

How Duonorth changed

In 2017 I started Duonorth Studio as a business intelligence and business solutions consultancy. I worked with clients to understand their operations, reconcile data and build dashboards, spreadsheets and automations they could use in their daily work.

Around 2020, Duonorth expanded into marketing and digital delivery. The work connected business analysis with campaigns, websites, landing pages and software. I handled diagnosis, scope and the relationship with the client, bringing in specialists as the work grew.

From 2023, I concentrated the business on websites and software. I was both directing the work and implementing it: WordPress sites, themes, plugins, interfaces and integrations in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

In July 2025, I moved into independent software product development as my main occupation, working on my own or with a team depending on the project.

What carried over

I still ask where the data lives before designing anything on top of it, and what someone needs when they bring me a requirement. Knowing what they will do with the answer helps me design the interface. I also draw on the experience of agreeing on a scope with a client and following it through delivery.

Those were already part of my work before my current focus on React, Next.js and TypeScript.

What I'm still learning

The current work takes me deeper into relational databases, authentication, security, automated tests and continuous delivery. Earlier experience with dashboards and websites helps, but it does not answer every question that comes up in a software product.

I still have to understand the systems I build, test the assumptions and learn from what breaks. The earlier work gives me context for those decisions, and a better idea of what I need to investigate next.

I wrote more about the learning part in working with AI without skipping the understanding. The current work is on GitHub.