Projects
Sandi’s List
A unified, local first ecosystem built on Dart & Flutter.
We designed Sandi’s List to solve a specific problem: managing large personal libraries & tracking one’s reading.
The result is a single codebase that compiles to native binaries for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, maintaining 60fps performance on all devices.
- Unified Architecture: 95% code sharing across Mobile and Desktop, compiling to native binaries for 4 platforms from a single repo.
- Backend & Sync: Architected a custom REST API using Dart’s Shelf and PostgreSQL to facilitate secure, encrypted data synchronization across multiple client devices.
- Local-First Security: Full SQLite implementation with AES-256 encryption at rest.
- High-Fidelity UI: Full implementation of Google’s Material 3 design system, enhanced with custom-written shaders to render real-time Apple iOS / iPadOS / macOS “Liquid Glass” effects.
The Virtual Ticketer (VTS)
Enterprise Scale: Processing $500 Million+ in Lifetime Transactions.
We architected VTS to solve a hard economic problem: delivering high-volume transaction processing to venues that refused to pay the “Oracle Tax” for database licenses.
To achieve this, we built a flexible hybrid system that could run entirely in the cloud or on a customer’s local server. This ensured that even budget-constrained clients got 99.9% uptime and enterprise reliability without the bloat.
- Native Performance: Built with C++ Builder to squeeze maximum throughput out of modest hardware.
- Cost-Effective Backend: Leveraged NexusDB to provide robust SQL capabilities, eliminating the need for expensive IBM DB2 or MS-SQL licensing.
- Early Web Architecture: Utilized IntraWeb to deliver a rich, browser-based reservation system long before modern SPAs became the standard.
- Hybrid Deployment: Engineered a flexible hosting model allowing seamless operation either on-premise or in the cloud.
$500M+
LIFETIME TRANSACTIONS
The Roots: Back-n-Forth
“Because memory is a terrible thing to waste!”
Before Windows made multitasking standard, users were trapped in one application at a time. Back-n-Forth broke this barrier, acting as a task switcher that swapped programs in and out of memory instantly.
While competitors relied on rigid Assembly code, we architected Back-n-Forth in C. This allowed us to build a custom overlaying module loader, ensuring the switcher itself consumed minimum RAM while managing heavy applications.
- Contrarian Engineering: Written in C when the industry standard was Assembly, proving high-level architecture could beat raw instruction counting.
- Memory Management: Developed a proprietary Overlay Module Loader to keep the resident footprint microscopic.
- Commercial Exit: Acquired by Symantec to bring multitasking capabilities to the Norton suite.
The First: PC-Sweep
International recognition from Byte & PC Magazine – as a freshman.
Our career didn’t start in a corporate office; it started in married student housing at Texas A&M. We developed PC-Sweep to solve the complex problem of unifying file maintenance across operating systems like CP/M, MS-DOS, and PC-DOS (the power of C).
Released as shareware, its raw speed and utility made it a global hit, earning features in industry bibles like Byte and PC Magazine. Features included:
- Performance-Driven Rewrite: Originally prototyped in Turbo Pascal, then completely rewritten in C (v2.0) to maximize execution speed on limited hardware.
- Low-Level Engineering: Bypassed high-level abstractions to interface directly with DOS interrupts for raw file manipulation.
- Shareware Pioneers: First wife & husband team to successfully develop & distribute commercial-grade software globally before the internet era.
