About Us
Introduction
Where old‑school craftsmanship meets new‑school silicon sidekicks.
We are Sandi & Shane Stump and we have been playing around with computers and technology for a long time. When we first met at Texas A&M University, phones were connected to the wall by cords and computers had floppy drives. Tech has come a long way. And so have we. We love making computers do what we want. Apps are best way to do this.
For most of our lives, we’ve alternated between solving other people’s problems and building tools for our own needs. With our latest app Sandi’s List, we wrote a solution to a problem I had, how to organize and keep track of my books.
An important aspect of our life is our love of and care for animals. We have had many four-footed family members in our lives, including our current family of two ginormous Alaskan Malamutes and seven opinionated feline friends. We also care for a colony of feral cats and a diverse assortment of wildlife including monarch butterflies and box turtles.
We are Texas A&M Aggies, and that still means something. The Aggie Code of Honor has shaped how we build software and how we work with people for over four decades.
An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.
The Rule That Stuck
Learning rigor before learning syntax.
During Shane’s CO-OP at Datapoint in San Antonio, his mentor handed him the rule that shaped our entire career:
“Your job is to prove the software DOESN’T work.”
Anyone can make software appear to work. The real job is to break it, stress it, and see what happens when the world isn’t cooperating. That mindset has saved us more times than we can count, and it fueled our early work, leading to tools like PC-Sweep and Back-n-Forth winning PC-Magazine awards and being acquired by Symantec.
Escaping the Corporate Trail
Why we chose the clarity of Flutter over corporate complexity.
We spent 18 years on mission-critical reservation systems surrounded by folks who would’ve looked at an iPhone and said, “Neat egg timer.” We learned a hard truth there: Developers rarely burn out from coding. They burn out from everything around coding.
When we stepped away and tried to retire from coding (the longest 10 minutes of our life), we realized we hadn’t lost the love for programming;
We had lost patience with the noise. We picked up Flutter “just to see what it could do,” and rediscovered the fun, the clarity, and the craft. It allows us to build things like “Sandi’s List”—simple, durable, privacy-respecting software, blissfully free of committees.
Why “TANSTAAFL”
There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
Free” is the most expensive word in software. A “free” shortcut today costs you stability tomorrow. A “free” plugin usually costs you security.
We chose the name Tanstaafl as a reminder of reality: Complexity has to go somewhere. You either pay the cost upfront with rigorous design, or you pay it forever in bugs and maintenance.
We don’t sell magic. I sell physics. I pay the cost upfront so you don’t have to pay it later.
How We Build
Still Building, Still Learning, Still Wrangling
- Respect the User: No dark patterns, no hidden costs.
- Complexity Kills: If it doesn’t need to be there, delete it.
- Cross-Platform Harmony: Work across devices without the drama.
- Data Sovereignty: We don’t harvest your data. Period.
- Built to Last: Software shouldn’t break just because the wind blows.
