Three stories, from my first job designing software for a robot to rebuilding a payments platform while merchants kept trading. Each one turns on a decision, and the people it was made for.
I'd just finished studying 3D animation when I started designing the software for Roboni-i, a programmable robot we built from nothing in Centurion. Play-testing showed us people wanted to play against each other, so we changed direction. Later, at the Rand Easter Show, I watched children who'd only ever kicked a soccer ball around an open field light up as the scoreboard went up.
Merchants were taking payments on iKhokha card machines while we rebuilt the platform underneath them. When rushed releases sent complaints spiking, I turned my attention to the support team taking those calls. By the final phase, I'd staged the change so they got it first, and it landed quietly.
When I joined Barrows, the software team had only just become a team, and updates still went live over FTP. Instead of writing the rulebook myself, I asked them what good looked like, and by 2020 they were shipping through a pipeline they'd designed. And when the servers went down for two days, we planned the next release with pens, printed phone templates and sticky notes.
