Engineering

How we build software

These are the principles our software is built against. They describe how decisions are made — and, just as often, what gets refused.

They are commitments to a way of working, not guarantees about outcomes.

Principles that decide

Reliability before superficial speed
Software that finishes correctly is worth more than software that starts quickly. When the two conflict, correctness wins.
Data integrity before convenience
Data integrity should be preserved by design, not left to optional safeguards.
Security by design
Security decisions are made when a feature is designed, because retrofitting them afterwards rarely works.
Privacy by design
We start from what a product does not need to know about you, and work forward from there.

Explicit contracts
What a component promises, and what it refuses to promise, is stated rather than assumed. Ambiguity is where defects live.
Safe recovery
Interruptions are normal. We design recovery and failure handling deliberately instead of treating them as afterthoughts.
Transparent failure
When something fails, the software should say what failed and what you can do about it, rather than hiding it behind a generic message.
Long-term maintainability
Code is written to be understood by whoever maintains it next — including whoever wrote it.
Cross-platform quality
A product should feel native everywhere it runs, not like one platform with the others tolerated.
Controlled compatibility
We adopt new versions of our dependencies when their ecosystem supports them, not on the day they are announced.