Writing
What we have learned building here.
We write when we have worked something out properly, not on a schedule. Everything here comes from running our own products, so it is specific rather than general.
Series · 6 parts
Modern software development in Australia
Read in order, or take the part you need. Each one stands on its own.
- Part 1 4 min read
What modern software development means from Australia
Building software here comes with constraints that do not apply in San Francisco. Most of them are opportunities, and a few of them are real. Read part 1 - Part 2 5 min read
Where your data lives, and why Australians keep asking
Data location, the Australian Privacy Principles and cross-border disclosure, written for people who have to pick a region and defend the choice. Read part 2 - Part 3 5 min read
Designing for distance, patchy coverage and six time zones
Latency, edge delivery, offline-first design and the Australian time zone mess, from a product that has to work at 3am with no signal. Read part 3 - Part 4 5 min read
What it actually costs to run software from Australia
The cloud bill for a small Australian software company, where the money really goes, and the architecture decisions that keep it boring. Read part 4 - Part 5 6 min read
Compliance is product work, not paperwork
Consumer guarantees, subscription rules, app store policy, GST and accessibility, and how each of them changes what you actually build. Read part 5 - Part 6 6 min read
Shipping with a small team, including the AI part
The pipeline, the deliberately boring technology choices, where coding assistants genuinely help, and what a two-person company has to leave out. Read part 6
Also
Other writing
Pieces that stand on their own rather than belonging to a series.
About this writing
Why we publish any of this
Almost everything written about how to build software assumes a market, a legal system and a network topology that are not ours. The result is that Australian teams spend time rediscovering the same handful of things: which region to run in, what the Privacy Act actually asks for, why a page that is fast in development is slow in Perth, and what a cloud bill does when nobody is watching it.
We write those up as we work them out. It is not thought leadership and there is no newsletter. If a piece is useful to one other small Australian team, it has paid for the afternoon it took.
Everything here is general commentary rather than advice for your circumstances, and the legal and tax parts are our reading rather than a professional opinion. Check anything you are going to rely on. If we have something wrong, tell us at hello@rowedigital.net and we will correct it and say that we did.
Working on something similar?
We are always happy to compare notes with other small Australian teams, especially about the parts nobody writes down.