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Charlie Schliesser

Full-stack developer

Web, mobile, infrastructure, solutions.

I'm a self-taught, full-stack developer that's helped businesses of all sizes leverage technology to improve their workflows. So, what does that look like?

Building web apps from concept, to launch, to long-term support.
Automating processes to capture, synchronize, & process data.
Migrating from legacy systems to modern, simpler tools.

Technologies and stacks that I work with:

This isn't an exhaustive list, but things that come to mind from recent work. Some of these technologies or frameworks are old, but I think the history & context can be helpful.
  • Javascript / TypeScript
    • Backend (Node.js)
      • Micro frameworks like Express, Koa, Fastify
      • MVC frameworks lke AdonisJS, NestJS
      • REST, GraphQL, etc
    • Frontend
      • Mostly Vue 3, some Angular and others
      • VanillaJS
  • PHP
    • Laravel, Drupal, Wordpress, SlimPHP
  • Databases
    • MySQL, PostgreSQL
    • MongoDB, DynamoDB
    • SQLite, lowdb*
  • Cloud Providers
    • Render
    • AWS
      • Cloudops via Cloudformation/CloudKit
      • Lambda (and @Edge!)
      • ECS / Fargate
      • RDS (Aurora, MySQL, Postgres)
      • SES
      • Cloufront, S3, Cloudwatch, Route 53, etc
    • Some work with Google Cloud, Azure
    • DigitalOcean, Heroku, Linode, etc
  • Web Services & APIs
    • Stripe, Global Payments / Heartland, Authnet
    • Shopify (API, custom theming, backups, disaster recovery)
    • ShipEngine, UPS
    • Auth0, Oauth (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, ...)
  • Accounting & ERPs
    • NetSuite
    • QuickBooks Online
    • Xero, Wave
For more info on what I work with and solutions I've built, check out my portfolio and blog. I try to write about problems that me or my teams have solved, if I think it will help anyone else.

I'm interested in...

iOS/macOS native app development
Game development
Older, defunct OS's like BeOS, IRIX, NeXTSTEP.
Novel OS's like Haiku.
MS-DOS/386 era games.

My current ideal stack

Front-end: Vue 3 + Vite, hands down. Any time I venture into web components or React – or try and fully grok my webpack config – I end up taking more time to achieve the goals of the project. This is not a criticism of any of these technologies.

Back-end: AdonisJS if appropriate, Express otherwise. Sequelize. I'm bummed that Koa doesn't have the traction it should, and I'm bummed that Fastify doesn't have as much middleware support.

On a side note, I'm not opposed to other languages. I've even spun up a Swift server for fun. I just find the benefits of writing both sides in the same language too great to ignore.

Hosting: I cut my teeth on shared + self-hosting, graduated to VPS's, thought Heroku was the silver bullet, then spent a few years running everything on AWS.

However, I'm currently enjoying the freedom, simplicity, and speed of running on Render. While I appreciate a multi-account, Cloudformation-driven architecture running on AWS, it can be a lot to setup and maintain for apps that don't need it (and many apps don't need it).