Django and Python
under tensionBoring on purpose. Database-driven tools that keep working after we hand them over, because the next person to open the code can read it. No framework of the month.
Smart Web Dev — the workshop
The first program was a pattern for cloth.
In 1801 a loom in Lyon read a stack of punched cards and wove a picture nobody had to supervise. Every database, login screen and gradebook since is the same trick: independent threads that hold only because they hold each other.
We are Smart Web Dev. We build simple, secure web platforms for businesses and schools — usually in Django and Python, usually for people who never asked to become the IT department.
- Guatemala
- Django · Python
- Schools & small business
- Security first
Joseph Marie Jacquard, 1801
His loom read holes in card stock and wove whatever the cards said — including, in 1839, a silk portrait of Jacquard himself made from 24,000 punched cards. Charles Babbage kept one on his wall while designing the Analytical Engine. Ada Lovelace wrote that it "weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." Storage, instructions, output. It was all there before electricity.
The warp
The three threads we never cut.
On a loom the warp is strung before a single row is woven, and it stays under tension until the cloth comes off. Get it wrong and nothing you weave later can save it. We have three.
Teaching
under tensionFive years in Guatemalan classrooms gave us the only test that matters: if a tool needs a manual, it isn't finished. We build the thing, then we watch someone who has never seen it try to use it.
Security
under tensionPasswords, permissions, backups. Not a feature you bolt on at the end — it is tension you set at the start, or the whole cloth pulls apart the first time something goes wrong.
Who weaves
Three people, three threads.
Small studio, on purpose. You talk to the person writing the code, and they answer.
Nelson
@nelson63dbGuatemala
Python developer, Bitcoin hodler, bookworm.
Threads they weave
- Python
- Django
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Java
- HTML
- CSS
- Google Workspace Admin
- Google Cloud APIs
- Django integration tests
Find them
Facundo Melita
@Facu6MArgentina
Front-end developer, building interfaces people do not have to think about.
Threads they weave
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- React
- React Native
- Node.js
- Python
- Flask
- Supabase
- Heroku
Find them
Remedu
@Remedu787
Python and the English side of the work — the person who reads what we wrote before a client does.
Threads they weave
- Python
- HTML
- Fluent English communication
Find them
Pictures and bios come straight from GitHub. If they don't load, GitHub is rate-limiting us — everything you need is above anyway.
The weft
What we pass across.
The weft is every row that crosses the warp. Nothing here works without the three threads above holding still.
Learning platforms built for one school
Quizzes, gradebooks, progress dashboards — shaped around how your teachers already work, not around somebody's product roadmap.
Going digital without the drama
Most of the pain of moving online is the migration, not the software. We do that part, and we do it before you have to explain it to anyone.
STEM people actually finish
Blogs, workshops and interactive experiments that make math, science and programming something you try, not something you read about.
Security in plain language
We set up the protection, then explain it in words your staff will repeat to each other. A rule nobody understands is a rule nobody follows.
Rooted here, on purpose
Guatemala. Free resources, training sessions and support that outlast the invoice, because digital literacy is infrastructure too.
What the cloth is for
A loom has a finite warp.
You can only weave until the threads run out. It is the only honest way we know to think about technology, so we say it out loud here instead of hiding it in a footer.
We build on open protocols and repairable things. A tool you cannot open, move or fix is not yours — you are renting it, and the rent goes up. We take Bitcoin because money should work like the web: no permission needed. And we keep the two counters below on this page, where our own work has to sit next to them.
The carbon budget
Counting down at current emissions. Every platform we deploy runs on electricity that comes from somewhere, and the deadline does not move because a project slipped.
Keep Android open
Installing your own software on your own phone is being closed off. A device you cannot put your own code on is a rental with extra steps — and every student we teach deserves better than that.
That is the whole position. If it sounds like how you would want your own tools built, tell us what you are working on.
Pull a thread.