Our Story

Lisantra was founded on the vision of bringing smart software development to the web. Smartness is in making web applications robust, cheaper to maintain, pleasant to build and a joy to use. We're part of a trend towards applying professional software development methods to open-source scripting technologies on the web, which is exactly what the web needs. We did not pioneer smartness, but we feel that the level of professionalism should rise, and why not give it our own unique flavor.

On this page:

• The Name
• The Good
• The Bad

The Name

I chose the name as a merger of English and Arabic; I was, after all, an Arabic linguist in the Marines. 'Lisaan' is the Arabic word for language, and dealing with diverse languages, both computer and human, is the core of everything at Lisantra. 'tra' is the first syllable of the English word 'translation', and software development is all about translating between the multitude of human and computer languages.

The Good

We've learned that coding is what we want to do in life, really. It is the perfect-for-us mixture of two worlds. It is both an art and and a science at once. We can be both creative and methodical and not have it all blow up. That's a good feeling; and it beats pounding sand in the desert.

The Bad

We've learned some really good lessons over the years. Some have been technical, and many were business lessons that business school didn't teach.

Technically:

• Requirements done right early saves much grief down the road,
• Don't reinvent the wheel, usually.

Business:

• In a nutshell: "Trust, but Verify",
• A troublesome client once, a troublesome client always,
• Get it done, but don't stress and burn out.