People often ask how we ended up specializing in the kind of challenging, unconventional projects that have become our signature. The answer lies in a journey that started with curiosity and led us through some of the most interesting corners of the tech world.
It all began with a teenager tinkering with BASIC on an Apple IIc and learning HTML at summer camp. By high school, I was already building websites for family friends – small projects that somehow gave me the confidence to apply for an internship at GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. Looking back, that internship was probably meant for a college graduate, not a 16-year-old, but they took a chance on me.
At GSK, everything clicked. I dove into Perl, TCL/TK, Bash scripting, and sharpened my C++ and PHP skills. More importantly, I discovered my passion for applying technology to scientific problems – the kind of complex, research-heavy challenges that reward deep thinking and careful planning. That experience convinced me to return the following year not as an intern, but as an independent contractor running my own business.
The next few years were a mix of learning experiences and growing pains. Like many independent developers, I worked through my share of difficult clients and half-baked ideas. But those early projects taught me something crucial: the web browser was going to be the ultimate user interface. Even before modern web applications existed, it was clear that one person could create sophisticated interfaces using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript instead of wrestling with complex desktop programming. Twenty years later, that insight has proven itself many times over.
For a while, I focused on traditional web development – building sites for small businesses and experimenting endlessly with content management systems (sorry, Joomla users). I was proud of some of those designs, though I’ll admit graphic design was never my strongest suit. Just as I was starting to feel burned out on standard web work, I discovered the Yii framework and the Raspberry Pi around the same time.
Yii transformed how I approached projects. Suddenly I could build complex applications from the ground up, complete with robust database layers, and get them running quickly. The Raspberry Pi was fascinating from day one, though it took time to find the right application for it beyond the usual hobby projects everyone was doing.
The breakthrough came with a long-term client who wanted to build a Casino Management System using Raspberry Pi hardware. This project brought together everything I’d learned over the years – Linux system administration, web design, application development, plus several new technologies I had to master along the way. The architecture challenges were incredible: licensing systems, data transport, fault tolerance, remote management, and handling large datasets. Through this project, I became deeply familiar with Python, WebSockets, SQLite, and Redis.
The technology landscape never stops evolving, and neither do we. JavaScript has transformed from a quirky scripting language that worked best in Internet Explorer 4.0 into the lingua franca of modern computing. Meanwhile, PHP – once central to everything I built – plays a smaller role in our current projects. Staying relevant in this industry means constantly updating your toolkit as new platforms and techniques emerge.
These days, we’re focused heavily on Internet of Things projects, and it’s easy to see why they’re such a good fit. IoT work combines everything we love: hard scientific problems, sensor integration, novel challenges like transmitting data over unreliable connections, and AI algorithms that need to make sense of real-world conditions. Plus, the web still provides the best user interface for managing these complex systems.
Our growing team shares this passion for tackling difficult problems with clients who need true long-term partners. Whether it’s scientific research, industrial automation, or cutting-edge IoT applications, we’re drawn to projects that push boundaries and require deep technical expertise.
That’s the SynaTree story – a journey from teenage curiosity to specialized expertise in some of the most challenging areas of modern software development. We’ve learned that the best projects often look impossible at first glance, and that’s exactly why they’re worth doing.