pauljonessoftware

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What Event Tolling Taught Me About Data Integrity

One of the more interesting features I recently built into a legal software application was support for event tolling—a process used to pause countdown timers in legal workflows when certain conditions are met. On paper, it’s just a date adjustment. In reality, it’s a complex, high-stakes chain of logic that affects deadlines, rights, and outcomes. But what I didn’t expect was how much this…

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The Tea App Fiasco: Data Breach, Public Shaming, and a Culture on Fire

72,000 identities exposed—and the irony runs deep. There’s something darkly poetic about what happened with the Tea App. Billed as a place to spill secrets, vent frustrations, and share personal truths under the comforting blanket of anonymity, it quickly became a hotspot for gossip, confessions, and—let’s be honest—cruelty. People used it to air dirty laundry, call others out by name, and…

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Invisible in tech? My new post breaks down five fast tactics—social presence, blogging, resume visibility, recruiter tracking, and consistency—to get you back on every recruiter’s radar. Catch the full rundown here.

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Beyond the Code: The Hidden Value of 'Human Core Services' in Software Development

We talk a lot about code quality, robust architectures, and agile sprints. But what about the most critical system in any software development process: you? Just like the applications we build, our own “human core services” need regular maintenance, bug fixes, and optimization to perform at their best. My recent internal changelog even reflected this: Performed scheduled rest and recovery…

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My AI Pair Programmer Works as Hard as I Do

How I Rediscovered My Love for Building With Help From an Invisible Teammate When I first started programming, it was exciting—creative, even intoxicating. I came from a background in electronics engineering, and code felt like this unlimited sandbox where I could invent anything. I dove in enthusiastically, thinking I’d found the perfect side hustle or creative outlet. But then something…

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Digital Ore: Mining the Hidden Value in Legal Metadata

Intro: Mining isn’t glamorous. It’s dirty, slow, and deliberate.But it’s how value is unearthed. And if you’re building in legal tech, that metaphor might feel a little too real. Because the gold isn’t in the user interface.It’s in the data—specifically, the metadata. And just like ore buried deep in the ground, you have to know what you’re looking for, and how to extract it. The First Step Is…

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The Quiet Power of JSON: Structuring Legal Intelligence at Scale

By Paul A. Jones, Jr. · July 2025 Most people think of JSON as a simple utility — a way to pass data between frontend and backend, or to store structured values in a flexible way. But in building data infrastructure for a complex, rules-driven domain, I’ve come to view JSON as something far more powerful: a foundational medium for scalable intelligence.It’s the gateway to organizing knowledge,…

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SaaS 101: A Practical Introduction to Software as a Service

A developer-friendly guide to what SaaS is, how it works, and why it’s changing the way we build and deliver software. If you’ve ever used Gmail, Dropbox, or QuickBooks Online, you’ve already interacted with a SaaS product. But what exactly is SaaS? And what does it mean when someone says they’re “building a SaaS”? Whether you’re a software developer, aspiring founder, or simply curious about…

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When Code Begins to Explain Itself

Posted on PaulJonesSoftware.com By Paul A. Jones, Jr. There’s a quiet shift happening in how I think about software. At first, it was about compliance — tracking what happens in a system, logging every event for auditing purposes. But something has changed. The deeper I dig into application-level telemetry, structured audit trails, and self-instrumented behavior, the more I realize: we’re…

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11 Lessons I Didn’t Know I Was Signing Up for When I Built My First SaaS

When I set out to build my first SaaS product, I thought the hardest part would be writing clean code. I figured the technical decisions would carry the most weight — choose the right stack, organize the database, write good tests, ship features. I had no idea I was about to get a crash course in business, legal strategy, pricing, communication, and product thinking. Here are 11 lessons I…

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How to Make Properties Immutable After Initialization in C#

Author: Paul A. Jones Jr., MSE In domains like legal tech, consistency is everything. Once critical information like a discovery date or a statutory deadline is captured, it should never be silently modified elsewhere in the system. Enforcing immutability in your data models ensures reliability and protects the integrity of calculations driven by complex jurisdictional rules. This article walks…

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The Developer's New Frontier: How Building SaaS Is Like Investing in Real Estate

By Paul A. Jones Jr., for PaulJonesSoftware.com When most people think about investing, they imagine stocks or property portfolios. But as a developer building SaaS (Software as a Service) applications, I’ve come to realize something striking: a well-built SaaS product is a digital income property. In fact, it behaves so much like real estate that developers should start thinking of themselves…

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When Delete Doesn’t Mean Gone: The Quiet Power of Soft Deletes in Legal Tech

In legal applications, “deleting” data is rarely as simple as it sounds. Records often represent more than rows in a database — they carry evidentiary weight, compliance implications, or even the history of a professional judgment.

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The Harsh Realities of Building in Public in 2025: A Developer's Take

Why today’s tech environment makes building in public more exhausting than empowering — and what developers can do instead. I saw a tweet last week from a fellow developer who boldly declared that “Building in public in 2025 sucks!” It got me thinking — what’s changed? Just a few years ago, building in public was the golden ticket for indie developers and startup founders. Everyone was sharing…

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Turns out I’m not building a calculator. I’m building 50. One for every state. Had to rethink the whole architecture — wrote about it here:

Why I’m Not Building One Calculator – I’m Building 50 – Paul Jones Software.

Long road ahead.

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Working with stored procedures in ADO.NET? I’ve put together a practical, hands-on guide featuring six essential retrieval techniques, real-world C# code examples, and a ready-to-use SQL Server database for testing. ✅ Output parameters, return values, DataReaders, DataTables, and more! ✅ Full-featured console application to test the methods in action ✅ Clear, structured explanations to enhance your database skills