If you read Jim’s story on how he helped himself to find out where specific newsletter traffic is coming from. And you have a bit of technical knowledge on building code and well… “corporate” reporting/analytics dashboard, you can’t help but smile a big smile. Because what he has built for himself is such an elegant and creative solution. Especially how he creates something that’s in the first of use for himself, but you can already see how others might benefit from this as well. Plus it shows the possibilities of the tool he professionally works on, Quadratic.

And the best part was I could do all of this from my browser in a visual way. No local environment setup. No garbled strings of text in a console with me trying to parse and decipher the data. Simply fetch data, render it to a structured grid, filter/manipulate it, and find exactly what I want.

All of this is possible in multiple ways. From dragging and clicking your own solution in no-code tools like Make.com up to having your own development team and creating a complete suite of reporting tools. I like this middle ground where code, visual spreadsheets and “scratching your own itch” coalesce.