Still Building: A Professional Update
I realized recently that I have not written much publicly about what I have been working on, even though behind the scenes this has been one of the more active periods I have had in years.
For a long time, my work has centered around building practical software for real businesses. I started back in 1999 building an e-commerce platform for a major dance shoe company, and in 2005 I launched phpLD, which went on to be installed on more than 200,000 websites.
Since then, much of my attention has gone into building and supporting software for studios, especially Dance Studio Manager.
Dance Studio Manager has been around for a long time, and that is both a strength and a challenge. A lot of businesses depend on it. The software has helped studios manage students, classes, billing, payments, communication, and day-to-day operations for years. But software does not stand still, and neither do the expectations of the people using it.
So lately I have been putting a lot of energy into modernizing the platform.
Part of that work is technical: moving toward a newer foundation, improving the interface, updating hosting infrastructure, and making the system easier to maintain and extend. I am also looking carefully at reliability, backups, support tools, and ways to make future development faster without making the product fragile.
Another part of the work is more strategic. I want the next version of Dance Studio Manager to feel more modern without losing what made the original useful: it has to solve real studio problems. The goal is not to chase trends. The goal is to take what I have learned from years of working with studios and build something cleaner, faster, and more useful.
AI has also become a big part of how I work. I use it heavily for coding, planning, writing, debugging, and thinking through architecture. I do not see it as replacing the judgment that comes from years of building software, but it is absolutely changing the speed and scope of what a small team can do. For someone like me, who has spent years building niche software products, that is a pretty exciting shift.
I am also thinking more about how to communicate what I am building. For years I was mostly focused on the work itself: writing code, supporting customers, solving problems, and keeping systems running. But I would like to share more of the process now – not just polished announcements, but the real story of rebuilding, modernizing, and continuing to improve products that have been around for a long time.
A few things worth checking out:
- Dance Studio Manager: dancestudiomanager.com
- phpLD: phplinkdirectory.com
- My LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/david-duval-183919b
I expect the next year to involve a lot of rebuilding, refining, and launching. Some of it will be behind the scenes. Some of it will become visible pretty soon. But the overall direction is clear: I am still building, still learning, and still interested in making software that helps small businesses run better.
More updates soon.
