Nitric Software Laboratory

We are a small creative software company based in Cape Town. We love Python, Ubuntu GNU/Linux and all things open source. We have been in operation since 2000 and have loads of experience creating all sorts of internet-based business systems for all kinds of enterprises.

We offer specialised software development and deployment for business. Our usual toolkit choices include:

• Python (of course!)
• Web stack made with CherryPy or Sanic with Mako for templating
• Django with Wagtail for content management systems
• Relational databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL with Django or SQLalchemy
• And/Or NoSQL databases like MongoDB and RethinkDB
• Elastic Search
• jQuery and Bootstrap

We’ve also made some desktop & mobile apps using Cordova, ElectronJS and Kivy.

We maintain a few long-running systems that were written in our dark LAMP days (PHP & MySQL).

We’re strongly influenced by the agile methodology and we are particularly adherent to an API-first philosophy: our APIs are always fully implemented because we first make the API (Application Programmer Interface) and then we become its first users.

Aside from doing custom development we also consult as Linux system administrators. We manage an extensive deployment infrastructure and are able to provide our development customers with robust hosting solutions, extensive monitoring, failover and backup services. Nitric has Linode cloud server and private managed servers in datacentres in South Africa and all over the world. We are critical of cloud-hype and resistant to vendor lock-in and seek to minimise dependence on tech giants as much as possible.

Take a look at our products and read about current and past projects.