John Eric Fritz

Hello, and welcome to my personal website. I’m the Software Engineering Manager at iHomefinder.com where I manage a team of Software Engineers who build best-in-class IDX and CRM tools for Real Estate professionals. I also write and play music and try to keep up with various other hobbies.

Web Applications

Languages, frameworks, and libraries have come a long way since I started building web applications over two decades ago. I really enjoy exploring the latest and greatest tools to help find the right solution for a particular job, but here are some of the ones I like best.

Web design is also much quicker to prototype now thanks to many helpful CSS and JavaScript libraries. I generally use Bootstrap for my personal projects due to familiarity and ease-of-use, but we use MaterialUI at work because of its excellent integration with React components.

REST APIs

REST APIs are the backbone of the modern web, and I’m a big fan of building APIs using REST principles. Spring MVC is a great framework for adding REST to Java web applications, but if you’re working in a JavaScript-first environment, then Node.js + Express.js is also a great option.

The tools for working with REST APIs have also come a long way in the last few years. Postman is indispensable for testing your APIs and the external APIs you consume, and Webhook Relay is a great solution for connecting and integrating webhooks.

Content Management

There are many content management solutions on the market, but for the last few years my go-to CMS has been WordPress. With a consistently high adoption rate in the Real Estate domain, WordPress has evolved from a simple blogging engine to a fully featured CMS. For static sites or those maintained by developers, Gatsby is also a great option, with excellent React integration and new themes and plugins being added every day. These two technologies can also be used together as they are on this site, with Gatsby as the frontend and WordPress as the Headless CMS backend.

Fun Stuff

YouTube Channels & More

To learn more about what I do in my spare time and my various hobbies, please visit my Fun Stuff pages. I regularly post videos to the following YouTube channels for audiophile gear, scale model making, and ambient bass/guitar music respectively. Subscribe and click the notification bell to be updated when new videos are posted!

I’m also a big CD and vinyl record collector going all the way back to the early 80s, with a broad range of genres including ambient, alternative, electronic, rock, jazz, classical, and more. To view some of my collection, please visit my Discogs and Bandcamp pages.