Last updated on the 30th of July, 2019

I’ve been developing software for a long time. My first programs were written in BASIC on a Commodore VIC20 computer before my teenage years:

10 PRINT "Hello!"
20 GOTO 10

From BASIC I moved to Pascal, and from there to Delphi. Most of what I did in those days were text-based games and Play by E-mail game processors, which gave me my first introduction to parsers.

My first steps in web development were in PHP, which I first started using about a year before I graduated high school.

At the University of Twente I was introduced to Java, which I immediately liked, but it wasn’t until my internship at Carthago ICT that I got my first taste of Java web development.

My first job after graduation, at Topicus Onderwijs, got me introduced to Apache Wicket, a framework I still love and use extensively.

What I like to code

I love building things that automate repetitive tasks. Code generators, annotation processors, custom maven plugins, you name it. I tend to prefer automating the creation of dumb code over creating smart code that solves the same problem in fewer lines, for a very simple reason: it’s far easier to debug dumb code.

More recently I’ve developed an interest in functional programming, which, if used in moderation, can simplify quite a bit of logic.

Java (11 or higher) is still my language of choice, with Kotlin a close second. I’ll happily take on a Typescript-based project too, and also have a (relatively new) interest in Rust.

What I don’t like to code

I have trouble taking anything built in PHP seriously, and will go out of my way to avoid the language if at all possible.

And while I love Java, this love does not extend to frameworks such as JSF and certainly not to antiquated technologies such as JSP.

What I do besides coding

I write fantasy books, enjoy an occassional glass of Scotch, do endurance kickboxing, bake bread, read a lot of books, play complicated and/or time-consuming video games (Crusader Kings 2, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Kerbal Space Program, Minecraft, Stardew Valley), go on a hike, and, most importantly, spend time with my family.