© 2019
© 2019
I'm Johan van Overbeeke, a computer programmer from Utrecht. I live there with Nicole Wezelman, and the amount of happiness we bring each other is something I wish upon everyone :-).
I am generally a private person and like learning and building things a lot more than writing about myself, so the rest of this website will be about (software) stuff I've made.
From a young age I have enjoyed building things and finding out how stuff works. This started with my toys, but the number of new and interesting ways to play with them always quickly diminished. A second hand Commodore 64 was the first toy that never ran out of new things to try. I have been hooked ever since!
One of the things I love most about software design is the endless amount there is to learn and improve myself with. Therefore it's no surprise that I spend a lot of my free time fiddling with new tools and techniques. I appreciate all parts of the process, from the first glimpses into the problem domain to the running of a stable production environment.
I enjoy working in an environment that values and invests in continued improvement, both of the product and their employees. As fun as studying in my own time is, I've found that it is no replacement for having study and improvement as an integrated part of the business culture. Learning on your own covers different ground than learning as a group for actual business goals. Besides that, studying as a team helps prevent knowledge silos and keeps everyone speaking the same language.
That last part is especially important because creating really great software is a team effort. You need differing perspectives and the ability to voice/hear them to create a product that gets the most out of the available technology and meets the customer's needs. I think technical quality is part of the business value of a system; a high quality system gives more value for less maintenance costs and is quicker to adapt to changing business requirements.