dvreeze.github.io

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Java/Scala experience

My development experience for the most part concerns the Java platform. This started with many years of (enterprise) Java development. After that I spent many years on Scala development (mixed with some Java development).

As much as I like Scala programming because of Scala's expressiveness and non-intrusive compile-time type-safety, Java has certainly caught up (lambdas/streams, "var" keyword, record types, immutable Guava collections, "FP patterns" in modern libraries, etc.). Also, development opportunities in Scala are still less common than I would like. Both factors caused me to get a renewed interest in Java. Of course, there is still a lot of overlap between Java and Scala development, such as the runtime platform and much of the ecosystem and tooling, so Java and Scala skills in a way strengthen each other.

Besides "regular" application development I also authored several (open source) libraries, for XPath analysis, XML processing (called "yaidom") and XBRL processing. These libraries in turn enabled fast and safe application software development in their respective domains.

I am passionate about software quality, and in particular about the ability to reason (locally) about code without losing clarity and readability. I like mentoring less experienced developers and giving "tech presentations".

As an example, my "yaidom" presentation at XML London 2015 is XML processing with Scala and yaidom.

Non-development topics

Normally I would limit myself in this page to my profile as software developer, or at least to topics related to software development. Unfortunately too much has happened in the world (and in the Netherlands) in recent years, and to me it feels like the right thing to do is to speak out.

There is also an upside to all of this (and about much more, that I do not get into now). We are basically forced to grow up spiritually. At least that's how I see it, along with many others.

Again, this may not belong to an introduction of myself as software professional, but so much has happened in recent years that I feel I must speak out about developments that I find quite worrisome.