About

Computers and the internet fascinated me from an early age. I still remember our first PC, with an incredible 4GB hard drive and a huge CRT monitor, and the modem screaming itself into a dial-up connection that billed by the minute. My grandma got annoyed if the phone line was busy on Sunday evenings because her grandson was surfing the web again.

Even back then I built websites for friends, and for the big band I played in, giving it a new redesign every other month. I taught myself HTML and CSS by reading other people's source code.

At 16 my parents insisted I learn something "proper." There weren't really any IT apprenticeships around at the time, so I trained as a CNC specialist at Pankl Racing Systems instead. It turned out to be a decent compromise between programming and precision work, and I moved into quality assurance soon after, becoming a certified metrologist (AUKOM) and spending years writing measurement programs for ZEISS coordinate measuring machines.

In 2024 my wife got the chance to pursue a PhD in the Netherlands, and it felt like the right moment for a change. After 16 years in the automotive industry, I finally switched fields for real — and learning full stack development, mainly the MERN stack and responsive design.

That leap paid off. These days I build Joomla websites for a living at Webjongens, finally doing for work what used to be just a hobby.