The Source

My name is Joost de Vries.
I work as a functional reactive developer in Scala, Kotlin & Typescript.
Currently as an independent contractor at bol.com. Before that at Port of Rotterdam.
I like to sing, play the saxophone, hike. And I like old books.

  • Twitter: what's going on in technology that interests me
  • Github: code! Although most of my professional code is proprietary.
  • And of course Linkedin.

Reactive - cui bono?

Looking back at 8 years of reactive

Kotlin coroutines + Akka actors = ♡

Kotlin and coroutines combined with Akka actors make for a really nice programming experience

Kotlin vs Scala

I've worked exclusively in Scala for 5 years. So I was curious to do a Kotlin backend project for more than a year.

Points of view

There are so many ways of looking at software development. Here are some of my points of view and beliefs.

  • Functional programming

    With functional programming applications are easier to understand. Really.

  • JVM

    The JVM is an amazing cloud platform for running applications. And the biggest ecosystem of libraries.

  • Modern programming languages

    Type inferencing, nullable union types, pattern matching, extension methods. There's a better way of programming and you can use it right now in Scala, Kotlin and Typescript and be really productive.

  • Collective learning

    By talking to colleagues, keeping up with blogs and twitter and github you can learn what other people learned from hard lived experience. Without the hard lived.

  • Seeing through microservices, application landscapes and business processes

    Programming code isn't the goal in itself. Nor are API's, microservices, servers. There's a way of not losing yourself in the technical details and seeing through the matrix. Seeing the bigger functional picture.

  • Sol Iustitiae Illustra Nos

    Because no website is complete without a bit of Lorem Ipsum Latin verbiage. Also, Alma Mater. I studied at Utrecht University..

Contact

I always enjoy having a coffee and talking to people. If you want to contact me: you know my first name and you know the site domain: that's my email.