Hello everyone,

I joined Starbase as a full-stack developer in mid-December 2017.

At that time, I was ending a fantastic 5-month contract at Zalando, normally ending on Dec 31. But I was so excited to start working with Starbase when I got accepted, that I managed to shorten my contract and to start at Starbase right away, 2 weeks earlier than planned. (By the way, I’m so grateful to my former Zalando team for supporting me this way - Hello to them if they are reading this!).

So here is a bit about myself:

I’ve started building websites back in Belgium in 2004, which is such a long time in Internet history that I have seen many fascinating changes and small revolutions happen.

I started my career as a web designer and gradually morphed into a CSS expert. At that time, IE was at version 5.5 and I wrote what I believe was the first opensource CSS framework (couldn’t find anything similar already existing at that time): WYMstyle. Have a look if you’re a fan of good old retro internet archeology!

Another project I started with my then co-worker, out of love for clean code and styling, is WYMeditor: the world’s first WYSIWYG editor using exclusively CSS for content styling. This project grew in popularity, gained many contributors over the years, and is still active and integrated in many CMS and web applications.

Around 2007 I turned freelancer, building websites for my clients and helping web agencies structure and love their CSS files. I also started to learn coding using Ruby and Rails, then soon switched to full Ruby developer. The programming fever caught me strongly: programming soon became one of the most interesting and fascinating activities in the universe to me, despite the endless changes, learning, challenges and frustrations.

Soon after moving to Berlin in 2015, I stared learning about Frontend technologies. Javascript was booming, and new tools like Angular and React were popping up like it was some kind of whack-a-mole game. Because of my web-designer and CSS past, learning frontend dev and getting to know tools like React became my new delight. Soon I decided to focus only on frontend development, after which I extended to backend JS with node, express and the likes.

Then over the past year, I felt a growing interest in Blockchain technologies. That’s why I’m now so delighted to be part of Starbase, learning more about the field, while doing what I know the best: web development.

Currently, my main role at Starbase is as a backend developer, with a bit of frontend dev as well, but mainly in the form of discussions, suggestions and code reviews.

Like Rafael said, the point in startups is people. For that reason, I’m really glad to be part of Starbase’s terrific team, even after having worked the last years for big and well-established companies. The quality of communications and collaboration, and the dedication of the team to technical excellence makes me feel like being at the right, best possible place. Add to this a great, realistic, down-to earth product that is gaining lots of interest and traction. What else could I possibly wish for ?

If you’d like to know me better, feel welcome to have a look at my blog, with coding projects, drawings and photographs, and to say hello. Just know that I’m currently not available for hire.

Looking forward for all the good things to come, thanks to the amazing team work and the whole Starbase platform.