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New PHP 8 language features that you may have missed

PHP has gained a lot of new language features over the years. Some of them are frankly a bit insane – but in a good way.

Improving search results using query expansion

Make your custom-built search engine return more relevant results by automatically adding similar or related words to search queries.

GitHub Actions is eating the world

Since its introduction a few years ago, GitHub Actions has become the dominant CI service. How did this affect competing CI services?

A comparison of open tracing tools

I’m in the market for a tool that can help me analyse logs, traces, and metrics, and I was hoping that this paper could help me pick one.

Fundamental principles of InfoSec explained using two three-letter acronyms

Next time cyber security comes up in a meeting, consider throwing in “CIA” and “DIE” so people think you know things.

Best practices for infrastructure-as-code (IaC) scripts

This week’s paper presents a catalogue of best practices for infrastructure as code programs.

This is a periodic reminder to add train emojis to your Slack workspaces

Spamming trains on Slack is likely to make some co-workers very happy and others very annoyed.

Get cheered on when you complete JIRA tickets

I built a completely useless Chrome extension that encourages people to complete their JIRA tickets (so I don’t have to).

My boulevard of broken side project dreams

I build a lot of side projects, but sadly many of them go sideways. This blog post lists some of the projects that never made it to production.

Why people find it hard to review code

The experience of reviewing code is negatively impacted by a number of misalignments, which are described in this paper.

How laypeople try (and fail) to design LLM prompts

Coming up with good prompts for LLMs like ChatGPT can be quite a challenge. This study sheds some light on what makes it so hard.

Can a good philosophical contribution be made just by asking a question?

Wat doet een ondernemingsraad eigenlijk?

Ik zit al bijna drie jaar in een ondernemingsraad, maar krijg nog steeds vaak de vraag wat ik daar precies doe.

Veelgemaakte Nederlandse spelfouten (die je spellingscontrole niet doorheeft)

Een spelfoutje is snel gemaakt, maar de regels maken het ook niet altijd even eenvoudig om het goed te doen. Daarom hier een paar tips.

Let’s build a simple journey planner using SQL (that you can run yourself)

What’s better than a crappy train travel planner that runs on my machine? A crappy train travel planner that runs on YOUR machine!

Chinese megacities and what they are known for

China is one of the world’s most populous countries, which means it also has some of the largest cities on the planet.

A quick-start guide to public transport in Hong Kong

Depending on where you’re from, public transport in Hong Kong either offers a glimpse of the future or is stuck in the past.

Five things that are (not) made in Japan

Japan is good at inventing things, but in these five cases it was actually just good at adopting things.

I built a theme park in OpenRCT2 based on things that are wrong in tech

RollerCoaster Tycoon and its spiritual successors are timeless classics that never get old, unlike messages from tech recruiters.

Conway’s Game of Life: Creating complex patterns from simple rules

This game is an absolute best-celler.

A gentle (re-)introduction to Scrum, a framework for project teams

This blog provides a concise summary of the Scrum framework for anyone who needs a refresher or is just getting started.

Upgrading to a Google Pixel 7 Pro from a Huawei P30 Pro

I replaced my Huawei P30 Pro with a Google Pixel 7 Pro. Should you do the same with your smartphone? As usual, it depends.

Effectively onboarding newcomers into agile project teams

A qualitative case study shows how we can design a smooth onboarding experience for agile software development teams.

Building up my LEGO collection, brick by brick

This page keeps track of my humble LEGO collection that I (passively) built up over the past decades.

On maintaining a technical blog in the age of conversational AI

Does it still make sense to write technical blogs when conversational AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can give faster and better answers?

The colours of Chuniversiteit

I illustrated 200 posts on this website using Microsoft PowerPoint and all I got are these lousy colour bar code visualisations.

Let’s build a simple journey planner using SQL (part 2 of probably more than 2)

Yet another blog post where I create an unmaintainable mess using our favourite yet very inadequate programming language, SQL.

Let’s build a simple journey planner using SQL (yes, you read that right)

When all you have is a relational database, everything looks like a table. And you know what? It works! Sort of.

Coalaty: A static analysis tool for comments

Let me tell you about that time I wrote a wonky static analysis tool for comments in Java source code…