My software development roadmap

It’s been almost twelve years since I graduated from university and began my career as a software developer. I have spent most of that time building and maintaining systems that directly benefit society in one way or another. Although I don’t find the work on such systems very challenging – especially when compared to things like compilers and operating systems (side note: And whatever it is they are working on at companies like NVIDIA and ASML?!) – I enjoy working on them nonetheless because I get to make meaningful contributions to society almost every day, and that’s what matters most to me.

At some point in my life – preferably sooner rather than later – I would like to work on projects that are both societally impactful and intellectually rewarding. Every five years I stop to think about how I’m doing, and set some long-term goals for myself that help me get closer to that point.

This blog post summarises the outcomes of that thought process.

Enterprise web applications have been my bread and butter ever since I got my first job as a software developer in 2013. That’s unlikely to change in the next few years because companies still need high-quality web applications, and I still need money (and something to do).

But there are still plenty of other ways to change things up a bit.

For instance, I built my first website using Tailwind this month, and I’m currently working on an application that’s built on top of Quarkus and OpenAPI. Later this year will probably see the release of a new major version of the system that powers this website.

In the next few years I also intend to build my (hopefully) last ever PHP web application (side note: To be clear: I don’t hate PHP; I think PHP is fine. I just would like to work with something else now.) using the popular Laravel framework. I also want to spend a bit more time with Java, because it’s often used at organisations I’d like to work at some day, and experiment with React Native so I can build my own mobile apps.

Some project ideas

• A personalised multimodal journey planner for public transport (side note: For those who don’t know, I built a shitty journey planner in 2023.) that takes your preferences into account, e.g. by suggesting routes that limit exposure to the elements or include a copious number of “pit stops”.

• A gamified urban hiking app that encourages people to boldly go where few people have gone before (without trespassing).

One of the major reasons I took up programming as a hobby and field of study is that I used to love playing video games, and consequently wanted to make one of my own.

That goal sadly seems to have gotten lost in time, because I still haven’t made any real games (side note: There’s Game of Life, but that one doesn’t count because it’s simply a reimplementation of an existing game made purely so I could have something to show off in job interviews.). It’s not that I haven’t tried: I’ve made multiple attempts over the years to develop small games, but most attempts just die an early death due to a lack of time, skills, inspiration, or a combination of all three.

I still don’t have time, nor do I have all the required skills to make something that looks and sounds good, but at least I do have a little bit of inspiration now for some small projects related to topics I am passionate about.

Some project ideas

• A turn-based strategy game in an office setting. The gameplay would somewhat comparable to games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, except that instead of cavalry and grenades you would have office workers on wheelchairs and shaken cans of soda.

• A middle management simulator where you get to suck up to your superiors, divide and conquer department heads, or bully your underlings.

For me, robotics programming is like the polar opposite of video game development: I’ve never been particularly interested in robotics and it’s not something I would have ever picked up by myself (side note: Hardware is expensive. I also don’t like having junk lying around my house, and buying things like Arduino boards and cables seems like a surefire way to end up with lots of things that do nothing but collect dust.), but I’m doing it anyway. It helps a lot that someone is paying me to write code for robots. And, as it turns out, it can also be quite fun once you get over the initial hurdles.

Having said that, I’m still bothered by the fact that I know so little about hardware. So, I’m planning on getting myself some robotics development kits that I can tinker with and maybe build an autonomous robot dog or two. You know, for science.

Some project ideas

• A cheerful robot that can walk around the office by itself, and greet and compliment everyone by name. Except for Grace. Fuck Grace. (side note: Obligatory disclaimer: I don’t know any people named Grace.)

• An entire fleet of tiny robots that help me press physical buttons at home, at work and other people’s doorbells, either automatically or remotely controlled.

Chuniversiteit.nl started out as a small programming blog, but it’s pretty clear by now that it’s primarily about summaries of scientific papers. That’s not a coincidence. It’s always been my goal to get a PhD and build a career in academia, and this blog has been my way to figure out where my interests lie (apparently they’re software development, human factors, and data mining).

I have no concrete plans for a PhD right now, but I would nevertheless like to contribute something to the field of software engineering myself in the next few years.