Ruud Hein
If you’re anything like me you like to know a little about the people “behind”. And yeah, true, you can’t do that via an “About” page — but at least it gives you some basics.
Like age, for example. Age estalishes a rapport, right? The statements from a 13 year old “Doogie Hoowser”-style developer are somehow different from the ones made by a 42 year old seasoned progammer.
Rather than updating this page every birthday, or dropping in a clever script that does it for me, I just state my year of birth: 1968. That means I was 13 when I started to write my own programs on the Sinclair ZX81, 15 when I ported them to MSX1, and 23 when I started to port them to Visual Basic. When PHP3 became big in 1997 and I adopted it big time, I was a ripe 29 — man, did I feel The Adult…
Where do you hail from?
I work and live in Rimouski [read more] in the provence of Quebec in Canada. It’s a nice little town; about 40 thousands souls.
It’s strange, or sometimes strikes me as such, that I feel that comfortable here as I was born and raised in Amsterdam in the Netherlands (that’s Holland for some folks… and yes, that’s in Europe). Definitely a different culture and with over 800 thousand people, a larger place.
But yes, I really like it here. No, more; I love the place. I have kids and they need facilities, places to go, sports to play, but otherwise I would be tempted to move to an even smaller place…
Reason I’m here is love. Sorry, I mean Love with a captial L. I met my wife over the Internet and hundreds of hours of online conversations later, not to forget several thousands of dollars in telephone bills, the choice was “easily” made to leave everything I knew and grew up with behind to join her and shortly after marry her. Life sometimes requires that “don’t look back” kind of dedication, that type of total commitment. It’s that same level of commitment which helps me to give everything I have for a project, make it the best I can. Anything short of total dedication is underselling the person you work with.