Hi there, nice to meet you! I'm Willem-Jaap, a frontend engineer from the Netherlands. Hi there, nice to meet you! I'm Willem-Jaap, a frontend engineer from the Netherlands.
I was born in 2003 (which makes me 21 years old). I've always been interested in technology and the way anything works. I started programming at the age of 15 using self-taught HTML and CSS and Javascript. It was a logical step for me to pursue a study Application- and Media Development at Hoornbeeck College in Rotterdam. During my study I've learned a lot about programming and also did a lot of self study. I overengineered a lot of projects and learned a lot from that.
After the first year I started working at WebNL creative studios as an intern. It was quite overwelming at first as I wasn't very familiar with the technologies they used. I worked on various projects, learned using Laravel and Vue.js and worked with a custom Wordpress framework. I learned a lot about programming and handling complex issues.
In the second half of the year I built a PHP framework for REST API's from scratch, with automatic route discovery and a custom SQL query builder. In this time I also started using React and Webpack for the first time. With this knowledge I created a healthcare application for a school project. This project consisted of a PHP REST API, a React frontend, a Python chatservice and a React Native client facing app.
I started working at Emerit as a parttime developer. I worked on creating a landingpages application using Next.js and CakePHP. During my final internship which I did at Emerit, I worked on a native cash register application using Laravel and Electron together with Frans Slabbekoorn and Diederick Verschuure. This cash register was local-first and used a custom API to sync data between devices. This cash register has integration with a payment provider and various hardware like a receipt printer and a barcode scanner.
A special shoutout to Joan Verhulst for always helping out with designs for all the projects I worked on.
Pixel Perfect is a digital agency based in the Netherlands. We strive to create beautiful, fast, safe & efficient user experiences.
In 2023 I started Pixel Perfect Agency, a software development agency based in the Netherlands that focuses on creating beautiful and software solutions to help businesses grow and thrive. In the company I am responsible for all business operations and Frontend / UX development for the projects we work on.
I also like to work on side projects and am becoming more active in the open source community. You can check me out on Github or view my projects.
Before founding Pixel Perfect Agency, I developed my skills and gained valuable experience through various roles with diverse technologies in other companies.
While working with these companies, I've delved into diverse tech stacks and programming languages. Today, I'm well-versed in Next, React, Laravel, Tailwind, and (S)CSS. However, my experience extends to a wide range of other tech stacks that I have used previously as well.
Next.js is my frontend framework of choice, I have used it for about 3 years now. I really like the innovative approach they take with the App Router.
Whenever I need to create a more heavy backend application, I always choose Laravel. It's a PHP framework that makes it easy to create REST API's. It's also very easy to create a frontend with Laravel, but I prefer Next.js for that.
For typesafe code, I use Typescript. I have been using it for 3 years and never want to go back to plain JavaScript. I have used it in both frontend (React) and backend (Node).
For all new projects, I use Tailwind CSS. It's a utility-first CSS framework that allows me to build custom designs without having to write custom CSS. It's a great tool for rapid prototyping and building custom designs. I've been using it for about a year now and I'm very comfortable with it.
When I'm not using TailwindCSS I'm using SCSS. I've been using SCSS for a long time and invested a lot of time into perfecting my workflow and structure for it. I do not recommend using SCSS for new projects, but if you have a project that already uses SCSS, I can help you with that.