Nicolas Mattelaer

My main interest is web development: the web is the driving factor for many people's work and entertainment, and it has become more than just static sites like this one. Entire applications are designed to run on the web, and I see that as a good thing: one central place to develop apps that will run on any device.
With that said however, web development is far from perfect. I mainly use JavaScript to develop webapps, but this is rather out of necessity than out of interest for the language. Modern JavaScript can be elegant to write with - if you write it correctly - but it is far from perfect. In fact, it is astonishing how it is being used in large-scale serious applications! It is full of weird and flawed design implementations, and the interesting implementations like prototype-based OOP is largely left untouched. I have recently switched over to TypeScript as I heard a lot of positive comments on it, but honestly it doesn't make JavaScript much better. The type system is weak and often gets in your way. If they would add some more concepts to it, like mixins and pattern-matching, it might actually be good.
I am eagerly waiting for the development of WebAssembly to reach a stage of maturity, so that apps can finally be developed without any JavaScript involved! Only time will tell...
If I am not working on the web, then I would preferably opt for languages like Racket, Scala or Haskell. They are the languages I've grown up with and it is undeniable that their strengths are not just nice features, but a necessity to write clean, understandable, and reliable code.
I usually don't do a lot of low-level stuff, although I do know my way around C. I have been wanting to pick up Rust for some time (I have read the Rust Book), but haven't found the right project to use it in.
I am a big proponent of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), so all my projects that I am comfortable with sharing (i.e. that don't suck) are available on Github. Other projects that I made for Infogroep can be found on the Infogroep Git. With that said, most of the programs that I use are free, open-source, and privacy respecting, minus some exceptions like Nvidia's proprietary drivers and closed-source games. I have been thinking of also replacing Android on my phone with a more FOSS-friendly solution, but most solutions don't seem to be on point yet.