Random thoughts on software by Jouke Waleson , Founder / CTO of Comper . We make real-time maps for all the software in your org so you can stay in control.
Back in 2021 I was a bit down as a CTO of easee, but then decided to do what I do best: innovate. It turns out that roughly around the same time, IBIS Vision, one of our UK competitors, was doing the same thing. They filed " GB2612366A - Method and system for eye testing " and we filed " NL2029579A - Guiding a user to a test position for performing a computer-based eye exam ." . This describes…
This was a 1 hour round-table discussion with CTOs from Canada ( TrueNorthCTO ) on May 6th 2026. I gave the main talk and during certain parts we went into discussion mode. It was a lot of fun and afterwards there was plenty of discussion on their Slack channel, or so I heard, I'm not on there as I'm not a Canadian CTO ;) Welcome, everyone. Today, we’re going to talk about "dark code," the value…
A couple of weeks ago Dan Shapiro's blog post " The 5 Levels" (about Agentic Engineering) did the rounds. He coined Level 5 the "Dark Software Factory". So what comes out of those factories? I'm calling it Dark Code. Dark Code : lines of software that no human has written, read or even reviewed. Two weeks ago I presented a talk " Mapping out Dark Code " at the OpenAI Codex meetup in Amsterdam, and…
This is a 30 minute talk I gave at the very first OpenAI Codex Meetup in Amsterdam on March 5th 2026. I introduced the concept of Dark Code . It was a lot of fun and the audience seemed to like it. My CMO gave me a 7-8 out of 10. This is not an exact representation of the talk, I improvised, went off-script and forgot things. Also the organizers told me to say the f-word less (4 is bad, 1 would be…
Here's some insights about what the hiring process can look like from within a company. The title is a play on Adele's "Hello (from the other side)". Quick context: I’ve interviewed for about three jobs in my life and interviewed somewhere between 300 and 500 candidates for teams I led. So yes, my view is from the interviewer’s chair. I’m in software, which has its own hype cycles, but most of…
This is a short story about one of the stupidest things I ever did in my professional life, namely, dropping a physical server from the top of the rack in a data center. Spring is my favorite season, summer is actually better, but in spring it's clear that winter is over and summer is coming up. In early 2014 I was driving from the Mendix office in Rotterdam to our co-location data center (DC for…
Over the years I've noticed a pattern when I'm developing software. When faced with a huge backlog of things to pick up, I tend to go with the tasks that give me the most energy. I've been calling this Energy Driven Development in my head. My team leads / PMs must have hated this back in the day, because I was often only giving a halfhearted attempt at the official sprint items, but I believe that…
As I've written before , I've seen teams work in incredible burst of productivity. We achieved 10x productivity for a week or so at a time. I've always been fascinated by it. Wouldn't it be great if we can get closer to these peaks in our day-to-day? Having now seen dozens of teams in various situations, I think the ingredients for having the perfect storm of productivity are: Team wants to work…
Edit: since creating this post I've also created a video about this project on YouTube. See it below or jump straight into all the details below. Here's a very beautiful antique rotary phone. It's a Dutch PTT phone model called simply "1950" . But, what's this at the back? A USB-C port? A peek inside shows us some weird things! How did that LiPO battery get there? Ok let's quit the jokey intro,…
Last week I gave a 20 minute mini talk at M&I Partners in Zeist about the Future of Programming Systems, and how the work of architects and engineering teams will grow closer together in the future. I'm completely obsessed by this topic so I'm excited! Here is that talk expressed in a blog post, slightly modified based on some feedback and new thoughts. Ok! Thank you for inviting me and sorry for…
A couple of years ago I was asked to give a conference talk about software security. Well, actually I wasn't really asked, my company bought a sponsorship package with a speaker slot and I replied to the internal email asking for volunteers 🤣 Anyway, while preparing my talk, I realized a couple of important points about security that have not left my mind since: Security is limitless . You can…
Speed, I am Speed. -- Lightning McQueen Some thoughts about the impact of feedback loops in startups and software. Parts: Intro Framework Observations Take-away Intro Feedback delay is the time between doing something and seeing whether it was successful. If the feedback is slow, we have a "lagging indicator". It becomes hard to link causes and effects, and in consequence it becomes hard to…
[ This is a part of " The Software That I Love ", a series of posts about Software that I created or had a small part in ] 2018 - Mendix Cloud v4 - Part 2 - How to launch a complicated product Note : This was a multi-year mega project (at least for my standards) and ran from about 2015 till 2018 when I left Mendix. It's still one of my proudest professional achievements. If you haven't yet, read…
[ This is a part of " The Software That I Love ", a series of posts about Software that I created or had a small part in ] 2005 - Dat Narrenschip Around 2005 I started creating a website for my friend Jaap who deals in antique maps at datnarrenschip.nl I wrote most of this here: see How we ended up owning a framing shop next : 2005 - Porting an Atari tax program to Delphi previous : 2004 - The HP…
As of last year my wife manages her art framing shop in Soest . It's an interesting business and here's how we ended up owning it. Shortly after taking over the framing shop, the local newspaper wrote an article about it. When I was 16 and living in Middelburg my mom introduced me to a bit of an odd man. His kids went to the same school as my siblings and his wife told my mom they needed a new…
Here's a short story about how I learned to innovate (a bit more) in regulated industries. In the summer of 2020, Yves Prevoo had got easee in the first Techleap batch. Pretty cool! I was invited to join one of the sessions for the CTOs in which Ali Niknam talked about his adventures. I didn't know anything about him then but I liked him right away as he also wore a black t-shirt and a Casio F91w,…
I'm taking some time to recharge after struggling as a startup CTO for 5 years (with lots of ups and down). I have been working 40 hours a week in salaried positions from 2010 till 2023, and I decided to take it a bit easy. And with easy I don't mean to not work hard or to do simple work, but to not be 100% committed to a company for the long term. In June 2023 I started freelancing as a…
For most of us, life is the easiest and most comfortable it has ever been in all of history. We have better healthcare than royalty had 100 years ago, we fly around the world for fun and all the information and entertainment we could ever want is at our fingertips. In most civilized countries there's even decent welfare systems for the have-nots. Although social media and climate change are giving…
Last year multiple companies asked me for advice. " We are evaluating this AI powered product, but do you think it makes sense at all? It seems a bit niche and we think ChatGPT might make this entire thing obsolete soon. " Long tail - credit to Wikipedia My answer so far has always been: "No, bare LLMs are not going to compete with this product." I think that people are failing to understand the…
Years ago I was a Product Manager of a product with lots of teething troubles. The Director of Support and I sat down from time to time to discuss the most urgent customer issues. One day he suddenly said, visibly annoyed, "I see that you're agreeing with me and writing down things in your notebook, but are you actually going to do something with it this time?" . Needless to say, that hit home.…
Here's a wake-up call to all CTOs: AI programming tools are getting freaking amazing and if you don't allow your teams to use them somehow, it will bite you in the ass in a couple of years. You will be slower and you will lose your best people. The infamous Joel Test is a list from the year 2000 of 12 things all great software companies do. Since then most companies have implemented Git and CI/CD,…
Weird thought of the day. Speech patterns that rhyme are pleasing and resonate with our brain. Could there be an evolutionary benefit to it? Cultures without writing systems told stories to pass knowledge from one generation to the next. As we know from the Chinese whispers game, a lot of information is lost that way. During oral story telling, information is added, removed or changed, it is…
The podcast hype train passed me by until late 2018. I never understood it and thought it was some Apple specific thing. Then, one evening, on a flight from Amsterdam to Berlin, I thought "I'm too tired to work or read, but I can listen to an interesting story, let's give podcasts a try." The first episode I listened to was by 99% Invisible. I believe that by the time I got back to Amsterdam a few…
I've always been a straight shooter. Perhaps it's the Dutch culture or the protestant roots, but mystery, rituals and concepts annoy me. If a company can't say clearly what their product does, I am annoyed. I don't need you to tell me that my team will be 5% more effective, let me figure out myself how useful your product is on the merits of what it actually does. Recently I had the pleasure to…
My wife uses Windows and over the years I've helped her move things to new systems. Win8, 10 and now 11. With every upgrade the UI changes. Now I can't right click the bottom right corner anymore to open Task Manager. The UI feels "fresh" and up-to-date I guess, but does it really matter? My desktop has looked like this since 2008. I love the picture of the gearbox, it's a testament to the hidden…