Web development since 2004.

👋 Hi! I am Laurens,

This is a short story about how I became a frontend developer.

When I was 10 years old, I found out that it was possible to create your very own website.

Back then, a friend of mine had just created a website using freewebs.com, and I was so intrigued by the fact that it was possible to have your own little space on the web, that I immediately followed.

This free website had so many limitations regarding the design that I soon started learning about HTML and CSS, the coding languages of the web.

During that time the web consisted mostly of webpages with images as 'fancy' buttons, often arranged in layouts that were put together using <table>s or now-antiquated <frame>s.

This process of creating my own space on the vast ocean called the internet was really magical to me, so I gladly invested my time in teaching myself the ins and outs of coding.

I copied the website of my elementary school by checking the source code and started stripping everything out that I didn't need. Eventually this led to my first personal website, which was a collection of some Flash games and animations which I copied over from my favourite websites.

It had a guestbook and a very insecure login system made by creating a maze of buttons and pages, where you could login only after pressing the correct order of buttons.

Communication & Multimedia Design

Luckily I improved my frontend skills a lot since then.

Between 2012 and 2017 I studied the bachelor Communication & Multimedia Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, learning the principles of research-based design, motion- and ux/ui design and project management.

Since 2012 I've been working as a freelance frontend developer, creating websites, and (web) applications for individuals, companies and the government of the Netherlands.

Nowadays I mostly work with Vue.js and Typescript (and some backend / devops). I also enjoy contributing to open source projects, such as Vue Timeline Chart.