My job title is Senior analyst, which means both a lot and very little at the same time.
I am a curious software engineer working at the European Commission in Brussels. My work has gradually moved from application development towards the larger questions surrounding software engineering: how to build systems that are understandable, maintainable, reproducible and reliable over time.
20 years after completing my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, I returned to UMons University during the Covid pandemic to pursue a master’s degree in the same field. I completed it in 2024 with a thesis on Reproducibility in Software Engineering. I now also contribute to teaching and knowledge-sharing around software deployment, tooling and reproducibility. Being able to pass on things I have learnt has become one of the most rewarding parts of my work.
Reproducibility is more than a technical preference for me. It is a practical way to make software easier to trust, operate, audit and hand over to someone else. The same principle applies to documentation, open source and good engineering practices: make assumptions explicit, reduce unnecessary complexity and leave behind something that others can understand and improve.
I consider myself a rational thinker with a Bayesian outlook: I usually form my views based on the available evidence and readily update them when new facts emerge. When I encounter something unfamiliar, I tend to favour Occam’s razor, starting with the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions while recognising that the simplest explanation is not necessarily the correct one. When presented with an unfamiliar claim, I usually ask what evidence supports it, not out of distrust, but out of intellectual curiosity and a genuine desire to understand. I value factual, verifiable information while remaining mindful of uncertainty, assumptions and the possibility that I may be wrong. At the same time, I do not judge people by their personal beliefs, identities, orientations or even their choice of keyboard layout.
2 of my superpowers are anosmia and hyperacusis: I cannot smell a thing, but I can hear noises that nobody else seems remotely bothered by. The former can be remarkably useful in many situations, especially on public transport, while the latter can be rather overwhelming… especially on public transport ! Mother Nature clearly assembled this sensory package without much of a plan, but one learns to work with what one is given ! Add an INTP-A personality type, a healthy appreciation for sarcasm and a tendency to overthink things, and you get a reasonably accurate picture of how I experience the world.
As a Linux and FreeBSD enthusiast, I have worked as a full-stack developer with over a decade of experience in PHP. My journey with Drupal began as a hobby, and I progressed to being a contributor, service provider, and eventually, a core maintainer.
In 2019, after careful consideration and a desire for new challenges, I decided to resign as a Drupal core maintainer and shifted my focus towards Symfony and framework-independent packages. That transition taught me a lot about abstractions, interfaces and the value of building software that can be reused outside the context in which it was first created.
My passion for functional programming led me to become an avid user and contributor to Nix and NixOS. Nix gives me a way to explore reproducible and declarative systems in practice, while also raising interesting questions about packaging, maintenance, dependency management and digital sovereignty. Being a NixOS committer is both a privilege and a continuous education in large-scale open-source maintenance.
I am particularly interested in systems that favour explicitness over magic, composition over hidden behaviour and boring predictability over fashionable cleverness. This applies to tools, infrastructure and organisations alike. When something fails, I usually want to understand not only what broke, but also which assumptions and incentives made the failure likely in the first place.
If you are interested in following my work or staying up-to-date with my latest projects and contributions, I invite you to check out my profiles on Packagist, Drupol’s Github, Loophp’s Github and code.europa.eu. These platforms showcase my commitment to developing high-quality, versatile software solutions and my ongoing involvement in the open-source community, where collaboration and knowledge-sharing are highly valued.
My love for STEM is rooted in a deep fascination with mathematics, especially numbers and the ways nature uses them. Data visualisation is another passion of mine, with some of my favourite work coming from Jason Davies and Mike Bostock. I also hold great admiration for the late Nick Berry’s blog.
I envision my ideal workplace as one that fosters open-source projects and is filled with passionate, open-minded, non-paranoid and friendly teammates. Technical excellence matters to me, but so do clear communication, humility and the willingness to explain a decision rather than merely announce it. The healthiest communities I have encountered are practical, welcoming and able to disagree without turning every disagreement into a question of character. If I could start my career again, I would probably spend even more time studying mathematics and computer science, and would try to work in a university. It is a reminder that academia still has much to contribute to the professional world.
Outside work and the geek stuff, I am fulfilling a childhood dream by learning music and playing the piano. I enjoy photography and taught myself most of what I know about reflex cameras, just for fun. I swim a lot and enjoy riding my mountain bike. Cycling is one of the reasons I have been an avid user and contributor to OpenStreetMap for more than a decade. When I am not at work, I can often be found wandering around at home in joggers and an old T-shirt.
Finally, there is my cat Apollo, and the memory of the late Izumi and Nakano. Izumi even has a mention in Drupal core, thanks to a patch I submitted many years ago.
Please feel free to reach out and connect with me, my public key fingerprint is:
85F3 72DF 4AF3 EF13 ED34 72A3 0AAF 2901 E804 0715.
