Hi, I’m Dick van der Heiden, co-owner of the tech agency Goedemiddag. I lead software projects from idea to delivery by helping stakeholders, clients, and development teams work toward a shared goal. My focus is on creating the structure, technical direction, and team environment needed to build sustainable software that solves real business problems.
Engineering Manager / Business owner
Organizing development teams, improving delivery processes, and translating business priorities into technical execution — the intersection of management, product, and engineering.
Read business articles →Product owner
How I translate stakeholder ideas into user stories, architecture, and delivery plans to achieve maintainable, long-term software.
Read about product & process →Developer
Technical notes from real production work — no fluff.
Read technical posts →Development services
I co-own Goedemiddag!, where we build custom Laravel applications, portals, integrations, and long-running business software. Certified agency and official Laravel Partner.
Visit Goedemiddag! →Development teams rarely struggle because people are unwilling to work hard. More often, they struggle because expectations are unclear, ownership is scattered, priorities are vague, or decisions are made too late.
Every application has them: error messages. Most developers dislike writing them, and most users dislike seeing them. Too often, they simply explain what went wrong at the end of a user flow. This post contains practical guide for writing error messages that help users recover from problems and gives developers an easy-to-follow formula for creating them consistently.
Writing a HTTP Link header parser package to replace the suddenly removed package.
MariaDB 11 removed the mysqldump binary, which can break backups for projects still using the MySQL driver. Switching drivers isn’t always straightforward due to differences like UUID storage. This post shows a simple workaround to fix backups without changing your database schema.