Hi, I'm Dick van der Heiden
I'm the co-owner of Goedemiddag!, a Dutch tech agency that builds and maintains Laravel applications. Goedemiddag is first official Dutch Laravel Partner, a certified Laravel agency and co-founder of the Dutch Laravel Foundation.
I've been developing websites and web applications for most of my life. I started when floppy disks were still around and somehow never stopped with over 20 years of professional experience in development. What began as writing code eventually turned into helping teams, clients and organizations make better decisions about software for over 12 years.
These days, I spend less time focused on individual features and more time figuring out how projects, products and teams can move forward together.
Work
Most projects don't fail because of technology. They fail because people have different expectations, priorities aren't clear, or teams lose sight of the original goal. An important part of my work is making sure that doesn't happen.
I work with stakeholders and the development teams to translate business goals into practical technical direction. Sometimes that means defining the architecture, sometimes it means writing user stories to bridge the gap, and sometimes it means asking uncomfortable questions before a team starts building something that doesn't solve the actual problem.
Over the years I've been involved in projects ranging from startup products to established platforms, usually somewhere between the business side and the engineering side.
My work consist of:
- Defining technical direction for development teams.
- Translating business requirements into user stories.
- Supporting development teams working to the delivery.
- Improving workflows and the whole development processes.
- Helping stakeholders make informed product and technology decisions that solves actual problems.
- Making properly considered trade-offs between long-term maintainability and delivering product value.
I'm at my best where technology, product and business meet.
Leadership
While I've started at developer, my responsibilities as a business owner go way beyond just software development. I'm involved in how projects are organized, how teams collaborate and how technical decisions are made. I achieve that by helping developers do their best work. Another part is helping stakeholders understand the trade-offs that come with building software.
I enjoy creating structure where it's needed, whether that's improving a development process, helping a team gain clarity around priorities or making sure everyone is working towards the same goal. I'm convinced good software is rarely the result of good code alone, it's usually the result of good communication, clear ownership and exceptions together with a team that understands why they're building something in the first place.
Approach
For every project, I like a pragmatic approach. I like clean architectures, maintainable code and thoughtful technical decisions, but I don't believe in complexity for the sake of complexity or too much abstraction layers. The best solution is usually the one that solves the problem while remaining understandable for the people who have to maintain it next year. I totally agree when people are saying that "the easiest solution is the hardest to find".
So whether I'm working with a client, a stakeholder or a development team, I try to keep things practical and focused on solving actual problems.
Writing
From time to time I write about Laravel, software development and the lessons I've learned while building products and running a software agency. Most articles start as a way to remind myself and eventually become blog posts.
Open Source
I actively maintain and contribute to several open-source projects.
Some are small utilities that solve a specific problem. Others are packages used by development teams in production environments. Open source gives me an excuse to explore new ideas, improve my craft and contribute back to the ecosystem that I use every day.
Work Together
If you're looking for a team to build, improve or maintain a Laravel application, have a look at Goedemiddag!. We work with organizations that care about being part of the team, where we work together to deliver technical quality, long-term maintainability and a high product value.
Contact
You can find me here: