Programming

programming

I started programming very young, around the age of ten. I began in QBasic and stuck with it for first year or two. Later, still a kid, I moved to the Windows world with Visual Basic and again remained using it for a while. Unsatisfied with Visual Basic's quircks, I eventually learned Pascal and moved to Delphi. Around the age of 18, I swore off Windows completely and began to use Linux, in time learning programming languages like PHP, Python, Java and C++.

For a while, when I was still working under Windows, my main interest was game programming and I wrote some simple games using DirectX. I even wrote an ActiveX interface to DirectDraw, called the DirectDrawControl. Also I wrote many other ActiveX controls in those times.

In any case, almost everything I in my teens created for the Windows platform used to be on the THEMA Homepage, effectively being my first-ever webpage. I created some DirectX games and other programs, using Visual Basic and Delphi. However, the site is long deceased now as I haven't maintained it for ages.

Most programming I do nowadays is aimed at either web development or language technology, or a combination thereof. I am employed as scientific programmer in the field of computational linguistics, at the University of Tilburg. In my spare-time I work for UniLang.

Note that I have a separate website where I publish all of my software regarding Language Technology, so please take some time to visit my website Proycon's Language Technology

This very site also is a testimony to my passion for computer programming . The previous incarnation of this site ran on a CMS I wrote from scratch in PHP, named CosMoS. However, I ceased development on that and now rebuilt this site using Python and Django, a web framework.

As you could read in the Linux section of my homepage. I am a big proponent of open-source software, so the source code tends to be always published along with my software.

I also have some blog posts about programming which you can read if you are interested in this subject.

My software and websites

Unicode Tool (ucto) This is a small tool that can do some simple processing on unicode texts. It can do things such as change case, count words/characters, reverse lines, simple tokenization, generate n-grams, and give unicode character information. · Download · 2008-09-01 12:00:00 · cpp ·
Container Packing Problem This was an assignment in a university course about search algorithms. The aim was to pack a 2D container in such a way that all value of all boxes packed (each box having a value) was maximal, and moreover that this packing had to be tight so that the boxes couldn't move inside the container. I wrote the assignment in Java in collaboration with Martijn van der Klis and Christian Apers. · Download · 2008-05-01 12:00:00 · java ·
UniLang "My Languages" application for Facebook This is an application I wrote for Facebook that allows people to list the languages they speak and find people based on language interests. Tied to UniLang. · View · 2008-01-15 12:00:00 · php ·
Wumpus agent This is a wumpus-world agent written in Prolog, which I wrote as an assignment in a university course. Only worth checking if you are familiar with the wumpus world, or love Prolog. After loading into Prolog, run with 
Run(L)
. · Download · 2007-10-01 12:00:00 · prolog ·
Language Technology for e-Learning (LT4eL) This website I designed as part of my work for the project Language Technology for e-Learning (LT4eL) (late 2006 - early 2008) · View · 2007-02-01 12:00:00 · php ·
Linguistics Online (LiOn) This is project I worked for, which aimed at investigating possibilities of creating an e-Learning environment for students of linguistics · View · 2006-08-01 12:00:00 · php ·
UnicodeTest for mobile phones This is a small and simple java MIDP program that enables you to see what foreign characters your phone supports. · Download · 2006-05-14 12:00:00 · java ·
CosMoS This is my content management system, made from scratch in PHP. The previous version of my homepage and some other sites I designed were powered by CosMoS. But I discontinued development on this CMS in late 2008. · View · 2006-05-01 12:00:00 · php ·
Arabische Woordenlijst Een Nederlands<->Arabisch opzoekprogrammaatje voor de woorden van de cursus Taalverwerving Arabisch aan de Universiteit Utrecht · View · 2005-06-04 12:00:00 · php ·
Arabische Vocabulairetrainer Nederlands<->Arabisch vocabulairetrainer voor de woorden van de cursus Taalverwerving Arabisch aan de Universiteit Utrecht. · View · 2005-06-04 12:00:00 · php ·
RapidTeX A LaTeX preprocessor (project is currently abandoned!) · View · 2003-10-01 12:00:00 · python ·
UniLang Most of my programming work goes into the UniLang language-community, which I co-founded in 2000 and of which I am the lead developer. It is a very extensive web-based community for learning languages and communicating with other language lovers. You can visit the Developer Documentation on the site if you desire to know more about the technical aspects of the site. (2000-2008) · View · 2001-10-01 12:00:00 · php ·
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