Hi there! I am Ruthger Idema, technical support manager at Guapa. Born in August 1992 and living in the Netherlands.
What do I do from day to day?
I spend my days crafting websites and making sure our clients websites are always top notch. I’m constantly learning web technologies and other related topics, currently playing around with frontend frameworks like Vue (+Nuxt) and tools like PM2. I’m skilled in many areas of development and server management.
Career
"Programming is not a regular job. It is an expression of our curiosity and personalities." ~ Kleverson Morais
I started programming (although HTML is a markup language, not a programming language) when I was 12. It was mostly playing around and building simple, static websites.
After experimenting with Wordpress, Prestashop and many other packages, I found Magento (1), one of the best e-commerce platforms at its time. I started a business together with a friend and had more then 60 different webshops. We sold the webshops in 2014. After that I started working at a wholesale who sold pet supplies, where my knowledge of Magento increased day by day.
I was introduced to Laravel by a friend (hi Jesse!) in 2015, which made programming a lot more fun! We started some affiliate websites and made a good profit, I sold it in 2019 to invest in real estate.
In 2017 I started working at Guapa, where my coding style and learning accelerated. Until then I never stood still about code guides / styles or what so ever. I programmed something that worked and didn't cared about how it looked. Next to that I started working with Magento 2, a revolution when you compare it to Magento 1. I also started with using Git, XDebug, PSR and many other tooling which made my coding life so much easier.
I’ve always been able to push my boundaries on projects where there’s no deadline or a certain level of quality required. Even though I put in a lot of time and most projects didn't make it to the public, I’ve found that the investment in the knowledge gathered was always worth it. Rome wasn’t built in a day either.