Hi! My name is Theo Harkes. I believe that this world is created by a divine being we will never fully understand. Still, I will probably always try to understand how things go about. Currently, I am working as a consultant at Betabit. I'm mostly focused on the .NET ecosystem but always looking for new and innovative ways to make software.

During my time at Betabit I have been mostly focused on proper software development using domain-driven design and solid principles. Properly isolating dependencies, and decoupling old code. My second focus has been on DevOps; setting up automated pipelines and infrastructure-as-code, enabling other developers to have full focus on creating new features. On the side, I try to manage scrum processes by fulfilling either scrum master or product owner tasks, like managing the backlog or planning refinement sessions. By now I have learned that the scrum process is sometimes little more than a name, and the proper activities and processes might just be left on the side if no one takes the necessary responsibilities.

The first 5 months of my career I followed the Betabit Azure Talent programme. The programme fully steps through most of the .NET ecosystem: from C# basics to Entity Framework, ASP.NET, Azure resources and DevOps technologies. Even more complex design patterns like event sourcing and document databases are part of the program. At the end of the program I managed to get multiple Microsoft certificates like AZ-900, DP-900, AI-900, and AZ-204.

I studied computer science at Utrecht University. Initially I started with the Gametechnology bachelor due to my love for games. But afterwards I transitioned to the Computing Science master since I got hooked on optimization algorithms and software development. I desperately wanted to perform research on path tracing for my master thesis, since it combines my love of algorithms with a beatiful rendering technique that could be used for games. However during my thesis I got hit by a pandemic, married, got our first daughter, and multiple switches in subject and supervisor. After almost two years of struggling I was finally motivated enough to quit and look for job opportunities.

During my studies I decided to be a student assistant. Assisting in courses like databases, data structures, graphics, concurrency, modelling and systems development and optimization and complexity.