Personal Background

I'm Mark Prins (28), a web/software developer from Delft in the Netherlands.

Ever since I've started as a professional web developer, back in 2001, I'm constantly trying to improve my skills by learning from everywhere I can. Most of the time I get new idea's from friends, colleagues and blogs of prominent people in the software engineering industry.

As of April 2008 I started developing PHP tools which should provide other PHP developers with a solid foundation for creating PHP driven High Availability Websites. The idea distilled over the years while I was working for my two former companies. At these companies, the need for scaling and high availability became the bottleneck for development.

Both companies never started out from the scalability perspective. Because of this they always improvised along the way. And in the end there was never time to create solid means for scaling.

Basicly my idea is to create a set of PHP tools (a framework if you will) with which the developer needs not to concern about scaling in any way. Things such as MySQL load balancing, Apache load balancing and even (PHP)Application load balancing should be handled in the background. This way the developer can always concentrate on the real problems.

Job History

From October 2006 till April 2008 I managed development teams for TBlox B.V.. The team's job was to create web applications which help companies in their business management. Applications such as Purchasing, Sales (webshop), Expense and Time modules where created and maintained.

Next to managing these teams I wanted to streamline the development processes and learn the different members of the teams what it was to create decent and maintainable software.

With the accumulated knowledge from know guru's as Scott Berkun, 'Rands' and Joel Spolsky and books such as "Pragmatic Programmer" and "Peopleware", I was able to create an environment which made it possible to create decent tools which aid in creating real decent and low maintanance applications.

Unfortunately, due to the ever lasting 'need-to-produce-products' it was never possible to correctly finish the tools and create a solid foundation. And the tools stayed at their mediocre state.

At this point I decided it was time to leave the company and pursue my own goals.

From September 2001 till September 2006 I worked for GamePoint B.V., a company specialised in web-based casual gaming. I started as intern and was, at that time, fairly new to web development using PHP. After my intern of about 6 months, I was hired as a part-time employee.

With the mutual help from my 5 collegues I was able to grow and learn what it was to develop web applications for a growing platform which consists of not only games and web pages, but was also the foundation for a tight community of casual gamers. I was assigned more and more tasks and I got more and more responsibility's.

As of October 2004 I was responsible for all what the development section created. And for most of the technical related issue's such as hardware purchases and system adminstration I was consulted.

In 2006 I decided that I should see more of what the world of development looks like and decided to work for a company which was founded in 2005 and with which I had close contacts since an old collegue joined them.

Hobby's

In my early computer years, I was a real game fanatic. But right now I don't have the time the way I had it and I only play some games occasionally. Mostly on the PC and XBox 360.

As of 2006 I bought myself a motorcycle and with my friends I tend to go out and just drive somewhere. When the weather is right and work makes it possible, we like to go to Germany, Luxembourg or Switzerland to enjoy the mountain roads.


Further I'm a bit of a movie and serie enthusiast. I try to follow as much of the series currently on-air as I can. And I enjoy going to digital cinema to see movies in crips high resolution whenever I can.