Koen is a self-taught software developer. He first became interested in programming through a friend he met in secondary school, with whom he developed several simple games using GameMaker. Because he felt that this suited him very well, he joined a game development company in Amsterdam after finishing secondary school. He worked at the company as a game-engine developer for some time, continuing to follow his passion for games that first developed during his school years, but ‘for real’ this time. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the studio was forced to close.
Shortly after, in 2017, he somewhat accidentally came to work for the Dutch Language Institute (INT) through an employment agency. This turned out to be a great match, and he has happily worked as a programmer of a variety of websites and tools for the institute ever since. Examples of his programming work include the Translation Vocabulary and DSDD websites. Aside from this, he primarily works on software for the development and publication of the INT’s various corpora, such as the Frontend application used to publish, among others, the Brieven als Buit corpus and OpenSoNaR.