ABOUT
I'm Tim
I am Tim Geerlings, a developer from the Bollenstreek. Born and bred. Since 2014, under the name 7im, I have been helping businesses with software that has to keep working.
How it started
At home
It started with my father's old computers. When he bought a new one, I got the old one. From a young age I was tinkering with floppy disks and games. If something broke, I worked out for myself how to get it working again. After school I went straight to the computer.
A detour
Studies
Even so, I first chose business economics. That was not a success. A careers test pointed somewhere else: working creatively with computers. It became Interactive Media, and there I discovered programming. It has not let go of me since.
Teaching myself
I kept at it outside school, with mixed success. To really learn PHP, I built an online shop for palm trees. Entirely on my own, without a framework. A lot of pain and effort, but I learned more from it than from any book.
Into the trade
Internships
My first internship was at a web agency in Noordwijkerhout. Among other things, I learned to build emails with tables there, so they looked the same in every email client. I did my graduation internship at an internet marketing agency in The Hague. I started there on a zero-hours contract, showed what I could do and got a permanent contract.
Front end
As a front-end developer there, I built sites that also had to work in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. So I know the trenches of this trade well. Later I went deeper into React there.
2014 · 7im
Around that time I started 7im, to help people get further online. The name? A 7 above "im". Say it out loud: Tim. After that I became a full stack developer at a digital agency. I still work there, and under 7im I also work for my own clients.
What I am good at
I am an all-rounder. I know something about most things, and a good deal more about many. That is exactly what I enjoy. Most of all I like working on complex problems: large payment integrations, systems that must always be available and the architecture underneath. I look at the whole, not just at one piece of code.
How I work
Personal
You deal with me, not with an account manager. If it helps, I will come round.
Explaining
I tell you what I do and why, in plain language. So that you can decide.
Solving
I keep going until it works, even if the problem goes deeper than it seemed.
What I watch for
Data integrity. An integration that now and then misses a record or creates one twice costs you far more later than it saves you now. That is why I design for what goes wrong: outages, empty fields, duplicate messages.
And AI. AI is going to support us in a lot of our work, and replace part of it. How far that goes, nobody knows. What is certain is that the growth is enormous. I use it where it really helps, and a human stays at the helm.
Shall we meet?
Tell me what is going on. You will hear from me personally.