Jan Niestadt began his programming career at age 9 by creating simple games, first on the MSX home computer and later on a state-of-the-art 286 PC. He later studied computer science at Leiden University. The fondness for computer games was reflected in his graduate research, on adding extra detail in interactive graphics applications, such as the relief in a brick wall.
In 2006, he started working as a software developer at the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT). That turned out to be much more inspiring than the financial sector security software he had worked on until then. At INT, he focused on editing environments and online dictionary search systems. He also founded the open source corpus research system BlackLab.
Today, as a senior developer, he is an important part of the institute's IT memory, but he prefers to look to the future, using the latest technologies to deliver ever better software. In his spare time, he helps at CoderDojo Leiden to get a new generation excited about the programming profession.