As you can guess from my name I am not a native dutch speaker, and although my dutch is good enough to follow the technical conversation of my colleagues and even to pair program, I am sure you will not like to see how I write in dutch.

The first time I was exposed to XP was many years ago when I was a guest scientist at the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg. This was long before the name XP was coined, and our group was doing XP because nothing else was working. Later I joined an american software consulting company where 700 pages of useless up-front design documentation was the standard - an experience I do not like to have again. In 1998 I and a friend of mine started our own company, and in 2001 I started my second company based in the Netherlands and Bulgaria. Since 1998 our team successfully delivered or is still working on about ten XP projects.

Because of our devotion for quality software, we are writing software either for !MacOS? X or for !WebObjects?. The preferred language of our team is Objective-C, but we have also several projects delivered in Java. Some of my research projects, or when I program for fun, are done in Smalltalk. And start learning Rubi too - it seams very promising...

I also mentor XP teams, and give classes in !WebObjects? and !MacOS? X programming. My first book is also slowly getting its shape. It is the first volume of a series of books I hope to write. There I would like to introduce XP in a more gentle way, together with other software engineering technics not related to a methodology. This seams to work very well for small talented teams, but I am desperately looking to mentor a really hopeless team and project,because I am convinced that my micro-changes methodology will work even in the worst situation when there is no hope for delivering of the project and saving the investment.If you know such a project please let me know!

You can reach me at gtupar@tuprev.com