About

Who I am

I live in Belgium and have spent roughly twenty years in corporate IT, close to real systems, real constraints, and real people. By day, I work in computer engineering in the local gas transportation and storage sector, work I enjoy because careful software has to serve a real-world responsibility.

At home, I am the proud father of two sons. That is the part I will keep short on a public page.

What I love building

I care deeply about programming, architecture, application design, and the more advanced engineering corners of computer science. I like ideas most when they can survive contact with real code, real users, and future maintainers.

Over the years I have built or pulled apart compilers, interpreters, database engines, websites, game engines, and plenty of other systems, mostly to understand how they really work. I also enjoy coaching and mentoring: helping people grow their technical judgement, clarify designs, and turn complicated ideas into software that can actually be maintained.

The game I keep coming back to

I have been trying to build a game, in one form or another, for about twenty years. None of those attempts quite became the game in my head, which has apparently not stopped me from trying again.

Hephaestus is the determined and hopeful version of that long-running ambition. Practical AI has made old projects feel possible again: not because it makes the hard parts disappear, but because a semi-large-scale game now feels like it might fit inside one determined human lifetime.

Say hello

If you have a business project where hands-on engineering, architecture, application design, or technical coaching could help, I am open to talking. I work from Belgium and am open to remote collaboration anywhere in the world when the timezone overlap is practical.

The simplest way to reach me is timoch@timoch.com.