Martijn van Iersel

This Saturday in Amsterdam, come playtest indie games and see cool creative stuff. I'm giving a talk on maze algorithms! Creative Coding Amsterdam + Amsterdam Indie Game Devs organize this event together. www.meetup.com/amsterdam-in...

Duolingo (currently using it to learn 中文) is a nice case study in gamification. It's also a cautionary tale against over-reliance on A/B testing. Giving you features that are research based, metrics-driven, experimentally PROVEN, but only suitable for perfect plastic people. 1/2

More notifications, more haptic feedback, more flashy animations. These increase retention, but also frustration. Accessibility, and actual learning, suffer.

#Genuary #Genuary2026 #Genuary14 Prompt: Everything fits perfectly! Fit 9 squares of 9, 8 squares of 8, etc., inside a square of 45. A.k.a. the "partridge problem" (think of the Xmas carol). See the animation at amarillion.github.io/genuary26/

#Genuary #Genuary4 #Genuary2026 Day 4: LowRes Revisiting another classic. Drawing Bresenham lines in XOR mode, creating this pretty Moiré pattern. On #zxspectrum, XOR mode was an optimization, but with current tech, it's a performance hit as it requires reading bitmap memory, a big no-no.

"Twelve Principles of Animation" #Genuary #Genuary2026 #Genuary2

How horrible is the user experience of setting up a new smart phone 🤮. Today I did tech support for my elderly parents who both bought a new smart phone - they were still on Android 9 and essential apps (banking) stopped working, so they needed a new phone. Here follows a rant 1/n

Icing on the cake from @fairphone.bsky.social: Our brand-new $$$ FP6 was soft locked on the TOS approval screen. Checkbox and Next button overlapping so no way to click either. I got through this by decreasing text size in the accessibility menu. Without help, my mom would have had to return it.

How horrible is the user experience of setting up a new smart phone 🤮. Today I did tech support for my elderly parents who both bought a new smart phone - they were still on Android 9 and essential apps (banking) stopped working, so they needed a new phone. Here follows a rant 1/n

This is then followed by each app eagerly offering to show you around to discover all the new features. Yay! 3/n

How horrible is the user experience of setting up a new smart phone 🤮. Today I did tech support for my elderly parents who both bought a new smart phone - they were still on Android 9 and essential apps (banking) stopped working, so they needed a new phone. Here follows a rant 1/n

This takes me back... I'm here to speak at #jfall. But Wageningen is also my alma mater you know...

Last week, me on stage speaking about #i18n-puzzles. Thanks for having me @tweakers.net developer summit!

A recording of my #Devoxx talk is now available. youtu.be/XJMrMxlt-BQ?...