Hi, I'm Michael de Lang

I studied electrical engineering at Saxion in Enschede, specialising in embedded software and real-time systems, and later software engineering at the University of Amsterdam. My master's thesis analysed the worst-case execution time of a drone program on multi-core hardware. Latency, throughput and predictability have been the thread through my work ever since.

I've written firmware for quantum computer control electronics, fast chargers, heating appliances and tunnel safety systems. Before that I built large government systems, including an app used by over a million Dutch citizens. That taught me something embedded teams often learn late: software that has to last for decades needs to be written so that other people can understand and change it.

That's why I care about foundations. Groundplane and BusBench come out of the same belief: decisions should rest on measurements, invariants belong in the type system and the tests, and when a device fails in the field someone should be able to say exactly why.

I also enjoy helping engineers grow. Seeing a team become able to solve problems on its own is worth more to me than any piece of code, and it's the best outcome of an engagement.

In short

• 14 years of experience, independent since 2018
• BSc Electrical Engineering (Saxion), MSc Software Engineering (University of Amsterdam)
• Author of Ichor, an open-source C++20 framework with dependency injection and coroutines
• Works in Dutch, English and German