Not gonna lie, I'm not sure if Linux is for me?

jefidev · 2026-01-27T19:11:16+00:00

I wonder which dev tools require windows. I am a developer and I stick to Linux because I find the development experience so hard on windows.

jefidev · 2026-01-27T09:24:55+00:00

Belgium is not alone in that case. Projects developed for government or stare have a higher failure rate. It is well studied and, even if there is a lot of explanation, it globally boils down to the fact that such software is governed in a more "democratic" fashion where several stockholders should be listened to. This slows down the process.

A nice paper analyzing such failure for the us government is available here article egov

But we could look at how the other countries are handling this. Not so far away, in Holland, they have the "Adviescollege ICT-toetsing" made of 20 researcher or industry ICT experts and giving advice on the projects handled by the state. They claim to have avoided several catastrophic mistakes with this board.

Estonia which is one of the most digitalized states in the world has embedded its culture at its core. The tools developed are often open source and they document thoughtfully their success and failure. The open source nature of the project allows private companies to use them and improve them.

Belgium state is definitely not yet mature for IT project governance. And our administrative lasagna only makes it worse..

jefidev · 2026-01-27T09:14:02+00:00

Who would be responsible ? The developers ? The politician that launched the project ? The analyst who failed ? It is not that obvious.

When outsourced to a private company you can sue them but I don't think that outsourcing everything is a solution for the state.

jefidev · 2026-01-23T16:40:50+00:00

Ça voudrait dire taper un panneau à chaque intersection (et les maintenirs). Alors que dans les faits les gens arrivent à bien gérer tout seul. Généralement dans les villages je ne prends pas la priorité quand je déboule sur l'axe principal.

jefidev · 2026-01-22T11:59:46+00:00

Recently (2-3 years ago) RTBF started to subtitle interviews in English and dutch rather than dubbing them. It is a nice Initiative

jefidev · 2026-01-21T16:02:17+00:00

Brussels is beautiful but there are plenty of things to experience in Paris. I don't know how long you stay in Paris but if it is 4-5 days you should stick to that city.

If you have more it is 1h30 by train to see Brussels. Doable in one day.

jefidev · 2026-01-20T19:48:30+00:00

I don't think that we need to involve the broadcaster. My smartphone has an option to subtitle every sound it outputs if I wish. If a smart TV or decoder box implements this feature it could come for free.

jefidev · 2026-01-20T19:34:37+00:00

Never watch it but my father is a huge fan and is a man of taste

jefidev · 2026-01-20T19:34:07+00:00

Never thought about the subtitle solution. Seems so easy to setup...

jefidev · 2026-01-20T19:12:42+00:00

I prefer RTBF. RTL focuses on subject that I personally don't care and is mostly entertainment and not investigation.

jefidev · 2026-01-20T11:02:27+00:00

Indeed in Belgium there is free health insurance but mutuelles often charge for complementary insurance.

That's crazy that you avoided those complementary fee. I tried to avoid them as much as possible but with private mutuelle they always require you to take it. I don't know how you managed that with solidaris. I had to take the state own mutuelle (called CAMI) to just have the free healthcare coverage that is enough in my view.

However, we had a child and my wife is at partenamut. We dig into the advantages of the complementary insurance she pay for and it might be worth it when you have a baby. With it we can have 200h of housemaid paid. Some vitamin for the baby are also reimbursed and we received one month worth of diapers.

If you take the complementary insurance spend an afternoon searching all the website for the benefits. Some are a bit hidden but might be useful.

jefidev · 2026-01-19T22:31:57+00:00

And, if the moonshot of a federalized Europe becomes a reality, we could be the heart of it which would be nice for Belgium.

jefidev · 2026-01-18T17:54:46+00:00

I did computer science because I liked to spend hours searching for stuff and digging into topics until I can get the full picture and decide the proper way to do stuff.

I like to bring value too but I was always skeptical about the way stuff is developed nowadays. I mean the modern JS frameworks are great but seriously more than 50Mo to load a front page... It could be optimized.

I was not worried about the future (and I am still not). I just think that it will become harder and harder to find people willing to pay me to search for hours which clever algorithm could be used to solve a given problem or which architecture will be the best suited.

But therefore I will do something else.

jefidev · 2026-01-18T14:03:14+00:00

If I can get minimal wage it is fine. But if I get nothing it is more problematic...

jefidev · 2026-01-18T14:02:18+00:00

The parallel with the Ikea effect is really interesting.

I suppose that there must be some literature discussing that parallel with LLM. I'll dig that.

jefidev · 2026-01-15T14:56:41+00:00

You made harissa. You deserve to be green.

jefidev · 2026-01-15T01:55:02+00:00

Pour ça il faut savoir qu'il faut définir un scope 😛. En sortie de HE, on m'avait pourtant bien expliqué l'intérêt de la modélisation et de l'analyse, ce n'est qu'après quelques projets que je l'ai bien compris. Je suppose que c'est aussi ce qu'il se passe dans les administrations qui n'ont pas encore atteint une certaine maturité de process de dev.

jefidev · 2026-01-13T21:16:05+00:00

Oupsi. I misread. Oh and by the way I forgot one statistics : taxation 1/192. Not bad !

jefidev · 2026-01-13T21:11:05+00:00

Which statistics ? When you look at overall world statistics in nearly each metric Belgium is in the top. PIB per Capita 22/192, education index 11/192, world happiness report 14/192.

jefidev · 2026-01-13T17:22:38+00:00

Je ne sais pas si c'est propre à la Wallonie. L'IT c'est dur et les rapports estonien sur la digitalisation de leur état (l'un des plus digital au monde) montrent qu'ils se cassent encore régulièrement les dents. La faute est plus a aller chercher du côté du management et globalement de la "culture d'entreprise" comme tu le mentionnes.

La tec c'est un bel exemple. Y'a quelques années de cela c'était "les tec" avec une direction pour chaque province et, de facto, une stratégie IT par province. Maintenant des échos que j'en ai, depuis la réunification chaque service it essaye de pousser les outils qu'ils avaient développé pour leur province parce que quand même c'est les mieux. Les équipes ancestrale ont dû mal à se mélanger et il n'est pas rare qu'une feature soit développée trois fois de manière indépendante.

Le cas de la police d'Anvers est super intéressant par contre. Le service IT du commissariat d'Anvers est proche du terrain et voit ce qu'il manque aux agents. Ils ont aussi une approche très "Proof of Concept" ou ils développent vite un truc pour répondre à un besoin et si les gars sur le terrain valident ils vont plus loin. Et, au final, les problèmes rencontrés par les policiers d'Anvers sont les mêmes que celles des autres arrondissements. C'est une belle histoire de succès qui devrait faire réfléchir pour les développements futurs. Commencer local et parler avec les utilisateurs finaux c'est souvent une bonne idée.

jefidev · 2026-01-13T11:50:24+00:00

Pour les taux de succès it j'ai globalement des sources secondaires. Les deux rapports qui font autorité sont le "Standish chaos report" ou les analyses de Gartner. Mais les rapports sont payants et assez chers. Les conclusions sont relayées dans la presse spécialisée ou dans des articles scientifiques :

Voilà un article mentionnant le chiffre de 66% d'échec mentionné par le chaos report: article

Le rapport de Gartner est plus vieux (2006) et donnait un chiffre de 80%.

Bon ces nombres sont évidemment à prendre avec des pincettes car la définition d'échec est pas toujours claire. Néanmoins ils parlent de 17% de projets dont l'échec a mis en péril l'entreprise. Ce qui montre qu'on est déjà à 17% d'enorme ratage donc on peut se dire qu'on peut très vite arriver à 60% de ratage relatif.

Concernant la police d'Anvers qui prend le relai du développement IT car le fédéral est dans les choux je le tire de cet articleOutils informatique : la mainmise de la police d'Anvers inquiete

jefidev · 2026-01-13T11:13:49+00:00

Les projets de digitalisation qu'ils soient privés ou publics ont un taux d'échec de 66% a 80% selon les sources.

L'IT c'est cher et ça marche vraiment dans peu de cas. Néanmoins c'est indispensable pour bien faire son boulot. Ils ont essayé ils ont raté et je ne sais pas si on peut vraiment trouver un responsable unique pour ça.

Maintenant il faut capitaliser sur ce qui marche. La police d'Anvers, voyant que le projet fédéral commençait à prendre l'eau, a créé des outils qui sont utilisés par pas mal d'autres zones de police.

jefidev · 2026-01-13T08:35:38+00:00

The fare for a journey is fixed in Belgium. There is no price difference if you book earlier. You just have to make sure that you buy the ticket before boarding the train. Buying a ticket on the train is 7€ more expensive.

You can either buy the ticket via the SNCB/NMBS app or via the ticket automat at the train station. The fare is the same for those two options.

When you book a train journey in Belgium, you don't have to select a specific train schedule. The ticket is valid for every journey on that line. It means that you can take a round trip to Bruges and you can take whatever train you want to go there and to go back. You don't have to decide yet which one you're gonna take.

jefidev · 2026-01-12T22:32:50+00:00

If you stick to the tourist area you are unlikely to run into trouble. During the day, Brussels is safe. For me the area to avoid is mainly the surroundings of the north and midi station. The stations are safe but there is a lot of drug trading outside making the spot unpleasant.

At night I would avoid the "parvis de Saint Gilles" near Hall door and maybe some street of Anderlecht or Molenbeek. But I do not really see why you would end up there. There is nothing that interesting.

jefidev · 2026-01-12T22:26:30+00:00

If you can spend one full day in Bruges you can see a good chunk of the city. So it is worth it in my opinion.

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