Felienne Hermans
Born 1984 · Age 41
Dutch computer scientist focused on programming education and end-user computing (spreadsheets). Professor of Computer Science Education; creator of the Hedy teaching language; author of The Programmer's Brain; active MOOC author, speaker and outreach leader.
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Life & Career Timeline
Master of Science (Computer Science), Eindhoven University of Technology (estimated)
Received MSc in computer science from Eindhoven University of Technology (year not specified in sources; date estimated based on career timeline).
TEDxDelft Talk: "What Archimedes has to say about spreadsheets"
Delivered a TEDx talk in Delft on spreadsheets (TEDxDelft published video 2011-11-29).
Appointed Assistant Professor at TU Delft; Headed Spreadsheet Lab
After her PhD she was appointed assistant professor at Delft University of Technology and headed the Spreadsheet Lab, focusing on end-user computing and spreadsheet analysis.
PhD in Software Engineering, Delft University of Technology
Defended PhD thesis "Analyzing and visualizing spreadsheets" (Delft University of Technology). DOI listed in thesis record.
Self-published e-book: Scratch: Maak je eigen games
Self-published a book (pressbook) on creating games with Scratch for children (pressbooks listing; date not always explicit).
Co-organiser: Joy of Coding conference (start of multi-year involvement)
Co-organiser of the annual Joy of Coding conference in the Netherlands; profiles indicate multi-year leadership (notes indicate she ran it for about six years).
Founded Infotron (TU Delft research spin-off) — founder & former CEO (date unsourced)
Founder and former CEO of Infotron, a TU Delft research spin-off implementing spreadsheet risk assessment software (Wikipedia states this but date is not provided).
Spoke at StrangeLoop conference: "Spreadsheets for developers"
Gave a conference talk at StrangeLoop (video dated 2014-09-21).
Started producing MOOCs (edX) on programming and Scratch
Began producing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for teachers and children (edX listing 2014).
Board member: Devnology Nederland (approx.)
Served as a board member at Devnology Nederland, an organisation for software developers (dates not explicitly provided).
GOTO conference speaker (multiple)
Delivered "Spreadsheets for Developers" / related talks at GOTO (video references for 2015).
Press coverage on spreadsheet risks
Featured in mainstream press (Telegraph, Financial Times) about spreadsheet errors and risk—raising profile of her spreadsheet research.
Begun shifting research focus to programming education
After work with spreadsheets, she shifted focus toward programming education and how children learn programming (gradual transition post-PhD; explicit by mid‑2010s).
Host on Software Engineering Radio (SE Radio) — host role begins
Became a host of SE Radio (Wikipedia states 'Since 2016').
Talk at NDC London: "Functional programming in Excel"
Presented at NDC London (NDC listing 2016-04-09).
Spoke at DDD Europe — domain driven design conference
Participated as speaker at DDD Europe (conference listing).
Wharton-QS Gold Education Award for online data analysis course (Europe)
Her online data analysis MOOC was awarded the Wharton-QS gold education award for best education innovation project entry in Europe (TU Delft publicity Jan 2016).
IEEE Software article published (May 2017)
Published a short piece in IEEE Software (Peter Hilton on Naming credited to Hermans, May 2017 issue).
Started programming lessons program for Rotterdam elementary students
Launched a program to provide programming lessons to elementary students in Rotterdam (reported May 3, 2017).
SURF Education Award (SURF Onderwijsprijs) winner
Won the SURF Education Award for contributions to ICT education (November 2017 announcements and TU Delft coverage).
Open Education Award for Excellence (2018)
Received the Open Education Consortium's Open Education Award for Excellence (TU Delft press 22 Feb 2018).
MOOCs reached 250,000+ enrollments (by 2018)
Her MOOCs for children and teachers attracted over 250,000 enrollments (Open Education Award write-up, 2018).
Tech Inspirator Award at Techionista Awards
Awarded the Tech Inspirator Award in 2018 (Techionista Awards listing).
Started teaching one day/week at Lyceum Kralingen (high school)
Began high-school teaching in Rotterdam (Lyceum Kralingen) as part of outreach and hands‑on teaching practice; timeframe described in interviews around this period.
Referee at FIRST Lego League Challenge
Served as a referee at FIRST Lego League events where children build robots from Lego (Wikipedia references involvement; date range unspecified).
Moved toward a new university appointment (Leiden / promotion discussions)
Following cultural fit issues at TU Delft, she engaged with other universities and accepted a position (profile later shows associate professor at Leiden University).
Began building Hedy prototype during Christmas break
Built the first small prototype of the Hedy programming language (a gradual, multi-lingual teaching language) over Christmas 2019–Jan 2020.
Hedy: defined as 'trainer-wheels' textual language with final subset equal to Python
Design decision and product-level milestone: Hedy implemented as levels of increasing syntactic strictness ending in a functioning Python subset (explicit design goal in interviews).
Public release of early Hedy (web-based) and open source on GitHub
Released the first web-hosted Hedy prototype (hosted on a Heroku URL) and opened the project on GitHub; uptake accelerated during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Hedy usage milestone: 100,000 programs created (end of 2020)
By the end of 2020, about 100,000 programs had been created using Hedy (reported in interviews describing early usage and analytics).
Built Hedy multi-language support; began non-English language expansion
Added support for multiple human languages after user studies showed children prefer programming in their own language (Dutch first, then French, Spanish, German, etc.).
Speaker & program committee roles at ICSE and other conferences
Listed as an ICSE contributor and committee member (ICSE 2020 profile) and continued program committee/service at many conferences (ICFP/SPLASH, SIGCSE, etc.).
Hedy open-source community contributions accelerate
During COVID-19 many contributors began improving Hedy on GitHub; community contributions and feedback drove rapid iteration throughout 2020.
Increased hosting costs and scaling challenges for Hedy
Rapid uptake caused hosting and scaling cost challenges; husband helped with optimisations (personal anecdote describing scaling pain points).
Hedy used as at-home programming resource during COVID-19
During lockdown many parents and children used Hedy as an at-home tool for learning textual programming; the project saw a surge of home usage.
Hedy iteration driven by data mining of common errors
Used analytics on student programs to identify common errors and inform language/UX changes—allowed rapid evidence-driven iteration in 2020.
Started weekly column on BNR radio and writes for De Ingenieur / AG Connect
Has a weekly column on the Dutch radio station BNR Zakendoen; writes a quarterly column for De Ingenieur and has written for AG Connect (timing around 2021 profile info).
Dutch Prize for ICT Research (NWO) recipient
Awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT Research (NWO) in January 2021 for her contributions to ICT research and education.
Publication: The Programmer's Brain (Manning)
Authored and published The Programmer's Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition (Manning, August 2021).
The Programmer's Brain translated into multiple languages (publisher listings)
Manning lists translations for The Programmer's Brain (Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese); translations typically occur after the original release.
Co-author: Communications of the ACM paper on learning for software developers (2023)
Co-authored "10 Things Software Developers Should Learn about Learning" in Communications of the ACM (2023).
Co-editor: ACM Transactions on Computing Education (role cited in profiles)
Listed as a co-editor of the ACM Transactions on Computing Education in conference/author profiles (exact start date unspecified).
Head of the Programming Education Research Lab (PERL); Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (current role)
Listed as full professor of Computer Science Education at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and head of PERL (sources list VU Amsterdam affiliation and headship as of 2024).
Invited talk: "A case for feminism in PL design" — University of Glasgow
Delivered invited talk at the University of Glasgow exploring diversity and feminism in programming language design (20 June 2024).
Hedy multi-lingual reach: translated into 47 human languages (reported)
Hedy reported as translated into 47 languages (ETAPS blog/interview material describing Hedy's multi-lingual expansion and cultural design goals).
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