Casper Smets

$ cat about.md

Casper Smets

software engineering · distributed systems · devops · ai · netherlands

I'm Casper, a 21-year-old ICT student at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, currently in the Artificial Intelligence semester.

Before Fontys I did the Expert IT program (System Administration) at Summa College, which is where my love for infrastructure started. These days I mostly build software, and I like it best when it runs on hardware I manage myself: microservice platforms, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, and everything needed to keep that observable and secure. This site is self-hosted too.

What I'm working on

  • Federation, my self-hosted, Discord-style communication platform, which I keep running and improving for my friends and me
  • Group projects in computer vision and machine learning as part of my AI semester

Where I'm heading

I'm aiming for a graduation project in artificial intelligence, preferably research-oriented with a strong software side, and I'm looking into doing a master's in AI after that.

Interests

Software architecture · distributed systems · DevOps & self-hosting · security · artificial intelligence

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Journey

  1. Before Fontys

    MBO Expert IT (System Administration), Summa College

    Where my interest in infrastructure, networking and self-hosting started.

  2. Semesters 1–3

    Fontys ICT: Software

    Object-oriented design, full-stack web development and my first client projects. Projects: WatchDB, TALPA for CGI, and EVE.

  3. Autumn 2025

    Internship (semester 5)

    Software development internship.

  4. Spring 2026

    Fontys ICT: Advanced Software (semester 6)

    Complex architecture, security and performance at scale. Built Federation and the BDO Transient Package Updater, and did federated learning research for Art-IE.

  5. Autumn 2026 – now

    Fontys ICT: Artificial Intelligence (semester 7)

    Deep learning, computer vision and reinforcement learning, working towards a graduation project in AI.