Freek Van der Herten is a PHP developer and partner at Spatie, a company based in Antwerp, Belgium. He is a Laravel enthusiast, known for creating numerous open-source packages for PHP, Laravel, and JavaScript. These packages have been downloaded over 500 million times. Freek is also a Zend Certified Engineer. He shares his insights and experiences on his blog, freek.dev, covering topics related to PHP, Laravel, and JavaScript.
At Spatie, Freek and his colleagues develop digital products and video courses such as Ray, Mailcoach, and Flare. Besides his work at Spatie, Freek is involved with Oh Dear, a monitoring tool for websites, and enjoys creating music with modular synths. He also organizes the Full Stack Europe conference. Freek has recently been exploring the use of AI in his workflow, using tools like Claude Code to triage open-source issues and PRs across Spatie's packages. He emphasizes the importance of writing skills for developers, even in the age of AI, to refine their ideas and communicate effectively.
