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About The Coin-Operated Engineer

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I'm Adriaan van Wijk, an electronic engineer who tests satellite components by day and builds hospital scheduling software by night. Welcome to my corner of the internet where I document the journey of solving a problem that affects millions of healthcare workers – starting with my wife.

The Origin Story

Every evening at 7 PM, my wife comes home exhausted from her job as a radiographer at Groote Schuur Hospital. Not just from the work, but from schedules that seem designed by chaos itself. When I learned that someone spends 40 hours every quarter creating these schedules with Excel and pen-and-paper, I couldn't just watch anymore.

So I'm building Shepherd – scheduling software that actually respects the humans using it.

What You'll Find Here

  • Build-in-public updates: The real, unfiltered journey of a solo founder with AI tools taking on enterprise software
  • Technical deep-dives: How Claude Code and I are building what normally takes a team of 10 to do
  • Healthcare insights: What I'm learning about the medical world from the inside
  • Startup lessons: The failures, victories, and 2 AM revelations
  • Occasional rants: About Bluetooth gate openers and other problems that won't let me go

Why "Coin-Operated"?

The inspiration came from a story about a senior engineer who described themselves as "coin-operated" – brilliant and technical at work, but at home? Just gardening. No side projects, no open source contributions, no coding "just for fun." Unless someone inserted a coin (paid them), they were off duty.

When I read that, I realized I'm the complete opposite. I'm the engineer who comes home from testing satellite components and immediately starts obsessing over which theme library I want to use for my project. The one who spends countless weekends trying get accurate Bluetooth proximity detection working in real world conditions. The one who can't see a problem without itching to solve it.

I'm not coin-operated – I'm passion-operated. But I loved the irony of the name. Plus, "The Passion-Operated Engineer" sounds like a romance novel, and "The Can't-Stop-Won't-Stop Engineer" is just exhausting to say.

So here we are: The Coin-Operated Engineer – running on passion, not payments.

Join the Journey

This isn't just another tech blog. It's the documentation of one engineer's attempt to give healthcare workers their lives back, 40 hours at a time.

If you're a healthcare worker tired of bad scheduling, a developer curious about AI-assisted development, or someone who just enjoys watching David take on Goliath – subscribe and follow along.

The pilot (episode, but also the actual pilot) starts soon with 30+ radiographers. This is either going to be spectacular or spectacularly educational. Probably a bit of both.

Want to connect? Drop me a line at hello@glyphsystems.co.za - I read every single email personally.

P.S. – If your hospital still uses WhatsApp groups, notebooks, or caveman style stone tablets for shift swaps, we definitely need to talk.