Ben van der Westhuizen

Full redesign of the Stellenbosch University CS Department website for the 2026 DevSoc Hackathon (team of three). AI-powered assistant via Claude API, ISR for CDN performance, interactive ICS calendar, and real-time site-wide search. Production-ready and live.

Full-stack health tracking platform built with a six-person team for a third-year systems project — modular-monolith Spring Boot backend, Vue 3 SPA frontend, Google OIDC auth, and Terraform-managed GCP infra with a GitLab CI/CD pipeline.

A full compilation pipeline for the WISTL teaching language — lexer, parser, semantic analyser, and JVM bytecode generator built in C.

Self-hosted infrastructure on a Raspberry Pi 5 — Pi-hole for DNS ad-blocking, Audiobookshelf, Plex media server, and Tailscale VPN for secure remote access.

Java desktop application for work-life balance featuring a Focus Mode and a workaholic filter to enforce healthy work patterns.

React + Vite web app for a third-year software engineering project brief — student login, profile management, honours lab seating reservations, and announcements.

Analyses DNA sequences to detect quasi-palindromic patterns, supporting bioinformatics research workflows.

Real-time multi-user chat application built for a third-year group project. Multi-threaded TCP server in Java handles concurrent client connections via a ClientHandler and ClientManager system for user management and message routing.

Two-player command-line board game in Python implementing core game logic — piece movement, win conditions, turn management, move validation, and a scoring system with point-sink tiles.

Bounded-knapsack solver that selects the optimal set of goods to load onto a delivery truck, maximising total sale value under volume, per-item stock, and item-count constraints, with JSON I/O and a full test suite.

Full-stack job application tracker built as a hands-on exploration of AI-assisted development — React, Express, and MongoDB monorepo scaffolded and iterated on with Claude Code, including its agents, memory, and skills to accelerate the workflow.

Java file transfer application comparing RBUDP (Reliable Blast UDP) and TCP protocols for a university network group project — custom RBUDP with burst-based transmission and NACK-driven retransmission, a JavaFX GUI, and a headless framework for evaluating both protocols.

Multi-agent simulation in Python modelling and contrasting biological foraging strategies — three agent types with distinct behaviours (individualistic search, cooperative communication, path memorisation) in a configurable 2D environment with resources and predators.

This portfolio — a responsive single-page site built with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No frameworks, no build step.