About Me

I write about architecture, distributed systems, and practical software engineering with honest lessons.

The curious kid (1998)

I was around 11 years old when I first watched someone build a web page in FrontPage. That initial spark of curiosity quickly gave way to basketball and video games, as it does. I later attended university for engineering while working full-time, constantly struggling to balance academics with a growing interest in building things on the web.

The long detour

Before software, I worked as a food and documentary photographer and designer in Istanbul. Around 2015, I discovered CS50 on edX, which fundamentally changed how I think about problems, even though I never finished it, work kept getting in the way. I explored frontend, backend, design, game development, and a dozen other things before finally finding direction in 2021.

The fears

I spent a long time convinced I was too late, not smart enough, and that there were too many people already better than me. The only thing that helped was doing the work anyway. Eventually I understood: everyone lives their own timeline.

The career change

I relocated from Istanbul to London and started my own one man creative agency business. After 7 years, i completed the TechSwitch bootcamp, a programme designed for career changers. That led to my first full-time engineering role. I now work across full-stack development, cloud architecture, and distributed systems.

Where I am now

Three years into my professional engineering career. I work with .NET, React, Azure, Django, Python, and AWS day to day. I hold an Azure Developer Associate certification. Chasing AWS these days.

I have dyslexia, something I’ve come to see as genuinely useful for systems thinking. I have to draw and understand something deeply before I can explain it at all, which means I rarely paper over the gaps.

Things I work with

Why this blog exists

I’m sharing what I’m learning as I go: backend architecture, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and production lessons learned the hard way.

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” - Yoda