How did I get into software development?

I don’t know where to start. Since we lived in a village in a district of an average city in the country, computers and the internet were very far away from us. The first time I saw a computer was when I was ten years old, when I went to stay with my older sister in Istanbul and saw it with the grandchildren of my sister’s landlord. I stayed with my sister for most of that summer, visiting them whenever I could. Seeing the computer physically affected me more than seeing it on television. The desire to have a computer increased even more. It took a long time to convince my father.

When I was in middle school, I had the chance to see computers at school. Of course, we didn’t have computer classes yet. There was a class in the seventh and eighth grade. The summer I entered seventh grade, my father convinced me. We bought the computer. It was second-hand and it was a collection. Its specifications were: Pentium MMX 133 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 1.7 GB hard disk, CD-ROM, and Windows 98 as the operating system. We bought the computer, but we don’t know how to use it. The people who brought it and installed it just showed us how to turn it on and off and left. I started tinkering with it, slowly learning things, listening to music. One day the computer locked up. There was no operation. My father didn’t know how to use it either, but with a practical solution he unplugged it, plugged it in and turned it on and it worked. That’s how the summer went.

Once windows crashed. It was hard to find a person to format it. We found one and had him format it. It was not a small amount of money in the value I remember at that time. I must have paid for a computer format twice in my life. Later I figured that out too. In time, computers increased. I formatted many people’s computers for free. I never felt like asking for money. I may have been seen as a sucker by people. But I don’t care.

In the seventh grade, we started to take computer classes. We were taking small things, mostly office applications. In the eighth grade, the computer lab was opened and there were more than ten computers. That year, a computer course was also offered at our school. I attended the course. The course was more detailed than regular classes. Teachers, civil servants and an officer came to the course. It was a mixed class of adults and children. I was trying out what I saw in the course on my own computer. I also bought a floppy disk, and I saved what I did on it. Thus, the foundations of my computer knowledge were laid in this course.

Since I was a boarder in high school, I was away from my own computer. I used to use it when I went home during the holidays. Internet cafes had started to spread in those years. I used to buy informatics magazines and CDs were given with them. I used to read the magazines when I had time left over from classes and homework. I used to examine the CDs at home on vacation. It was thanks to them that I had my first coding experience. There were some about HTML. I tried them on my own computer and my curiosity about coding increased.

I remember the FrontPage application. It was used to write HTML and Classic ASP. I also started to learn Classic ASP, but I couldn’t create a real website. The summer after high school, an acquaintance from our village went to a computer course. FrontPage was also shown to them in detail. It may sound strange to many of you, but he decided to make a website for the village. He built it on his own computer and published it on a web hosting service. When we met, we started talking. We started talking about this website, we decided to continue together, and it continued during my university years. The number of users had increased. We added innovations. It was extremely enjoyable for me.

Due to some unfortunate events, I could not enter the computer engineering department first. I settled in another department but I regretted it. My main job should have been software. I tried to prepare again and won and developed my own software and found a place in this field in business life.

Computers and software are not only a job for me, but also a hobby. I now believe that when you really want something, it will happen.