Computing history of Yusuf Erdogan

Early Days

I think everything started from the day that I started to disassemble my toys. DC toy motor was my favourite. I started to dissemble my toys and tried to create new ones. Especially toy cars used to contain a lot of gears and dc toy motors. My DC adapter and my DC toy motors were things that I spent my day with. Then I started to hear about game consoles and commodore. I cried a lot for a commodore but then I only get a hand held tetris :) (Around 1992 when I was 9 y/o). There was not much to do with tetris and after a while I get my first 8 bit Atari game console (around 1994). It made me busy for a while but still it was not giving me chance to modify things and come with something new. After that I get my next 16 bit game console and that was the time when I met with Mario Brothers(around 1996). Not so much later I got a hand-held Nintendo and that was the time I learned about Fifa series of EA Sports, I guess it was Fifa 97. During those years I was always longing for a PC but my father was refusing me in case I stop studying my lessons.

First 3D Game

After a year, a friend of mine showed me his PC and Fifa 98, that was the moment I saw a 3D game for the first time. When I saw Fifa 98 I completely lost myself with its fascinating graphics, I was like in heaven as someone who lived in 2D world till then. I wanted nothing but to have a PC but still no chance. I couldn’t get a PC but I got a Sega game console, but it was still working with game cards, it was not even using CDs.

First Computer

During my middle school and high school even though I did not have a computer I was always buying PC magazines, and trying to learn about computers. I knew about DOS and Windows 95 but didn’t know about Linux or GNU. Then in 08.07.2000 I got my firstcomputer, it was my second year in high school and I very clearly remember that day. I couldn’t sleep before night we were going to get my first computer. It was a Compaq Presario PC and it had Intel Pentium III 550Mhz CPU, 128Mb Ram, 20Gb HDD, and it was coming with Windows 98. (It is exactly same as seen on the right.) That day is the day my life has changed. My dreams came true, I was going to be able play latest games and even create my own programs and web sites. I got a 56Kbps dial-up account and I was able surf from home. My first games were Fifa 2000 and Need For Speed.

First Programming, First Entrepreneurship

Not so much later I got bored of playing games, and I heard about PHP. PHP was the first programming language I started to play with. I was able code pretty complex portal components around 2001. I was reading about PHP a lot and I was inspecting lots of example codes from all over the web. I learned about MySQL and SQL, I also tried ASP but I liked PHP more. After a while in 2001 I created a complete web portal for the city I live in. (Thanks to www.archive.org: www.elbistannet.com) I was planning make money via getting advertisement from local stores. (As can be seen from the right side panel of the archived page, that section was reserved for ads.) That portal had game reviews that I write, some computer related how-to topics like fdisk, cd cloning etc, some local news, polls, mail subscription, free mail sending service, it had a forum that I setted up one of those ready to use forums (I guess it was PHPBB), and it had some other components that I can’t remember very clearly. With a friend of mine, we bought a spray and sprayed the web address of the portal around the city, I think it was getting a few hundreds of visitors in a month which doesn’t sound much now, but around those days people didn’t have many computers or internet in my city. I was able log IPs of visitors and I was able watch my visitors. I knew about changing IPs and I implemented a timer so I could use it for my polls, since I knew that people can delete their cookies. It was a very primitive way of watching visitors but that was my own algorithm and that was what was capable of during that time. Anyway I couldn’t make my portal make money, I just didn’t go and ask stores/shops if they want to advertise in my portal, I though I should concentrate on my university exams.And also I tried other programming languages like C and VB, I even had a very useful VB application that can log my dial-up internet usage, since dial-up was quite expensive and I needed to be careful with using it (Hmm I think I was using winsock to detect becoming online). Finally I was feeling just like I was dissembling my own toys and trying to come up with new ones…

University

Around those days I was preparing for university exams and my only aim was computer engineering. From like 1995 while I was 12-13 y/o I knew about computer engineering and I have always dreamed about it and targeted it, even though my parents were advising me to become a doctor, I never liked that idea. In 2001 I took the university exams. My results was not good enough to get a computer engineering department since I used computer more than pencil and paper, then I decided to code less and wait and study for 1 more year and try again. In 2002 I got the exam again and among around 1.5 million students I was in like first 5000 and that meant that I could get computer engineering study in one of the preeminent universities. So I was going school as who had already know about PHP, ASP, VB, MySQL, SQL, and even about Linux. First year was English preparation year, we just studied English for one year since the department was %100 English. It was very useful for both my English and getting used to to a new city. Following 4 years passed quickly and I learned a lot of things about computers and programming and had great memories. Most of the time I get good results from core computer science classes but my grades were terrible when it comes to classes like history or Turkish literature. But again I always targeted getting enough results to pass classes. I never had great exam results. On the other hand I had better successes like getting good internships or successful projects.

Working Years and Now

I worked part time and as freelance programmer during my university years. But my best working experience during university years was my internship in Germany. I worked three months in Dresden, Germany for SeeReal. Later on I worked part time for AGC. Right after I graduated I started working for Innova, and finally since May 2009 I am working for IBM. Life is fast, by the time it has been a bit more than 10 years in front of computers, 16 years if I count game consoles in…