Breaking Up With WordPress After Two Decades
Around Black Friday last November, I moved my website from SiteGround to Bluehost. This was not some ambitious infrastructure decision. SiteGround wanted roughly five times more...
In English
Posts written in English.
Your Work Introduces You
Years ago, when I first joined Tripadvisor, we had a tool that moved data to Amazon Redshift. One of the engineers went on holiday, the tool had a few bugs, and people were bloc...
Trial By Fire
Teams spend months hiring a strong candidate. Sourcing, interviews, debriefs, approvals, compensation, notice period. Everyone treats the hire like a serious investment. Then th...
The Dude
It was during my college years that I saw the Big Lebowski for the first time. Within days, my friends and I were calling each other “dude”. Living in Turkey, despite Englishspe...
Why Headcount Math Lies
In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published and helped cement one of management’s oldest instincts. In simple terms, break work into measurable units, optimize for efficiency, a...
Capacity Is the Roadmap
When I was young, I worked in carpentry during the summers. Summer was busy. New buildings had to go up. Stables needed repairs. Barns needed extensions. Sheds had to be built o...
The Roadmap Is Not the System
A few years ago, my father decided to build a house in the . On the surface, it was easy to like the idea. A quiet place. A porch. A garden. Somewhere to disappear for a while....
Torres del Paine W Trek
Torres del Paine was easily one of the hardest and most rewarding hiking trips I have ever done. From the outside, it looks like one of those perfect dream adventures. Jagged to...
Escaping Status Theater
I still think about one migration project where everything was green until the final month. We did not have the luxury of extending the deadline. This was tied to external regul...
Incentives Drive Everything
In early modern France, the monarchy kept running into the same problem. Wars were expensive, revenue was not steady, and every obvious solution came with a political price. New...
Scaling Culture Without Dilution
As organizations grow across geographies, one thing becomes disproportionately important. Culture. We, engineers, often dismiss culture as soft and cushy. This is until you see...
What Good Looks Like
A few companies back, my manager and I inherited a group of teams after layoffs. Confidence was already low. People didn't believe in the systems we maintained. Stakeholders los...
Why Airport Security Feels Random
I’m about to take yet another flight, this time flying to India. I’m excited, but then I can’t seem to pass the thought of why the heck security checks are so random. I had to c...
Why Politics Appear
Ancient Athens did not solve uncertainty with better communication. They solved it by removing people. Once a year, citizens gathered to vote on exile. Not for crimes. Not for f...
How to Work with Me
In 1935, Boeing had a new bomber prototype, the Model 299, which later became the B17. It was impressive, and it was also easy to mess up because it had more switches and steps...
The Janus Protocol
In the Roman Forum, there was a small shrine with double doors. When Rome was at war, the doors were left open. When Rome was at peace, the doors were closed. It is an oddly mod...
Multi-Horizon Delivery Framework
If you’ve been in leadership for a while, you know the drill: a line manager reports team progress along with the PM, anyone above reviews it in cadence and sees how things are...
What Good Execution Looks Like
The other day I was talking with one of my directs. We ended up discussing something we’ve both learned over the years. When execution works, the environment is quiet. Not slow....
Managing Your Manager
Managers change more often than you realize, especially when a company is growing or downsizing. New roles, new org charts, new reporting lines. Other times, you’re shopping aro...
Why Kingdom of Heaven’s Director’s Cut Is Better
It was another lazy Sunday. And I like them at this point. You start to appreciate them more and more. I let YouTube’s algorithm land me on a few chess videos. Later, it pushed...
AI Broke Interviews
Interviewing has always been a big can of worms in the software industry. For years, big tech has gone with the LeetCode style questions mixed with a few behavioural and rounds....
Most of What We Call Progress
Most of what we call progress in software is just motion. New tools, new frameworks, same problems. Maybe fancier logos. Our industry always has this collective thrill that a ne...
Managers Have Been Vibe Coding All Along
Everyone’s been talking about vibe coding lately. I’ve been doing it myself. two projects. and . It’s the kind of work where you don’t analyze, architect, or overthink. You star...
Stop Wasting Brainpower
How many times have you found yourself saying: “I worked all day, but I didn’t get anything done.” I know, we have all been there. We feel bad about it, too. On the surface, it...
Why Over-Engineering Happens
If you’ve worked in software long enough, you’ve probably seen it: a CRUD app serving a handful of users, deployed on a Kubernetes cluster with half the CNCF landscape stitched...
Prisoner's Dilemma
On September 3, 1949, a weather plane was flying over Japan. It detected traces of radioactive isotopes. These elements decay quickly, which means they had been created recently...
Climbing No More
Engineers have been reaching a common ceiling in their careers for decades. The pattern goes like this: an individual contributor gets promoted to a senior software engineer, an...
The Weekly Win
If you happen to work for a large organization, you’ve probably heard of quarterly checkins or some similar corporate buzzword to describe what you’ve done and what you could ha...
Mevlana Candy
When I was a child, Rumi wasn’t a philosopher or a poet for me. He was candy. Every once in a while, a relative from Konya would visit and bring Mevlana şekeri. The rock sugar a...
Brewing Turkish Tea
I love Turkish tea. If I go too long without it, especially while traveling, I start to miss it badly. It’s an addiction I have no intention of fixing. When I talk to nonTurkish...
Onboarding Your Engineering Manager
Bringing on a new leader to your organization is always tricky. It starts with . Then comes the real part. Onboarding! I always think bringing in a new leader without context is...
Technical Deep Dives
When someone asks for a technical deep dive, they don’t care if . They want proof that you actually understand the beast you’ve built. Can you walk me through the system like yo...
Building Remote Teams
You've probably heard stories of big tech companies in US and hiring double that number in India, blaming AI for the shift. Everyone's first thought is likely cheap labor. While...
From Idea to Launch in 2 Weeks
Everyone’s been talking about LLMs. I didn’t want to be too late to the party. When everyone’s talking about doomsdays scenarios, I just wanted to see for myself. As an engineer...
Reflecting on Software Engineering Handbook
One year. May 2024. Back then, we were riding high, celebrating the launch of this with an amazing . Five days of glaciers and waterfalls, finally enjoying the fact that we fini...
Representing the Business
The other day, someone asked me why we even need managers. What do they actually do? I think it’s a fair question, and honestly, people get it wrong a lot. You can throw usual f...
New Manager Survival Guide
Alright, this is gonna be a long one. And not just a onetime thing. I'll keep updating it as I write more about leadership. I’ll try to link everything I’ve written before. This...
Chasing Real Respect
You can fake a lot of things in business. Authority. Expertise. Competence. But you can’t fake certain , like respect. Think about the managers you’ve had in the past. The good...
The Invisible Difference
There are plenty of skills you can pick up along the way. Some come from , some through experience. A lot of it is just trial and error. And some from . You figure things out su...
Learning the Johari Window
When I wrote this piece on , I focused on the practical side: clarity, motivation, breaking down complexity. But here’s the thing. Even the clearest goal doesn't mean much if yo...
Management is a Lonely Place
Yes, it is. If you’re in it, you already know. It sucks. You can’t talk to your boss about many things because, let’s be honest, they probably don’t have that much time to hear...
Simple Task Management
I don’t have the best memory. Hell, I barely remember what I did yesterday. Over the years, I’ve tried countless apps to track my tasks, but most of them are too complex. Signin...
AI Balance in Work
I use AI, you use AI, and almost everyone uses AI. I don’t think that’s going to change. But how should we use it? I’ve seen people turn five bullet points into three pages — I...
PIP Manager Insights
I remember one of my directs stepping into a new manager role, only to inherit a team with one or two employees who just weren’t cutting it. From day one, it was a challenge. He...
Engineering Manager Interview Preparation
Layoffs seem to be everywhere these days. You scroll through feeds, and it’s another round of cuts, another company restructuring. If you're a seasoned manager, losing your role...
Work-Life Balance as a Manager
As an IC, you close your laptop at 6 PM, log off, and forget about the work unless you are oncall. As a manager, you check Slack at 10 PM because someone might need you. Your ca...
Bridging the Management Disconnect
I’ve seen this happen over and over. A successful engineer . They are eager to build great teams and support their people. They know some of the leaders before didn't do that. T...
Tech Hiring Bubble Bursts
I wasn’t around in the 90s, but people who were say it was incredible. If you could code, you were set. Talent was rare. There were almost everywhere. In the 2000s and early 201...
Traits for EMs
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many managers, and mentored a few. I was fortunate enough to learn from some great bosses. When I think about it, I feel li...
Simple Acts of Recognition Matter
I once worked with a brilliant software engineer who quietly solved a major system issue in the middle of the night. By morning, no one even noticed there had been a crisis. Bus...
The Question I Ask Every New Report
When I take on a new management role, whether it’s through a reorganization, succession, or stepping into a new organization, I make it a priority to ask this question in my fir...
The Reality of an Employer's Market
Lately, Iʼve seen a lot of posts about what employers should do or how they should treat candidates, what benefits they should offer, and how they should run their interviews. I...
Bridging Ideals and Reality
Have you ever been in an engineering discussion where someone starts pointing out all the ideals and how much the company sucks? Complaining about all the mistakes the company m...
Hiring Red Flags
Hiring is tough. It's one of the most important tasks a manager faces while growing their team. The problem with hiring is that a bad hire can significantly impact you financial...
Why The Godfather Is So Damn Good
I recently stumbled upon The Godfather while scrolling through a movie list. I figured, why not take a peek? Well, that "peek" turned into watching the whole damn movie again. A...
Subteam Tenets
Over the years, working across multiple organizations, I developed the concept of subteam tenets. I’ve tweaked it along the way to fit each company's unique quirks, but I still...
No Fluff Please
I've seen countless socalled resume coaches who stuff resumes with flashy buzzwords like 'scalable' and 'fast.' It's all fluff, and it doesn't land real results. A truly impactf...
Losing a Top Performer
Over time, I had to manage and help to manage many times when a top performer quits. It sucks but we need to be reasonable. Imagine you’re on a winning streak, your top striker,...
Balancing Act of Reliability
Software development involves both creating and maintaining systems. Once you put anything into production, reliability becomes critical. When your systems are not reliable, you...
Building Trust in Engineering Teams
We all know that transparency builds trust. The lack of it? Well, that can lead to major issues. Engineers sometimes join teams and, from the start, struggle with trust. It’s as...
Ideal Number of Direct Reports
Amazon’s likely comes from a closer look at ratios. Were there too many managers with only 23 direct reports? That’s entirely possible. From my time at AWS, I didn’t see this mu...
Overriding a People Leader’s Decision
When managing managers or leaders, there will be times when you feel that the right course of action differs from their opinion. It could be related to rating an employee, decid...
From Misperception to Promotion
If you are in the realm of management, sooner or later, you will encounter someone who wants a promotion but isn’t quite ready for it. In fact, I have seen many cases where the...
Perception vs Perspective
Have you ever found yourself questioning someone's decision, only to realize later that you didn't have the full picture? You know it's really easy to get caught up in our own w...
Setting Goals
One thing I've learned over the years is that humans naturally don't have a longterm mindset. Without clear goals, it's easy to lose track of what we want to achieve. Defining g...
From Engineer to Manager
I often get asked whether someone should transition into management. In the past, this might have been the only viable growth path. However, in most large organizations today, t...
Getting Delegation Right
In software business, leaders often need to delegate the work. Yet, I have seen leaders struggle with it, often saying, “I try to delegate, but it never quite works.” The truth...
Interviewing Your Future Boss
I’m sure you have been asked if you have any questions during interviews. A few things come to mind. Often, we think we need to impress the other party. Nevertheless, tough ques...
Celebrating Our Book in Iceland
To celebrate the release of our new book, , Ender and I took a nice trip to Iceland. Here’s a relaxed recap of our fiveday journey. Day 1: The Golden Circle We kicked off our tr...
Operational Skills Needed
Over the years, I've interviewed many candidates. One crucial skill that often gets overlooked is operational reflexes during oncalls. Surprisingly, few companies test for this,...
On Writing Software Engineering Handbook
I’m thrilled to share the story behind our newly published book with you. This project has been a labor of friendship and collaboration, and I hope our journey resonates with yo...
Charlie Munger Quotes
I got to know more about Charlie Munger in the last 10 years. His name came up with Berkshire. I knew he had been in the industry, but I wasn’t really into investing. I apprecia...
Working with Dependencies
If you are part of a large organization, the term "dependencies” probably means more than . In a big organization, when we talk about "dependencies," we're diving into more than...
From Las Vegas to Canyons
Last Friday, I flew to Las Vegas, not for the casinos, but for an adventure that promised the raw beauty of the American Southwest. I went to the hotel and crashed. My journey i...
Navigating Layoffs
In the last few years, companies have begun laying off talent, leading to tough and depressing times for many. Some layoffs came as a big surprise, especially from companies tha...
Handling Competitive Dynamics
A healthy level of competition can fuel innovation, drive individuals to excel, and push teams to achieve remarkable results. However, when competition crosses the line and beco...
A Weekend Getaway to Malta
Last weekend, I swapped the cold Dublin for the Mediterranean sun with a trip to Malta. My journey started on Friday evening. I left Dublin at 7 pm and, after a few hours in the...
Engineering Health Essentials
Engineering health is a term that deserves far more attention than it receives. Sustainable software development is not only about the features we ship or the speed at which we...
Should Dev Managers Code?
As someone who's been navigating the world of software development for a while, I often think about what it really means to be a good development manager. It's a bit like being...
Confronting Life's Storms
Life isn't easy for anyone. Everyone finds themselves navigating through a series of unpredictable challenges. Our unique journeys get punctuated by challenges that test our res...
Winning Eleven
Here's 'Winning Eleven,' my own mix of eleven key ideas that have helped me grow both at work and in life. This isn't your usual list of tips. It's more like a collection of rea...
Kindness is A Choice
Discussing leadership, we often overlook kindness, focusing more on power and wealth. Yet in reality, the leaders who leave a lasting impact are the ones who choose humanity ove...
Leading from Where You Are
When we were building Areca, a realtime billing engine for Turk Telekom, we were a small team competing against giants like Amdocs. They had the brand recognition, the scale, an...
The Subtle Art of Listening
At its essence, leadership is not about big speeches or decisive commands. It’s about listening. I know it sounds like a cliché but think about how many times you’ve sat with so...
Coding in Leadership
When you start coding, you start the adventure. It feels like unlocking a new world of logic and creativity. From programming classes where we tried to solve pyramid programs to...
The Power of Consistency
One of my friends from primary school didn’t go to high school. At first, it was a bit surprising, but his family was making kebap, and he wanted to run the family business. Bec...
The Making of a Leader
Leadership, in my eyes, has always been a blend of natural inclination and learned skills. Reflecting on my own path to becoming a leader, I've realized it's not just about inna...
The Path to Leadership
Leadership is not a position. It is a journey that changes how you see yourself and the people around you. You begin as an individual contributor, focused on your own craft. Ove...
Embracing TikTok
I've had a TikTok account for a while. I was a passive scroller. But, today I made my first video based on . It's about how building a great team is like cooking a good meal. Yo...
Talent Sourcing Journey
Talent sourcing is one of those things everyone claims to understand until they actually have to do it. On paper, it sounds simple: find great people, hire them, done. But anyon...
Leading Self Managing Teams
When I first started leading teams, I thought being a good manager meant being everywhere. I felt like checking every ticket, joining every status update and so on. I got exhaus...
Cracking Coding Bottlenecks
In software development, we obsess over component benchmarks and algorithmic complexity, chasing milliseconds latency and BigO wins. But, time and after time, I’ve found that th...
Quick Reflexes in Decision Making
In the fastmoving world of software development, decisions rarely wait for me to feel ready. I’ve lost count of how many times I wished for more data, more clarity, more time bu...
Achieve More by Meeting Less
Meetings are part of leadership. We need them to align and understand. Yet, we often do it at the expense of action. The success lies in the milestones achieved. In essence, "Fe...
The Metamorphosis of Iron Mike
Just like everyone else, I know Mike Tyson's for his performance in the ring. I got into martial arts, so I watched videos of Mike. While enjoying him knocking boxers out, I the...
Becoming a Rockstar Engineer
In the software development realm, people often debate about 10x engineers or rockstars. But what does that really mean? How can you become one? There isn’t an easy answer, but...
A Weekend in Amsterdam
This week, Ender and I checked out Amsterdam. It was pretty neat. We landed on Friday night and zipped straight to our hotel in an Uber. After dumping our bags, we hit the city...
Leadership Archetypes
I’ve had all kinds of bosses over the years. Some of them were visionaries. Some others were quiet geniuses. One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to survive and maybe even...
Turning Defensiveness Into Growth
As a leader, part of the job is helping people grow. That usually means giving feedback. And while we often picture feedback as a simple “I share, you listen,” the truth is it o...
Silent Guardians of Quality
In the realm of software development, testers are the silent guardians. Their role is often misunderstood and underappreciated, especially when they do their job so well that no...
Why You Should Read More Code
In university, I have master students studying software engineering. I often ask them one question: how do authors become authors? Do they suddenly start writing great novels in...
Restful Sleep: The Ultimate Debugger
Coding can be tough. Even the best get stuck with tricky errors. But many forget one helpful trick: sleep. Software engineers often work late. We get so into our work, we think,...
Embrace the Unknowns
Why do we often stick to what's familiar? It's simple: it feels safe. However, staying in our comfort zone means missing out on intriguing experiences. Think about the thrill of...
Hiring Harmony
Building an allstar team is a bit like cooking a nice dish. It's less about throwing in a lot of ingredients. It’s more about using just the right ones to create something truly...
Estimation Accuracy
Estimating software projects is basically the tech equivalent of arguing about Irish weather. Everyone has an opinion, nobody really knows anything, and the forecast changes all...
Why Legacy Systems Are Worth Your Time
I know. When you hear legacy, you think , , weird edge cases, and “what the hell just broke now.” Every moment feels frustrating. You don’t know what the next change will trigge...
Why Metrics Don’t Equal Quality
In 1902, Hanoi was drowning in rats. The government was getting nervous about plague. Hence, the city put a bounty per rat tail. Suddenly, the system had a scoreboard, something...
A Sunny Day in Edinburgh
At 4:45 am, my alarm rang and I got ready quickly to catch my flight from Dublin to Edinburgh. I reached the airport at the optimum time. The flight took only 45 minutes. I took...
Life's Compounding Effect
The principle of compounding is a concept most often tethered to the world of finance. We understand it as the cycle where an investment earns interest, and then that interest e...
Hiking Trip to Errigal Mountain and The Stairway to Heaven
On May 20th, we set out from Dublin at 6:30 pm, embarking on a memorable hiking adventure to Errigal Mountain and the Stairway to Heaven. The trip began with a peaceful drive to...
Passing Through Bulgaria
During my recent trip to Bulgaria, I was fortunate enough to explore some of the most stunning and historically significant sites this beautiful country has to offer. From the b...
Blessington Greenway Trail
The Blessington Greenway Trail is a hidden gem in the heart of the Wicklow countryside, offering a delightful escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The picturesque...
Quotes from Ali
Muhammad Ali was not just a boxing legend but also a social and cultural icon. He was known for his charismatic personality and his ability to use words as powerfully as he used...
Teaching Software Engineering
As a software engineering instructor, I’ve taught a diverse group of master’s students with varying technical backgrounds. Not everyone comes in with the same level of expertise...
Visiting Vienna in January
Vienna is a city steeped in history and culture, and no trip to the city would be complete without visiting some of its most famous palaces and churches. I decided to go to Vien...
Pamukkale, Ephesus, Bodrum
On my last visit to Turkey, I had a chance to visit the western part of Turkey, specifically Pamukkale, Ephesus, and Bodrum. I spent a day in each of the cities. I think a day w...
System Design Interviewing Tips
System design interviews are inherently subjective. Outcomes depend on many factors, including the backgrounds of both the interviewer and the candidate. Even if both have exper...
Lough Ouler in May
The hike for lough ouler is one of those that can get tricky. The terrain is boggy. It can get slippery. I saw many people lose their balance and go directly into the mud. If yo...
Fusilli with Yogurt
I have liked the fusilli with yogurt since my college years. It's simple yet a very interesting combination. It takes a very little amount of time to prepare. It's delicious. Le...
Engineering Strategy and Planning
Strategy is a word that's often used but rarely understood. Ask ten people what it means, and you'll get ten different answers. I often see people confuse it with , a quarterly...
Data as a Product is a Promise
Domaindriven design (DDD) has been around for quite a long time. In short, DDD focuses on domain to match domain requirements. One of the pillars of DDD is bounded context. A bo...
Update Statements on Production
Executing update statements on a production database is always a big challenge. It’s one of those tasks that looks deceptively simple until something breaks in ways you didn’t i...
Engineering Roles and Responsibilities
Engineering organizations have roles and responsibilities either explicitly or implicitly. When it’s explicit, one or more people exercise the engineering role, and the responsi...
Essential Engineering Principles
Engineering principles give teams a practical foundation for how to build and operate software. They guide decisions, shape behaviours, and help groups stay aligned even as syst...
Pulling the Plug from a Project
Every project starts with high hopes to deliver one or more business values. The team begins with the requirement analysis and then carries on with design and development. On th...
Addressing Technical Debt
Tech debt occurs when we solve a software problem with our limited understanding of the business at the time. We start building a solution to get feedback as early as possible....
Building a Technical Vision
A technical vision is the compass of an engineering organization. It sets the longterm direction. I believe it should define the "why" and "where" behind the technical choices t...
Manager as a Service
What would a manager as a service look like? What kind of systems would a manager resemble? How can you describe a manager’s responsibility through various systems? Here’s my ta...
Service Overload Strategies
Service overload happens a lot. If you haven't seen one, count yourself lucky. The first time I watched it take a system down, I realized how serious it’s to get the basics righ...
Designing A Key-Value Store
I’ve been asked once to design a key value store in an interview. It looks easy at first. Then it gets hard, fast. What makes it interesting is how ambiguous it is. I started us...
Promoting Learnings in Incidents
Incidents are used for the negative consequences of an action. The incident comes from an action that fails to result in the expected outcome. For instance, deploying a code to...
A Trip To My Village
I was born in a remote village in Turkey, in the northeastern province of Bayburt. It is called Gökçedere, named after the small river that divides the village into two parts. T...
Greatest XI of All Time
I don't follow football nowadays closely. My enthusiasm is limited to big competitions. Part of the reason is the decline in football. There aren't as many good players as used...
Why Data Fails to Capture the Magic of Fenomeno
1998 World Cup. I was waiting for him to shine. I was not sleeping. I was waking up just to see matches. I was so excited. Every time Ronaldo had the ball, I had that feeling th...
Bray Head Walk
The walk around Bray Head offers some amazing views. The bray head walk is the perfect summer’s day activity for those looking to escape the city, and is suited for all with a m...
Quotes from Mill
I first read John Stuart Mill's books when I was in college. He has some amazing quotes about freedom of speech. I just want to compile them in this post for myself and for anyo...
Wicklow Mountains
There are a few days in Ireland where it's sunny but not windy. This Sunday was one of them. I decided to go to the Wicklow mountains without setting a destination. I first arri...
Code Author
Throughout the years I have worked on many software projects. In most of them, the code header included the authorʼs name. At first, it seemed natural to have the authorʼs name....
Missed Opportunities
Itʼs been a while and I havenʼt posted anything new on my blog. Life, work, and priorities often got in the way, but the urge to write never really went away. Itʼs time to get b...
Risk Comes First
You probably saw many cliché stuff about risking everything. Not risking is the biggest risk and all. While there is a truth to that, risk needs to be an appetite. Remember what...
Quotes from Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a soldier, reformer, author, president, and founding father of Turkey. He has some amazing quotes. I compiled some of them for myself and anyone intere...
Leetcode Hard
Over the years, I’ve been on both sides of the interview table. To become better at conducting interviews and preparing for my own, I spent time solving and reviewing coding pro...
Verifying passed arguments partially
Recently, I was working on a project and I missed a case in unit tests. I didn't want to verify each argument but rather wanted to check if an object has a certain attribute set...
Good APIs Age Slowly
I have noticed that APIs are a bit like abstractions in general. APIs that impress people quickly are very often the ones that cause the most trouble later. I do not mean this a...
Before You Import That Library
Software development depends a lot on open source projects. From operating systems to editors, we use open source software everywhere. Nevertheless, we should be careful about w...
On Writing Wrapper Libraries
A wrapper library is a thin layer of abstraction around an existing library, dependency, or functionality. A wrapper library offers a better and cleaner interface or rather hide...
Minimum Viable Agile
In , I criticized agile frameworks for bringing too much complexity with too little impact. What was meant to make teams more adaptive often ends up doing the opposite. They slo...
What's wrong with Agile Frameworks
Some time ago, I attended a course and became . It wasn’t a huge deal. I was already doing the job. But as time went on and I gained more experience, my view of agile frameworks...
The Real Work Is Social
I get along with people. I talk, I joke, I do the normal office stuff. But even with that, something about how work actually works has always felt off. You think the job is most...
Simple Mutual Exclusion
When we design services for high availability, we often deploy more than one instance of the same application. It might be two servers behind a load balancer or a few nodes shar...
Hype in Software Development
We live in a time when every month brings a new framework, library, or architectural pattern that promises to change everything. Increasingly often, we come across a new technol...
Why I like JavaScript
Every programming language has its oddities and challenges. When it comes to JavaScript, it has Every programming language has its oddities and challenges. When it comes to Java...
How Teams Choose Language
Choosing a programming language is one of the most defining decisions in software development. It shapes how a team writes, maintains, and reasons about their system. Today, the...
I'm no longer a Scrum Master
Recently, I received an email from Scrum Alliance. My Scrum Master Certificate has expired. As expected, the email was suggesting to get certified again, a friendly nudge to sta...
You Know State Is NO Good
Every engineer learns this the hard way. You think the logic is solid, your tests are green, and your deployment goes smoothly. Looks all good, right? Then you have an outage. N...
Refactoring Untested Code
Most teams realize they are dealing with a legacy repo only when a tiny change turns into an operation. A oneline fix suddenly needs three people, two days of manual checks, and...
Duplicate code isn't that bad
Duplicate code isn’t something we usually want in our code for various reasons. The most obvious one is maintenance. When you change a piece of logic, you have to find every pla...
How I Work as a Software Engineer
When I started out, I thought productivity meant speed. Ship fast, fix fast, move fast. Working in startups taught me something different. When everything around you changes con...
Smaller is Faster
“Smaller is faster” is a wellknown hardware design principle, as you might already know it. Generally speaking, smaller pieces of hardware will be faster than larger ones becaus...
You Cannot Fix What You Cannot See
I have been working on this data discovery tool for a while, and it keeps showing me how messy our systems really are. The idea behind it is simple. Crawl every database we have...
Who needs an Architect?
An architect? According to Wikipedia, an architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. So, we obviously have derived the role from civil...
Shoulder Ship It
Pair programming is no new topic and has been widely used in the industry. At first, it might seem like itʼs a waste of time because two coders work in the same station. However...
Scrum, Kanban, or just Agile
Before going deep in the subject, I would like to emphasize that this post is completely personal. You miBefore going deep into the subject, I would like to emphasize that this...
Consistency Matters
When I look back at the projects I’ve worked on, the most peaceful moments were always when the code felt consistent. Everything lined up. Names made sense. Files looked familia...
Local vs Production Debugging
I have been debugging this data workflow tool we built in house lately. It has an Angular UI and a Java backend, and it moves data between different systems like Postgres to Hiv...
Mock methods that manipulate parameters
Recently, I've worked a little bit on cache for . I needed to mock a behavior of a method where the method manipulates given parameters e.g. change state or call another method....
A guide for Code Reviews
Code reviews shouldn’t be about ego. Still, every time you send one, you’re putting yourself out there. You want your work reviewed but at the same time it makes you vulnerable....
Java Developer vs. Software Engineer
Java developer vs. software engineer is discussed quite often, especially among programmers trying to define what truly separates a coder from an engineer. One of my friends kep...
Moving from Java to Python
I recently started a new role in AWS networking, and it’s the first time I’ve gone from writing everything in Java to writing almost everything in Python. Honestly, the shift is...
Spring Cache Abstraction
Spring cache abstraction applies caching to the Java methods. It provides an environment where we can cache the result for the methods we choose. By doing so, it improves the pe...
Implementing HTML5 Bomberman
CS102 is one of the most important course in CS curriculum. In this course, students learn how to write recursive function, objectoriented programming and etc. This course provi...
JavaScript Execution Context
JavaScript developers do not pay attention much on internals of JavaScript execution, namely execution context. Even experienced JavaScript developers may lack necessary knowled...
Dependency Injection in JavaScript
Dependency injection is about removing the hard coded dependencies and providing way of changing dependencies in compiletime or runtime. This pattern has been exercised in sever...
Achieving Abstraction In JavaScript
In computer science, abstraction is to hide certain details and only show the essential features of the object. Abstraction tries to reduce and factor out details so that the de...
Buggy Code on Production, Survived
Areca is the name of the billing engine I am working on for Turk Telekom. Funny enough, it is also the name of the flowers we bought to freshen the office. We wanted the office...
XA Transactions: A Simple Guide
In early days of computing, there was no need for distributed transactions, everything lived in one place. As number of applications increased, synchronization of the data becom...
Faster JavaScript
JavaScript is a very important language for now and the future. Nowadays, there is no page that does not include some JavaScript code in it. Moreover, code written in JavaScript...
Caching With Guava
In computer science, cache is a component that is used to speed up data retrieval in general. The data stored in cache is limited so a given query can hit or miss the data that...
Hello World
I am starting this blog, even though I do not really know what I am doing yet. I see engineers blogging and sharing what they learn. It looks cool, and it feels like a good habi...