A Brief History of Mine as a Computer Engineer
This is not about what I did or how I did to become a computer engineer. It’s more about why I wanted to be a computer engineer. In other words, what forces me to become so?
This is a brief history of mine as a child who wanted to be a computer engineer.
First Touch to the Computer
Everything started with an old computer that my uncle sent to our house. It was about twenty-five years ago. I was just a four-year-old kid.
There was a big box in the middle of the living room. My older brother, Halil, opened the box and took all the pieces out: a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a big case, and lots of cables. Every cable had a number on it, and it was easy to build it by following the numbers. We plugged in the last cable, and it was ready to be turned on. There was my first computer, which I was not allowed to touch!
I admit I didn’t know what it was, and why we had that but it was yet another toy to me, and I just wanted to play with it. Anyway, days came and passed. One day my brother came with a floppy disk. There was a game in it. Finally, I had a way to play with the computer.
My first game on the computer was chess. But wait, there was a problem! We only were able to see the loading screen. After a while, we figured out (well, not me) that our hardware was not enough.
We had to scale up since we had 2 MB RAM! You heard right: just 2 MB! And the game needed 4 MB. We added 2 MB of additional RAM, and finally, I was able to play chess. I didn’t even know the rules, but I liked it anyway!
Building Own Computers
After a while, we started collecting computer pieces one by one. We both saved the money and bought one piece at a time. I lent 160 Deutsche Marks to my brother that never got back! After we burned two main boards as training casualties, we finally built another and more powerful PC.
First Meet with Linux: Red Hat
My brother installed Red Hat but there was a problem, and the OS couldn’t start as expected. One day, my brother came home with his friend, Uğurcan, which is a very talented man by the way. He had a short look and opened some files and started reading the lines on the terminal. Then he stopped and put a # at the beginning of a line. Then he rebooted the OS, and it worked like a charm! I had no idea what the hell was going on, but I liked that feeling of solving a problem. I liked working on the terminal too.
First Steps to Programming
I remembered playing with QBasic. I am telling playing because it does not count as programming completely. But it was a start anyway. I was just learning some simple commands.
At the same time, my dad was working in a big enterprise company, so there was an IT department in which my brother and I liked to spend time. There were lots of mainboards, floppy disks, monitors, soldiers, etc. It was just like heaven!
One day, my brother convinced dad to buy our first flash memory of 128 MB by telling me it was like holding a hundred of 1.44 floppy disks. He had no clue, but bought it anyway. Mom and dad always supported us, even though they had no idea!
Day by day, the curiosity inside me got bigger.
After years, it came to choosing a field to study at the university. Physics, math, and computer engineering were my favorites. After deep thinking, I chose to be a computer engineer and made my all choices in computer departments of the best universities.
I chose computer engineering not because of playing computer games but because of the feelings that encourage me: designing, creating, and building. At the university, I had a dream of wearing cut gloves, writing code on a laptop, and having a cup of coffee.
My brother bought me my first laptop. What a wonderful brother! He bought me a car too, but it’s another story ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Today, I am so happy to have such a wonderful family and to be able to catch my dreams.
Anyway, I said a brief history. Thus, I have to recap. Deep down in my heart, I love dreaming, creating, and solving problems. These are the reasons why dealing with software was the right choice for me.
Today, most kids are born with the latest mobile phones with more than 4 GB. I am not saying that I was lucky as them, but I was lucky compared to the 1990s in Turkey and thankful for all circumstances that made me a computer engineer today. And all the family that supported me along this journey.
