Published in Better Programming·Jan 11, 2021An Optimization Exercise in GolangCould this simple hour conversion get any faster? Hint: It gets 420 times faster — In the middle of a quiet day, a friend of mine reached out to me to ask for an idea: He said, “If I give you a string of an hour in a 12-hour format, like 7PM, how would you get the integer version of it for the 24-hour format…Programming7 min read
Published in Better Programming·Jan 4, 2021Is PHP Still Relevant in 2021?The conversation has shifted away from PHP to JavaScript and Python. Does PHP still matter? — A Brief History of PHP PHP was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. Lerdorf developed a bunch of scripts to track the visits to his online resume and named them “Personal Home Page Tools,” which then evolved into being called “PHP Tools.” …Programming7 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·Nov 5, 2020Pi-hole on Raspberry Pi using Docker and Docker ComposeA practical guide for setting up Pi-hole for a privacy-focused home network. I need to start this article with some simple disclaimers: I love Raspberry Pi, I love Docker, I don’t love networking that much (spoiler alert: I suck at it). I love Raspberry Pi because it is a tiny…Privacy20 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·Jul 7, 2020Laravel: Lightning Fast Testing for Subscription Payments With StripeI should have a base test suite that can run without an internet connection, and it should be super fast. Both of them, at the same time. — Laravel has been my go-to framework for all of my side projects thanks to its ease of use, but while integrating Cashier into Nana recently, I have seen that there is no easy way of testing the subscription creation flows when using Cashier. …Software Development6 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·May 1, 2020Python vs R for Data ScienceA comparative analysis of two great languages with regards to their features, communities and industry position. — The comparison of Python and R has been a hot topic in the industry circles for years. R has been around for more than two decades, specialized for statistical computing and graphics while Python is a general-purpose programming language that has many uses along with data science and statistics. …Data Science9 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·Apr 22, 2020Jupyter Notebook Best PracticesThere is always a need for fast prototyping when it comes to data science solutions. Be it a sophisticated face recognition algorithm or a simple regression model, having a model that allows you to easily test and validate ideas is incredibly valuable. Many data science problems out there require specially…Data Science9 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·Feb 27, 2020Handling 350k Requests for $3 using LambdaNo servers to manage, no maintenance, deploy and forget. I think I found a valid use-case for Lambda. Since its launch towards the end of 2014, Lambda has created a lot of hype, and more importantly, brought the term “serverless” into…Software Development14 min read
Published in The Startup·Jan 29, 2020What exactly is Docker?Alright, we get it, “cloud” is the future and we need to use containers with all the fancy tools it offers. We are going to containerize our app, use container orchestration tools for deployments, and we have to install Docker. What is a container? Remember the good old times where you used to SSH…Software Development12 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·Jan 14, 2020How I bricked my router trying to lock a doorI thought I had a smart solution to an ancient problem, which turned out to be a stupid engineering quest. I used to live in a not-so-nice neighborhood of Istanbul since I was born, and there would be burglary incidents every once in a while. Also, we were living in…Networking8 min read
Published in The Startup·Oct 13, 2019Seniority in Software EngineeringI’d expect a senior engineer to be a technically capable individual who thinks and understands human psychology, has good self-motivation skills that would ignite the team motivation as well and is dependable. …Software Development9 min read
