All things start from somewhere
I have been thinking for a long time about starting my own blog, but never actually took the plunge. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and let you have a glimpse of my life and my passions. Hopefully it won’t sound too stereotypical. :)
My name is Mehdi. I am a 20-year-old guy from Tunisia. For those of you who don’t know, Tunisia is the tiny country north of Africa, sitting comfortably between Libya and Algeria.

And this is what I look like:

What my blog is about
The focus of this blog will be my discoveries, my struggles and all kinds of neat things I find about software development. I hope to inspire more people to consider programming in their career and see the possible ways it can improve their lives and the lives of others, and not get discouraged by stone-age-old introductory programming courses taught in Tunisian high schools. (I am looking at you, Pascal)
How it all started
I developed a keen interest in computers at an early age. My first real contact with the “coding sphere” probably happened when I stumbled upon a website named siteduzero.com which is French for “The zero’s website”. At the time, the website had a small amount of tutorials, and comparing to today’s standard of web design, looked pretty stale. But the quality of the content was what really mattered.

My first tutorial was about HTML and CSS design. The tutorials were thoroughly explanatory and easy to understand, which helped my young brain assimilate all the different concepts involved in web development.
When I created my first website, running on an Apache server, I was ecstatic. Everything that I wrote inside those HTML files matched what I was seeing. It was the first time I felt I could control the computer, by being clear and explicit of what I am asking it to do.
I had since grown an interest in coding in general. I started with the C programming language, a few weeks later moved on to C++ and started making textual games inside the console, like “Jeu des Allumettes” to slightly more sophisticated graphic games like “Sokoban”.

During all this time, I thought that C++ was the best programming language out there, and that there was no other language that could surpass it, whether it was by raw performance, ease of coding or the tools that work with it. I had naively thought that for a long time, and basically excluded a whole world of programming languages, each with their own perks and quirks, styles of thinking and vision.
About a year back, I see an ad on Facebook to what seems to be the first coding boot camp in Tunisia. The name was GoMyCode. The name rhymed right, the logo was catchy and the website looked well made so I gave it a go. For three weeks, I was among a bunch of students, all from different backgrounds, learning how to build simple games using Unity3d and C#.
For me the most interesting part was not the game engine, but the power of C#. I had expected it to be a clone of C++ but with more bloat. I had a phobia of managed languages (mostly from forum posts which mock users of Java, C# and the likes), but needless to say, it ended up being my favorite language. There is something about that makes it so appealing. It is the clarity you get when you code with it, the syntactic sugar that helps you write code in a more expressive and “human” way, and the powerful type inference that removes the need to define all the variable types all the time…
Now I won’t get carried away by my awe of C#, and no, I do not want awaken the flame war trolls, but my point is : maybe the grass is greener on the other side. Maybe you should just venture out and discover yourself. Because if you never try, you never know.
Part of which is why I took a step forward and started typing my first blog post. I have always had the “but what will I be talking about? what if my blog doesn’t interest enough people gets doomed to oblivion?.” Just a few minutes ago, I was staring at a blank screen with a blinking caret, trying to decide what my first words should be. And here I am, a few 700 words and going.
What I am doing now
I am currently in Boğaziçi Üniversitesi in Istanbul, Turkey studying for a Bachelor in Computer Engineering. I haven’t started my Freshman year yet as I have spent a year to learn the Turkish language in a different school. I am quite excited for the year to start and hoping to make the best out of it.

Well that is a wrap. I hope that wasn’t too long. Don’t even bother asking why the blog is called CodeNoodles. I don’t know myself. Just sounded good to my ear. :)
See ya soon!
