Hello there.

This is definitely not a financial advice article. It simply begins with an example to illustrate how generative AI integrates into daily life. We have always needed access to knowledge: we bought books, asked questions on IRC channels and forums, became regulars on StackOverflow, and now we have tools far more practical than all of them combined. Türkiye is currently going through a mutual fund crisis, and for the past few days, I’ve been sitting back trying to figure out what saved me from getting caught in it. Was it sheer instinct, the reluctance to deal with reporting income to the Finanzamt and filling out an Anlage KAP-INV here in Germany, or simply the glaring asymmetry between risk and reward? I can’t quite tell. After all, I used these investment vehicles for a while myself, and what ultimately kept me selective (and helped me steer clear) was a virtual advisor. ...

Maybe you’ve had a different experience, but I’ve never once looked at a system and said, “This is perfect, we’re done here.” There is always a new requirement, a shifting bottleneck, or a sudden spike in traffic. You can’t build a distributed system without at least one of your services eventually collapsing under the weight of its own dependencies. It’s a rite of passage. This is a tour of the patterns I keep reaching for across backend systems — written for engineers new to distributed architecture. We’ll start with the one that usually forces you to learn about all the others. ...

There is a fundamental inconsistency between what consumers expect from transportation and what today’s electric vehicle market actually delivers. Most people want more comfort and less planning. They don’t want to drive. They don’t want to think about annual maintenance, tire pressure, or oil changes. They want to get in, go, and arrive — without any mental overhead. Enter the electric vehicle, marketed as the future. But instead of freedom, it demands more: plan your route around charging stations, drive conservatively to preserve range, check tire pressure more frequently, monitor battery health, worry about winter degradation. A vehicle that promises simplicity ironically requires more attention than the noisy, polluting machine it replaces. ...

This article was originally written in Turkish in December 2025 as a contribution to the “2026 Trends in the Software World” series. The original collection can be found here: Yazılım Dünyasında 2026 Trendleri. Hello, this is my third article. For four years now, I’ve been talking about mass layoffs, recessions, emerging business sectors, and working frameworks like the hybrid model. As someone who has been coding in Python for over 15 years and working without interruption, 2025 turned out to be the year where I had to learn the most new things, gain the freshest experiences, and constantly reinvent myself compared to any previous year. Moving forward, I foresee that “captain” developers—those who can adapt swiftly to dynamic conditions, work cross-functionally, remain highly productive, and manage tiny, agile teams—will become incredibly valuable. ...

Is it technically impossible to build a smartphone with a battery that lasts a full month? I suppose it would either be a heavy brick, take an eternity to charge, or just be too expensive to make any sense. Even if a company fixed all those issues and started mass production, I’d probably still be sitting here thinking: “I don’t mind plugging my phone in once a day, why on earth do I need more?” ...

In our projects, I had a simple script named do.sh to quickly define and run tasks. I don’t remember why we didn’t use Makefile, but it had similar functionality. It’s just a BASH script: you can define environment variables, add functions and easily run other CLI commands. We wanted to be able to do that without having an extra dependency, so we could tell the developers, “Just download the script and run the command sh do.sh setup.” That’s it! It was much better than writing all the steps and other instructions in the README.md file. ...

A few years ago, to better understand ray tracing, I read the book Ray Tracing in One Weekend. The original code samples were in C++, and as I read, I was translating and writing them in Python. Yes, I knew from the start that it was a terrible idea, but I was curious. One of the best ways to observe Python’s performance inadequacy is to test the ray tracing algorithm by generating an image with a width of 1000 pixels. But even 300 pixels takes a lot of time. Therefore, you resort to alternative solutions such as interoperability, multiprocessing, or GPU usage. This appeared as a fun and extra task that I had to solve while learning ray tracing. ...

I took a quick look at the new features in Python 3.14. To try the code below on your local machine, install uv and run the REPL with the following command: uv python upgrade 3.14 uvx [email protected] PEP 750: Template Strings Template strings (t-strings for short) were a proposal to address a significant shortcoming in existing f-strings, and it’s now ready for use with version 3.14. First, let me show you the problem: ...

I assign a minimum lifespan to things I want to own. This habit helps me calculate how much budget I can allocate for them, understand whether that thing comes cheap or expensive, and whether it’s worth it. My 6-year-old Alienware laptop was a bit of a disappointment for me. I wanted it to be something I could game on at home, code on, and also be my portable computer. I also wanted to be able to increase RAM and SSD capacity when needed in the future. None of my expectations were met satisfactorily. It was hard to carry, the charger was like a brick. The battery swelled twice and I had to replace it. Upgrading any hardware was difficult - those curious should definitely check out Alienware 15 R3 battery replacement videos. ...

I had the experience of upgrading Python in the projects from 3.8 to 3.12 in one step, and I realized that keeping the Python versions up to date is just as critical as keeping the dependencies up to date. Maintenance should not be a separate task, it should be part of all the other tasks. If you can check and update package versions in a timely manner, you don’t have to tell anyone that it’s going to hold up your business in the future. ...

17 years ago, Steve Jobs stood on stage with a manila envelope in his hand and pulled out a laptop. At that time, mini-laptops called netbook were very popular, and the first Macbook Air had far superior features in every way. I had a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e. If I remember correctly, the screen resolution was 1378x768, but it was good enough for me. It fit in my small bag, it was light, and I could open it up and even use it on the food tray on my long bus rides. ...

Sometimes I see this photo when Apple announces a new product and there are some really funny jokes about it on social media. Frankly, I don’t understand the criticism that “Apple is exhausted, it can’t produce anything new” for technological products that have reached a certain maturity. How do you compare them? I used the iPhone 11 for more than four years and upgraded to the iPhone 16e. I agree that there’s not much difference in appearance, there’s still a notch at the top of the screen, it’s lighter. There’s a single-lens camera, but the quality is better than the older one. I didn’t notice any improvements on the screen because I was happy with the old one too, but the iPhone 11 has a lot of improvements like 5G connectivity, longer battery life and the ability to charge multiple devices with the same cable thanks to USB-C. If I were using an iPhone 14 or 15, I wouldn’t understand these innovations, and When the iPhone 17 comes out, I probably won’t find the innovations that come with it remarkable. ...

I had an incident that was as fortuitous as the alignment of the holes in Swiss cheese and, frankly, I wanted to take the vehicle to an open field, pour petrol on it and burn it. Fortunately, I am calm now and I think I will pay special attention to prevent that from happening again. Let me tell you what happened first. The fire alarm went off in the building next to our apartment and soon after I saw three or four fire trucks, police cars and ambulances and I realised how serious the situation was. There was an air of panic and I tried to stay as calm as possible and take precautions. I even didn’t have time to think about if there was a possibility of the fire spreading or not. At that moment I just wanted to get my family into the car and get away from the crowd for a while. We wouldn’t get cold and my wife and kids could sit in the car for a long time, or even sleep if necessary. I had in mind to switch on the camping mode, listen to music, put on cartoons and keep my daughters occupied. ...

When dealing with more than one language, we look for similar approaches across languages. In Rust, there’s a keyword called enum to define and use enumerations. It’s easy to use, let’s look at this example from the official document: enum IpAddrKind { V4, V6, } struct IpAddr { kind: IpAddrKind, address: String, } let home = IpAddr { kind: IpAddrKind::V4, address: String::from("127.0.0.1"), }; let loopback = IpAddr { kind: IpAddrKind::V6, address: String::from("::1"), }; If we want to write this code in Python, we can define two classes and two variables simply. Let’s start with a simple alternative first: ...

Python favours letters and meaningful keywords for the logical operators, and all of them return a value depending on the conditions: not: The opposite of a condition, the reverse of the logical state of its operand. If the condition is True, it returns False, or vice versa. and: It needs to compare two operands, It returns True if both operands are True. or: It’s similar to and, but it returns True if at least one of the operands is True. ...

I wanted to repost the part about the mobility of an article I wrote in Turkish for 2024 Trends in the Software World on my blog. The topic of mobility is still in my focus and I am still following the developments closely. … Now I will end my article with a topic I haven’t mentioned before: Electric vehicles, or in general terms, automobiles. We have entered a strange period that will closely concern the software industry. It is like the Quartz revolution in watches (or the Quartz crisis if we look at it from the Swiss perspective). ...

Authy was my bad decision to use it for two-factor authentication. I remember that I chose it because of its ability to work on both PC/Mac and mobile phone, so if I work on a PC, I don’t need to use my phone to see the validation code. The GUI was very bad on all platforms, but it was working at least. Authy is sunsetted, the team explained on their website and stated that it will no longer be supported after March 19, 2024. ...

I’m very conservative to avoid changing my routines, habits about my preferred software and hardware. But on the other hand, I always follow the new tools and try them as much as possible. It’s not easy to change habits, but if I think that the new alternative is better than my current one, and if I think that the new tool will increase my work quality, then I take a risk and replace it. ...

I really like Japanese cars. There are Japanese brands that are durable, safe and have very good parts and service support. Toyota and Lexus are my favourite brands. But on the other hand, I was looking for value for money and I knew that Tesla was unbeatable in that regard. My beloved wife and eldest daughter loved the Tesla, while I, as a gourmet car guy, preferred the Lexus. My wife suggested that I test drive both the Lexus and the Tesla. I tested the Lexus ES350h first and fell in love with the car. Everything was just as I wanted, I never had to change my old habits and because it was a hybrid, the fuel consumption was very low. Most importantly, it was not an SUV, which for me is a great opportunity that sedans are still being produced. ...

When someone asks me about the starting point of my career, I always tell them about my Linux/BSD adventure. These operating systems still exist and most people know them, but not everyone knows about Pardus, and even if they do, it is not the same Pardus I mean. I grew up in a house without internet and the only connection to the world was through technology and gaming magazines. I used to rewrite the articles in magazines that I liked and wanted to understand on my typewriter because I read too fast and didn’t understand anything, so the typewriter was kind of slowdown for me. Sometimes codes were shared in magazines and they would also write what the output would be when we compile and run these codes. That’s something a typewriter could never do. So I grew up dreaming of owning a personal computer until I started university. ...