Murat Çorlu

I was born and raised in Sakarya, a city near Istanbul, Türkiye. My journey with computers began at 13 (in 1995), when I saw one for the first time at my cousin’s house. It was love at first sight. After my persistent requests, my father bought me a second-hand Commodore Amiga 500, as it was affordable. Initially, I spent months playing games, fascinated by how everything worked, until I met an older friend who owned a Commodore 64. He was doing something magical: coding. I asked, “Please teach me how to write that,” referring to the hangman game code he showed me. This moment introduced me to QBasic.

For two years, I tinkered with QBasic, experimenting and learning. Later, my father bought me a PC, a Pentium 166. At a bookstore, I discovered a thick book titled “Visual Basic.” The word “Basic” in the title intrigued me, and I started reading it, realizing I could learn this too.

I developed many Windows applications for personal use, like a batch file renamer (to organize my MP3s), a birthday reminder, and a digital version of my high school graduation yearbook in 2000.

In 1998, internet cafes were popular in my town, and one was owned by someone I knew. During a visit, I noticed he was manually tracking customer usage times and charges, using stickers and calculations. I suggested, “An application would help you manage this,” to which he replied, “If you make one, it would definitely help.” I spent the next two nights coding and created a basic application for him. He was thrilled and immediately adopted it, rewarding me with free access to the café. This was the first time I realized coding could help people and even bring in some earnings.

With the internet’s rise, I expanded my programming knowledge, eventually shifting to web development. Excited by the idea of creating something that could reach anyone worldwide, I learned ASP, then ASP.NET, PHP, and Linux. I continued to make digital yearbooks (using Adobe Director) until 2006. After university, I started my professional programming career at small companies, progressing step by step to roles in Türkiye’s top internet firms.

Now, in my 40s, I’m still learning daily and constantly exploring new projects and ideas. I’m passionate about creating useful things through programming, the best tool I have.

So, I’m Murat Çorlu, a software developer based in The Netherlands. This blog is about my work. I also write a Turkish blog and micro-blog on Mastodon at murat@synaps.space.