Sencer Yurdagül

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Textpattern developer, Sencer Yurdagül, answers a few questions.

TXPQ What is life all about?

SY If you're asking for my philosophical outlook on life, I'd have to say that stoicism (their ethics anyway) comes pretty close to my beliefs and principles. For example seeking happiness in those things that lie within your control, and not making ones state of mind dependent on things that are entirely outside of ones control.

TXPQ What motivates you or "makes you tick"?

SY One thing that drives me personally is the desire to understand how things work. Be it learning a new programming language, a piece of software, how certain events in history came to be, why societies have the rules they have, or why people behave the way they do.

TXPQ Would you like to say anything about favourite things, music, film etc?

SY In the past months I have been listening to the Soundtrack of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. I also liked the movie. And I found that generally in recent years I developed a fondness for what I used to consider as slow and drawn out movies; Sergio Leone's classics for example, or the more recent No Country for Old Men. I also bought a CD of classic Guqin songs after watching Hero (both of which are great as well).

TXPQ Would you like to say anything about your day job?

SY I finished university last year and have since been working full-time in a corporate setting on and with enterprise software. While switching from being a student to being a full time employee quite noticably drains available time, for me it was additionally the fact of working on a project in Triest that meant plenty of additional travel time and not being at home 5 of 7 days a week. And since I have been in a long-distance relationship for several years and therefore already been traveling between Köln and Frankfurt... well, you can imagine that means some things I needed to cut back on. Hence why I have been so quiet in terms of Textpattern contributions for a while now.

Development and TXP

TXPQ When did you start programming (for the web)?

SY The first programs I wrote were on a Commodore 64, when I was in 4th grade. My first dabbling in connection with the web was in the summer of 2000, where I started to work with Java Server Pages(version 0.91 I believe) during an internship. While that was interesting, there was no cheap hosting available to make it viable for small scale, personal or hobbyist stuff. In early 2002 I had my first contact with PHP when together with several friends we wanted our own forum (we used some ancient version of phpBB 1.x) and very soon I started modding away on it.

TXPQ When did you first use Textpattern?

SY I switched my own site to Textpattern in June/August 2004, after b2 had ran out of steam for quite a while. Though I distinctly remember trying out Textpattern several months before locally and finding it to be confusing enough that I put it aside. But I continued hearing plenty of good things about it, so I decided I should give it a second chance, which then convinced me very quickly that it was a lot better for me than any of the alternatives available at the time (wordpress, b2evolution, and a few other larger more cms-oriented packages).

TXPQ Why has Textpattern grabbed you rather than other CMS?

SY It's been a while since I've looked at any of the other CMS, but I remember at the time that the size and quality of the codebase, as well as the committed goal/focus of staying lean and clean was what made me favour it over the alternatives. And it was the remarkable atmosphere and community that made it so much fun to stay active.

TXPQ Anything else you'd like to say about Textpattern, the community, your involvement with it etc?

SY I would like to thank everybody that is contributing on a regular basis. And I want to apologize for my absence, though I hope people understand it given the circumstances I described above. I am still trying to figure out and realize a way to combine my desire to contribute to Textpattern with all the other necessities in life.

use every chance to get to know your fellow Textpattern contributors/enthusiasts Also if I can give one recommendation, it would be to use every chance to get to know your fellow Textpattern contributors/enthusiasts. The only constant is change, and opportunities that are here today, might not be tomorrow. And I know I've met some great people from all over the world, and I wish with some others I had gotten to know them better.

Categories: Core Developer, Plugin Author