Who Is Mustafa Erdinç Zorba?

Who Am I?

Hello! I’m Mustafa Erdinç Zorba, a developer with a 20-year career in software technology. I began my career in security, but at the time the field did not receive enough attention in Turkey. To move forward, I made a decision and dedicated myself to software development. Security remains a passion that I pursue as a hobby.

Although this hobby has led many large companies to send me gifts for vulnerabilities I’ve reported, I still wouldn’t call myself a professional!

A Rapid Transformation

My endlessly curious nature led me from security to software development—initially front-end development—and then, naturally, into new fields. When front-end development no longer felt fulfilling, I moved into areas such as internet marketing (SEO) and back-end development. After trying many programming languages, I decided that PHP was the best fit for me at the time and worked as a full-stack developer for a while.

Endless Curiosity

Starting my career in penetration testing made me deeply familiar with Unix systems. I wanted to go beyond simply running the code I wrote on a server. Avoiding problems that companies like Google had already solved and ensuring that the systems I built remained continuously available became a passion of mine.

My Journey as a Problem Solver

I realized that building more reliable systems first required identifying and solving problems. Along the way, I became more closely acquainted with database administration (DBA). Even though I once had to wait several minutes for a single image to load online (a minute of silence for the 56k fax modem!), keeping server costs to a minimum meant accounting for every byte held in RAM. That experience proved extremely valuable in the SRE part of my career.

A Passion for Automation

Long before the term “DevOps” became popular, I worked with an automation-first mindset because I believed my time was more valuable than CPU time. I developed my skills in automating deployments and making them testable. This journey took me from DevOps to SRE, and my title continues to evolve: sometimes I’m a platform engineer, and sometimes a database administrator.

Conclusion

I’m a software professional who enjoys any task involving computers and has made solving problems a purpose in life. If you have questions about any of these topics, I’d be delighted to help. You can always reach me through my LinkedIn profile or at [email protected]!