This blog has been a long time coming, having been pestered many times by friends & colleagues.
I was intrigued by a Kazakh colleague of mine learning that in Russian, the phrase "do not reinvent the wheel" basically is literally "do not reinvent the bicycle". I naturally found that cruelly ironic and took it upon myself to buy such ridiculous a domain.
This is a problem many programmers have. In the same manner, starting this site the first thing I did was start writing a build system to compile template files to generate a static site before I went, "wait a minute, surely this is the whole point of starting this blog!".
Before all that, I'm Timur Kiyui. I've been a long-time computer nerd having received my first computer when I was 6. I wrote my dad a letter thanking him for buying me a free computer. By 10 or 11, I was introduced to GNU/Linux by a father of a friend.
Compulsory related xkcd:
I started hacking batch scripts before I was able to properly read, also around the age of 10. I attribute much of what I have learned in life to the machine and the ability to just hack in my past-time. I cannot thank enough the introduction of computers to my life, as perhaps many can relate to!
Now at age 23, having been professionally employed for about 3 years in a collaborative environment, I find often myself baffled by coding styles or paradigms that others employ in their code. While I know this isn't something taught in universities, it clearly is at the same time not something learnt by years of coding, being junior to many others I'm surrounded with (I am the youngest programmer of my colleagues)! Hence, I have decided that my first article should be on identifying hacks. Do enjoy.
Thanks for reading; This took me approximately 2 vinyls to write.