Welcome to my blog! I’m glad you’re here. In this post, I want to briefly share my story and the reasons for this blog.
Who am I?
My name is Lev Yastrebov, Lev is pronounced like [lʲef].
I live in Türkiye (Turkey). The warm sea and mountains are a hard-to-beat combo!
I’ve been technically inclined all my life, starting with modeling clubs (ships, aero) in elementary school, then moving on to electronics, where I learned to solder and the basics of electronic components. At some point, I learned about microcontrollers and that was so much fun! I read a couple of guidebooks with theory and practical lessons and completed all the lessons from there, which gave me a solid understanding of ASM and C.
I got my master’s degree in Industrial Power Distribution - that was a well-known field in my family, and I didn’t even know that a “programmer” was a profession - we had no such faculties in universities in my town. Anyway, programming and electronics have been my hobbies, and even my graduate work involved a microcontroller that managed an electrical substation.
In 2011, I met my friend Alexey Piskarev, who suggested trying to turn my hobby into a profession, I thought - why not? I like this anyway. So, after a short training, my developer’s career begins and continues to these days.
Due to stupid transliteration rules, my name in docs is spelled as Lev Iastrebov, so don’t be surprised.
Why did I decide to start blogging?
After 13 years in my professional career, I realized, that I can be useful to the world! Should have realized it earlier, but I always thought that my problems and discoveries were not that interesting to share with others, until I finally shared and got encouraging feedback.
I gave the idea of my blog some time to settle, and I understood that, apart from helping others, my blog would also benefit me in several ways:
- Writing helps structure my understanding of a topic. It appears amorphous when you merely read or experiment, but writing it down reveals the structure and any gaps in my understanding.
- Identifying and fixing the weak points leads to better learning and understanding of the subject.
- This gives me a public presence. People, who are interested in getting to know or working with me, could know better how I think and what I do.
- The more you write - the better and faster you are at formulating thoughts. That’s an incredible skill to have for any job and person.
Why it’s here and not on some platform?
During my career, I’ve seen a lot of services and platforms emerge and fade away, and all these services have their opinion on how everything should be - how many ads they need to have, how to track users, how to treat your data and manage your passwords, whether your country of birth or residence is good enough for them today, as well as your views on any topic.
Fuck that.
I don’t restrict myself from posting elsewhere, but I prefer to keep my content under my control whenever it’s meaningful.