Mustafa Yılmaz

Six chapters from his life

• Boarding-school years

  Boarding school: growing up away from home

  Born in Geyikli, Çanakkale, Yılmaz left home for boarding school during his middle-school years. New routines and friendships, along with learning to live away from family, became the first threshold of a much longer educational journey.

  T01 · Anı kitabı, s. 17–26

• Youth at Kuleli

  Kuleli: student life amid history

  On the morning of 12 September 1980, young Mustafa was in Istanbul seeking the medical report needed to enter Kuleli Military High School. A turning point in the country’s history coincided with a turning point in his education. The Kuleli years that followed shaped his experience of discipline, study and friendship.

  T02–T03 · Anı kitabı, s. 9–16 ve 27–100

• Engineering at Boğaziçi

  Boğaziçi: choosing a profession before knowing it

  In 1985 he began studying civil engineering at Boğaziçi University. In his memoir, he recalls making that choice without fully researching the profession. Looking back, it was the start of a path through construction engineering, software development and academic research.

  T05 · Anı kitabı, s. 115–144

• Engineering ethics and code in Balıkesir

  From the weight of a signature to computer code

  During his early engineering years in Balıkesir, Yılmaz learned about professional responsibility as well as plans and calculations. His memoir recounts a manager’s emphasis on signatures and verification. He also began writing GW-BASIC programs to assist repetitive payment checks: a problem from the field became software at a desk.

  T06–T09 · Anı kitabı, s. 157–158 ve 182–183

• TekHakWin in Erzurum

  Erzurum: an engineer builds software

  During the Erzurum years, work on construction payment calculations developed into TekHakWin. Yılmaz recalls that the “Virtual Software Group” was in fact a single developer: himself. Sharing the program online and through tutorial CDs marked another form of engineering work.

  T10–T11 · Anı kitabı, s. 282–283

• From engineering to academia and writing

  From the field to the classroom, and from cost to literature

  His move into teaching at the Turkish Military Academy in 2014 brought field experience into the classroom. Graduate work on steel structures and doctoral research on occupational safety cost estimation developed his technical approach to cost. In the later Cost Series, a related question becomes literary: what happens to losses that never appear in the ledger?

  T14, T17–T18 · Anı kitabı, s. 393–428, 436–437 ve 469–518