Coding 💻
How I Started
I’ve been programming for a while now - since my early high school years.
It all started very simple. At the age of 15, I started writing World of Warcraft macros. After a couple of years, I found out that those same macros are actually simple Lua scripts. I was quite fascinated because that’s when I realized that those macros were my first steps in the programming world.
Then, that same spark kept fueling my interest in coding during high school. I think I was a pretty good student in programming back then because of that.
What I Love (TODO)
I love open-source software, game development, electronics and IoT, automotive software/firmware/hardware, AI, computer graphics, software system architecture, blockchain, and many more topics. To be honest, I find quite a lot of topics interesting.
Some projects that I’m proud of are …
Career
Since I love automotive software, in 2018 I started my career as an intern software engineer at Visteon but it ended up shortly after. It was not my thing.
As mentioned, I also like computer graphics and IoT, so unsurprisingly enough, I also went for an internship at Chaos Group. A world-famous company that provides state-of-the-art rendering solutions for architectural, VFX, film, media and entertainment, automotive design and other industries. I also had a short stay there.
After a couple of months after my departure from Chaos Group, I successfully landed a position as a junior software engineer at Bosch. At this workplace, I’ve learned a lot, I really enjoyed working on the multiple projects that I took part in, and I loved my colleagues. I felt that Bosch gave me an environment in which I experienced a very rapid career progress. I felt that I’m important and this really motivated me to push my limits to deliver outstanding results in all fields that I took part in. Also, I managed to quickly establish an amazing visibility in the whole office due to my multiple attendances of company activities - public meetings, sample company projects, and more. I had an absolutely marvellous experience as an employee there.
Then, a really nice opportunity came up for me. I went to work for SAP, a world-known German multinational software corporation, a market leader in end-to-end enterprise application software. I was part of a team that was working on a complex, cloud-native, open-source project crucial for SAP’s cloud platform. The technology stack included Go, GraphQL, Docker, Kubernetes, Istio, Kiali, Prometheus, Grafana, PostgreSQL, and many morе modern and open-source tools and technologies. I absolutely loved my team - they were all young, motivated, and quite helpful.
Fast forward two years later, I got an even better opportunity! A friend of mine introduced me to Confluent - the young, fresh, Silicon Valley-based company that’s composed of one of the most skilled software engineers in the industry. One great thing about Confluent is that they are extensively involved in the development and use of Apache Kafka - the industry standard event streaming software. Confluent, in short, offers a proprietary Kafka SaaS solution and a whole ecosystem around it - ksqlDB, Schema Registry, etc. Fun fact, the company is founded by some of the engineers that were part of the development of Kafka in LinkedIn. So another great thing about Confluent is that they offered me a relocation to London! I can’t describe with words the excitement that I felt when they invited me to be part of the company because I’ve always wished to relocate to the West for a while - and what better place for that than London, right? So here I am. I’m part of Confluent’s core Kafka teams that develop features for the proprietary Confluent fork. We develop a product that enables Confluent’s Kafka clusters to rebalance themselves whenever the brokers inside experience uneven load distribution. Up until now, I’m loving it!
Qbaware
On the 4th of September 2020, I decided to make the first move in creating my own commecrial brand - Qbaware. There, I plan to develop both commercial and open-source projects.
The meaning behind the name “Qbaware” is very simple and symbolic. The essential part is the word “Qba” which is a Bulgarian word used mostly in the region around my hometown that expresses an emotion of excitement, fascination, amusement. It’s just like the word “wow”. Furthermore, the remaining part “-ware” is derived from the words Software and Hardware because I aim to deliver primarely IoT projects. So the meaning of “Qbaware” simply breaks down to “Fascinating software and hardware”.
The brand’s slogan “We inspire the future, and the future inspires us” is derived from a slogan of my hometown Dimitrovgrad which was constructed during the Socialism period from a big group of young people who used to say “We create the town, the town creates us”.
The first project which I aim to deliver under my commercial brand is Kola. This is a modern and outstanding smart car solution.
Education 🎓
High School
I attended a high school in my hometown called Ivan Vazov. There, the disciplines I loved were Programming, Physics, and Maths because I imagined how all of them can be used to build a video game. Yes, I was really into game development back then.
During my high school education, I’ve attended a lot of IT academies, like Telerik and SoftUni, and IT competitions, like HSSIMI - High School Student Institute of Mathematics and Informatics and the National IT Olympiad, and I had excellent results on every single one of them. This I greatly owe to my beloved Informatics teacher - Mrs Doneva.
University
Later on, I continued my education in Sofia University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
Before Sofia University, I really considered studying abroad. I was even accepted in the University of Birmingham, UK 🇬🇧 with Computer Science, but I’m glad that my life went in a way that didn’t let me go abroad. My university years turned out to be among my best.
The Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics gave me more than I could have ever expected. Countless new opportunities, countless new skills, countless new memories, and countless new friends. I’ve went through a lot of pain together with my colleagues, we’re a big team and a big family.
Futhermore, Studentski grad, the place where mostly all students in Sofia live, and Sofia itself, gave me so many friendships, so many great memories.
After my Bachalor’s, I went for a Master’s degree in Entrepreneurship. I think that some management, marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship skills can help me a lot more in life than any other technical skills from a technical degree.
In the future, I’d love to go for another Master’s degree or even a PhD in a foreign university. Currently, I’m considering some options like Sweden 🇸🇪, Switzerland 🇨🇭, and even the USA 🇺🇸.
Teaching
During my fourth and last year at Sofia University, I really wanted to see what’s like to be a teacher, so I signed up as a teaching assistant at my university for two subjects - Data Structures and Algorithms and Internet of Things. In short, I really liked it. You feel wonderful when you manage to blaze even a little spark in someone, when you get them passioned, when you get them excited. I also feel like I have the urge to continue Mrs Doneva’s teaching practices, like a successor of hers. I’m sure she’d be happy about that.
For the future, I’ve been considering some teaching opportunities in academies like Telerik or SoftUni and also in online learning platforms like Udemy, Coursera, etc.
Currently, I publish tech articles at my blog on Medium. I’ve also started my own YouTube channel for tech tutorials.
Training and Sports 🏊
On a Daily Basis
At my best, I try to excercise atleast once on every two days.
Usually, I do street workouts and jogging.
My favourite jogging place is park Maritsa in Dimitrovgrad - my hometown. It’s a big park near the river Maritsa. I often take pauses to sit by the river and just relax and purge stress.
On Rare Occasions
I adore swimming. For me, it’s the ultimate stress relief activity. In the past, I’ve practiced swimming a couple of times every week. Unfortunately, as of now, I just go swimming when I have the time and opportunity to do so.
And here’s one winter sport that I absolutely love - snowboarding. Furthermore, I love the people with whom I gather with for those winter sports, it’s always ultra fun with them.
Animals 🐾
I enjoy interacting with animals regardless of their kind. I especially love cats and dogs.
A cat named Sofi, born in Sofia, Bulgaria and adopted from there, is our chubby, fluffy, and loving family member since October 2016.
Unlike some cats, she has never hissed or attacked a person. If you annoy her, she’ll just gently move away from you. Or if she doesn’t recognize you, she’ll just run away and hide.
She also doesn’t know exactly how to meow, so she just makes a cute toy-squeezing noise.
I often terrorize her by doing stupid and funny things with her. But she doesn’t mind, she loves it.
Fun fact: If a cat has three or more colors, it’s definitely female.
From October 2020, our family expanded with a new member - Karina.
She’s a cute little Pomeranian, however she bites like a piranha fish!
Men’s Fashion 👞
I’m also very interested in men’s fashion.
“Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak.” —Rachel Zoe
Spring and Autumn are the seasons for some of my favourite outfits.
I’ve created myself an Instagram page called casualsformen in which I gather, store and share all my favourite outfits.
Gaming 🎮
I’m very passionate about gaming. I love every second I spend in gaming, but unfortunatelly I’m slowly starting to avoind doing so because there are more important things to do in the current phase of my life.
I play a lot of games both on my PC and on my PlayStation.
Some of my favourite games are
I’ve also started my own Youtube channel for entertaining gaming videos. I’m planning to buy myself a VR set and to play and record VR games.
Finances 📈
I’m a person who’s very concerned about his money.
I try to save as much as possible without stopping myself too much from doing or buying things that I want.
I see topics such as investing, money management, finances, and economy as very interesting ones. Sometimes, in my free time, I educate myself in those topics through different kinds of online material.
I like investing in stocks and that’s mostly what I focus on, but recently a friend of mine sparked in me a serious interest in Bitcoin and the whole crypto world.