I am writing this post from the aircraft which is getting ready to depart to San Francisco. I am about to leave this historic, beautiful, culturally rich Istanbul city in a few minutes. I came to this city 3 days back, now returning back to San Francisco with so many memorable experiences. I came here to speak at the Java Day Istanbul conference. Java Day Istanbul is a non-profit conference organized by a capable team led by Altuğ B. Altıntaş for last 12 consecutive years. Altuğ was recently presented with the ‘Java Champion’ award by Oracle. 100% deserved and even more. I truly believe only because of self-less individuals like Altuğ, Java is flourishing even after 30 years of its birth. His 16-year-old son was busy running around in the conference arena to help with conference activities. It’s rare to see such responsible kids at this young age. Apparently Altuğ listened to my 2025 JPrime conference talks in Sofia, Bulgaria. And he invited me to the Java Day Istanbul conference. They are hand picking the speakers; thus, the speaker lineup and content they presented were world-class.
Java Day Istanbul: The Conference Experience
Java Day Istanbul Conference was held in the well-run 5-star Elite World Grand Maltepe hotel. The hotel provides wonderful extensive Turkish breakfast, world class fitness center & very comfortable pleasant stay. I highly recommend it. Organizers were kind enough to give me the first speaking slot that too in the best conference room. The first talk topic was ‘GC Tuning: A Masterpiece in Performance Engineering‘. This topic didn’t attract many attendees in a world where everyone wants to listen to ‘AI’ topics :-). It had less than 20 attendees. Over the years, I have gotten used to speaking in less attendee sessions. It’s no longer disappointing. Few years ago, I used to get disappointed with following questions:
– Is the travel fatigue worth speaking to 20 attendees?
– Is it worth the time to speak to 20 attendees?
– Is it worth it to be away from family for 20 attendees?
I have concluded, it’s worth it. The ancient Hindu scripture ‘Bhagavat Gita’ mentions that ‘Do the duty. Don’t expect the Result’. I would like to follow that. Besides that, more than the quantity of the attendees, the quality of the attendees matters a lot. Even if there are only a handful of attendees, if they take away and implement the key learnings, it can bring profound results to their organizations.
My next talk was: ‘3 Critical Java Performance Issues Every Engineer should know‘. To my great surprise, this talk attracted more than 200+ attendees. The conference room was fully packed, in fact few attendees were standing and listening.
Talk time allocated for this conference is interestingly only 25 minutes. Fellow speakers were slightly worried about how to communicate their content within 25 minutes, as typically, talk time in other conferences are 45 – 55 minutes. I was also concerned originally. Later I told myself, in modern times, people cannot watch 1-minute shorts/reel, and they want to scroll to the next shorts. Thus, we should adapt to this fast-changing world and this new 25-minute schedule was perfect.
Once my second talk was over, to my biggest surprise, few attendees wanted to take photographs with me and shake hands with me. This is the first time this has happened to me (even though I have been speaking in conferences for more than 13 years). Oh wow, for a moment I felt like a celebrity 🙂
Fig: Fully Packed Conference room for my Talk
Fig: Turkish Engineers wanted to take Photograph with me 😊
Beyond the Keynote: Connecting with Cagdas
One of the primary reasons for me to come to Istanbul is to see our UI developer Cagdas Kasimogula. He has been writing amazing HTML, CSS, JavaScript for our applications for the last 6 years. Our UI/UX lead designer Harkiran (based in India), has once mentioned that she has worked with so many UI developers in her career, but no one has accurately implemented her design like him. I thought it’s a huge compliment given to his work! Cagdas lives in Brusa, he drove a couple of hours to meet me at the conference location. We went out for lunch and he gave a brief drive to Bagdat Avenue. He didn’t allow me to pay the lunch bill. Turkish courtesy of hosting guests. The hilarious thing was, even though I was working with him for 6 years, I have never met him, not even on a zoom call. He always comes to the Zoom call with video turned off. Also, I have not seen his photograph in the past. Because of his deep technical capabilities and mature voice, I always thought he was supposed to be 50+ years old. Apparently, he is only 38 years old and just got engaged recently. He is going to get married in the upcoming Summer. Let’s all wish good luck and all the best wishes to Cagdas for his successful married life.
Fig: Seeing our UI developer Cagdas for the first time after 6 years
The Overwhelming Magic of Istanbul
Beyond the conference and my team’s meet-up, I was completely captivated by Istanbul itself. Oh my god, what a great city. There is so much uniqueness to this city, let me highlight some of them:
- Guest Welcoming City: Whether you are taking the Metro, walking on the street, anywhere, anytime you ask for help, Turkish people take special time to help you out. It’s very kind of them. In fact, after my conference talk that night, I stopped by a local cafe. There was a family having tea. They started having a friendly, entertaining & engaging conversation with me when they learnt that I have come from the USA to speak at a software conference. The head of the family began sharing his personal fitness workout routine. He offered me a cigarette. I respectfully declined as I don’t smoke. The eldest daughter in the family showed me a thumbs-up sign and smiled. At this point, it’s worth mentioning that a lot of people in Istanbul smoke. Tax Drivers, Women, Men are smoking & smoking. One pleasant surprise was that his eldest son was a mobile test engineer. He told me he has watched my YouTube talk – oh my god, I started floating in the air.
Fig: Engaging & Entertaining Conversation with Local Turkish Family
- Mother Tongue Loving Citizens: In Istanbul, the Turkish language is widely spoken. All signs were in Turkish. Not that many folks talk in English. I totally welcome and appreciate their love for the language. This is how it should be. Thus, I had to heavily rely on ‘Google Translator’. It was so much fun to type in English, show the translated content in mobile phone to the locals, and see their English translated response in their mobile phones. We were communicating beyond the language barrier using Google Translator. What an amazing tool!
- Traveling on a local minibus without purchasing a ticket: I always try to take public transportation (instead of Uber) as much as possible for 2 reasons: 1) It’s very cheap. 2) You can experience the local culture fully, it will be a touristy/surface-level experience of Istanbul. Thus, I took local Metros, trams, and small blue minibus during my stay. The small mini blue bus experience was so much fun. It stops anywhere people wave their hands. It was fully cramped with people. I don’t know how much to pay or to whom to pay in that bus. Before I could make the payment, my stop came and exited the bus, without paying for the travel :(. Sorry, Blue Bus Operator.
- People are complaining about expensiveness: Several people mentioned that it’s very expensive to live in Istanbul. One taxi driver mentioned that he is unable to pay rent and he is not in a position to take his sick son to the doctor. I tried to help him by tipping a good sum that I can. I could see a big thank you smile on my face. Similarly I saw the big thank you smile from a person who was helping me to get on to the Havaist shuttle bus to Airport, when I gave my Istanbulkart card which had left over money. The Istanbulkart card is used for public transportations in the city. I loaded this card with a sizable amount of money on the first day of the trip. It had decent money left. Whenever I do this sort of small favors, I always get reminded of thought leader from our country Annadurai, who once told in my native language Tamil: ஏழையின் சிரிப்பில் இறைவனைக் காண்போம். Meaning: “In a poor man’s smile we can see God”.
- Heavy Traffic: There is traffic all the time on the road. Even at night, at 1 am, cars are hustling on the road busily. This was in direct contrast to several European countries like Germany, which went into hibernation mode after 8 pm.
- Strategic City that Connects Europe & Asia: Istanbul has been blessed with beautiful geography – an ocean piercing into the city, green mountains. Besides that Istanbul is the city that connects two big continents Europe and Asia. Thus, the city has two sides: Europe side and Asia side. Europe seems to be more historic and traditional. The Asian side seems to be more modern.
- Cats & Cats: To my biggest surprise, there are so many cats all over Istanbul. Even in the historic Blue Mosque tourist sites, cats were there. They all are roaming comfortably on the streets. I have never seen so many cats roaming in the streets anywhere before. When I asked Cagdas about it, he said, “Yes, we love cats! “. Note, he stressed the word ‘love’.
- Few Minutes Delay Culture: Buses, trains, and conference sessions were all running late by a few minutes. It’s only a few minutes and totally acceptable. I am not saying it as a complaint, just sharing it as an interesting cultural observation.
- Smoking & Mobile observant Taxi Drivers: Invariably, most tax drivers are smoking & they smoke within the car as well. You can feel the smoke aroma dominating in the car. I told myself, when there are so many economic issues going on in their family, probably smoking is their biggest stress buster. Besides that, they are comfortable talking, typing and typing, talking on their mobile phones while driving. My blood pressure was pumping so heavily, I thought I should take my Blood Pressure tablets. But then I got used to it.
People often use one word to describe each country, person, movie…. The word that comes to my mind when I think of Istanbul is ‘Overwhelming’ in a positive manner. There was a lot happening in this city & country, and 3 days wasn’t enough to absorb it all. It’s like trying to pour black sea into a water bottle! I told myself I should come back & experience Istanbul/Turkey even more.
Share your Thoughts!