Who am I?
TL;DR: I am Giorgi Tsiklauri, software engineer, architect, lecturer, mentor, part-time consultant and someone
who has long (since JDK 5) been a Java enthusiast; who has long been keenly interested in computer networking,
architecture, security and engineering; who is fond of an aesthetic, clean and simplistic code, architecture
and design; and finally - whos passion for music (mostly classical, since the childhood; but electronica too - since
the early teenage) has long been big.
TS;WM: I have been interested in computers since my early childhood, playing around IBM 286 and even manually "pasting"
some BASIC code into machine, fancying my (successful, by the way) chances of, finally, after some
really tedious work, have my PC printed simple geometric shapes, green on black. Even though these were just simple
geometric shapes green on black, and even though that was not persistent, by any means, losing everything you had done in
just a second due to a very fugacious and ephemeral nature of electricity in the '90s of the post-soviet
coutnry (where I was born), that success of compiling and actually running something you wrote, was a bliss,
making me full of the joys of spring.
Soon after purchasing my first "colourful modern PC" (Intel Pentium 166MHz), somewhere in the beginning of the
Windows 98 times, I became passionately interested in the real nuts and bolts of computers.
Somewhere in the times of 2005-2006, I dove into several branches of computers, namely - software programming,
web design, computer networks, and a little later - computer architecture, software architecture and network security.
Apart from technology and computer sciences, another major constituent of my life has been music. I've been
playing piano since 3 years old age and somewhere during teenage, I took on it professionally. Although I managed
to perform some of my favourite pieces (including Rach 2, Sonatas, Preludes and Etudes, by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff,
Mozart, Scriabin and Bach), all this didn't live up to me being famous classical concert pianist; however, I still
play for my own satisfaciton.
I also have been producing and mixing electronica music since my 20s.. and occasionally, I still produce music
(see my soundcloud), but not being engaged into playing DJ gigs.
What have I been doing?
Being currently in 2023, it's ~17+ years of experience in IT, encompassing 13 years of experience in software engineering, 4 years in software architecture/design, 6 years in mentoring Java programming courses (by Duke University) and 5 years of lecturing in different topics of programming with main focus on Java and web technologies. Experienced in working in the government and private/enterprise sectors. Experienced in leading and managing software teams.
What else am I passionate about?
- Music - although, it used to be much more than just a passion (I have even studied at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, for some time), today, it's only passion, but a huge passion, huge constituent of my life. On some rare occasions, I also try composing classical music;
- Quality Education - I cannot count how many university courses, online courses, books, conferences or etc. have I been through.. and I think, that the quality education is certainly lacking. Nowadays, there are countless free materials, books, video lectures, online courses, tutorials and so forth, and very often, this huge amount of produced materials lacks clarity, accuracy, consistency and correctness (i.e. the quality), which, therefore, produces mess and noise, resulting in an increasingly chaotic, unsystematic and unstructured knowledge. Overall, in our time, education content became much more about quantity rather than quality. So, I'm passionate about being highly scrupulous, clear, simple and understandable whenever I explain something;
- Other things I'm passionate about include: cyber security, cryptography, algorithms, data structures, linguistics (especially British linguistics), philosophy (Immanuel Kant, Isaac Newton), political philisophy (John Locke, René Descartes, Francis Bacon), privacy and climate.
What I volunteer[ed] for?
My first volunteering experience was accepting proposal on a Mentor role for the English Grammar course, provided by the University of California, Irvine, on Coursera. Some time after that, another proposal from Duke University followed - Mentor for the Java Programming course, provided by Duke University. I occasionally contribute to the Java Magazine, Oracle's Java Tutorials, Java docs, MDN docs and JCP community discussions. I have done technical review for two books: "How to Read Java - Understanding, debugging, and optimizing JVM applications" [L. Spilcă, Manning Publications] and an "unsung" (not acknowledged due to some technical reasons) review for "Spring in Action" [C. Walls, Manning Publications].
What are my outside interests and hobbies?
Astrophysics, International [Geo]Politics, Ethnopolitics, Middle East. I enjoy strolling, watching northern lights, deconstructing symphonic music, listening Georgian folk music, reading different scientific domains (mental models, sleep biology, cosmology, thinking systems, etc.), watching documentaries and interesting/fun movies.