I started writing computer software in 1995 using the family's Z80-based computer. Armed with a HC-90, a casette player and a 5.25'' floppy drive, I spent a couple of my childhood months moving applications from casettes to floppy drives using Tape2Disk, an Assembler application I wrote from scratch. My collection of tapes and floppy drives is still functional, but my first PC did not survive this long.
The early 2000s caught me learning web-based programming languages (mostly JavaScript and PHP) via tutorials published on the CD version of the CHIP magazine. Soon thereafter, I discovered the wonderful Delphi, an object-oriented programming language for Win32. By the time I ended highschool, I had learned the ins and outs of Windows programming. Some of my games and applications are still online, while others have never been carried to completion.
I signed up for my first real job in 2007 at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi where I used to study at that time. There is where I became acquainted with system administration, computer networking and computer clusters.
In 2008 I joined Bitdefender and pivoted into cybersecurity. I'm currently a director of threat research at Bitdefender, where I'm building awesome stuff, curating the news, speaking at conferences and running the CNA partnership with MITRE. You can find a more detailed description of what I do on my LinkedIn profile.