I am pretty sure I'm a 50th percentiler. I'm mid 40s, kinda burned out but still struggling forward in my ok-but-not-hollywood IT career, I still have a passion for doing things well in a technical society that values doing things cheap (and well). The things I am known for being good at, I still google daily, and for a long time, I've been hungry for a change - any change - but especially one that isn't chaotically negative.

So in 2026, I wanna learn how dirt works.

I actually have a giant box of dirt sitting on a shelf at the UNH community co-op soil analysis lab, waiting to give me some kind of data about the soil behind my house. (Or is it dirt? I don't know what I'm getting into).

In 2024 I tried growing some corn. It never sprouted.

In 2025 I tried growing some corn. It sprouted and a few ears had enough kernels to make one full mouthful. Tasty, but maybe 7 calories of food for a year of effort.

So in 2026 I'd like to grow: one entire fully formed ear of sweet corn. Anything else is a bonus.

That's what I wanna develop in 2026 - learning how soil works enough to make it make a thing. Small moves, Ellie.

If you want to try again, these are the seeds I last used which had 100% germination and produced plenty of ears of corn.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MI33BS

I've also had a ton of luck growing corn in 5 gallon buckets with holes drilled in the side to allow air into the soil which keeps the roots from balling up (wasting energy that should go into growing ears). Used potting mix with a handful of lime and a handful of epsom salt, and topped the buckets with mulch to retain moisture.

If you're willing to try that approach, this was very similar to my system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptgJn15TmRM

A couple of things about corn. It might not be soil at issue. Germination depends on correct temperature and moisture. Too much moisture the seed will rot or not have enough air to germinate. Too little moisture it won't trigger germination. Too deep it won't germinate, too shallow and germination won't happen either because it will dry out instead of staying moist. Seeds vary in depth they require and some even require light to germinate (doesn't apply to corn). It's a bit of an art figuring out what "even moisture until germination" is, and this varies based on soil type. Timing of planting with correct temperature is important.

Each kernel of corn has one silk. The silk is analogous to a Fallopian tube with pollen traveling down into the ovary (or kernel of corn in this case). If you have an ear of corn with only a few kernels it's often because pollen didn't land on all the silks. For this reason corn is usually planted in blocks. It's wind pollinated so wind shakes pollen off the tassels or male flowers at the top, down onto the silk. But if you just have one corn plant in isolation, or a row in isolation it's easier for the pollen to just blow away or miss. Planting in blocks or "array of arrays" configuration helps the pollen to reach the silk more uniformly as pollen from the surrounding plants is released.

So, 2026 is going to be the year I'm going to run this experiment on myself and see what I can accomplish with this way of working.

I have similar years experience and regularly try out AI for development but always find it’s slower for the things I want to build and/or that it produces less than satisfactory results.

Not sure if it’s how I use the models (I’ve experimented with all the frontier ones), or the types of things I’m building, or the languages I’m using, or if I’m not spending enough, or if it’s just my standards are too high for the code that is produced but I usually always end up going back to doing things by hand.

I try to keep the AI focused on small well defined tasks, use AGENT.MD and skills, build out a plan first, followed by tests for spec based development, keep context windows and chats a reasonable length etc, but if I add up all that time I could have done it myself and have better grasp of the program and the domain in the process.

I keep reading how AI is a force multiplier but I’m yet to see it play out for myself.

I see lots of posts talking about how much more productive AI has made people, but very few with actual specifics on setup, models, costs, workflows etc.

I’m not an AI doomer and would love to realize the benefits people are claiming they get.... but how to get there is the question

Initially I was astounded by the results.

Then I wrote a large feature (ad pacing) on a site using LLMs. I learned the LLMs did not really understand what they were doing. The algorithm (PID controller) itself was properly implemented (as there is plenty of data to train on), but it was trying to optimize the wrong thing. There were other similar findings where LLM was doing very stupid mistakes. So I went through a disillusionment stage and kind of gave up for a while.

Since then, I have learned how to use Claude Code effectively. I have used it mostly on existing Django code bases. I think everybody has a slightly different take on how it works well. Probably the most reasonable advice is to just keep going and try different kind of things. Existing code bases seem easier, as well as working on a spec beforehand, requiring tests etc. basic SWE principles.

This is step 3 of “draw the rest of the owl” :-)

> the most reasonable advice is to just keep going and try different kind of things.

This is where I’ve been at for a while now. Every couple of months I try again with latest models and latest techniques I hear people talking about but there’s very little concrete info there that works for me.

Then I wonder if it’s just my spend? I don’t mind spending $30/month to experiment but I’m not going to drop $300/month unless I can see evidence that it’ll be worth it, which I haven’t really seen, but maybe there’s a dependency and you don’t get the result without increased spend?

Some posts I’ve seen claim spending of $1,500/month, which would be worth it if it could increase productivity enough, but there’s very few specifics on workflows and results.

I use Claude every day for everything, it's amazing value for money.

Give it a specific task with the context it needs, that's what I find works well, then iterate from there. I just copy paste, nothing fancy.

I'm sure you can derive some benefit without doing that, but you're not going to see much of a speedup if you're still copy/pasting and manually prompting after each change. If anybody is copy/pasting and saying "I don't get it", yeah you don't.

Fair enough :-)

This reminds me about pigeon research by Skinner. Skinner placed hungry pigeons in a "Skinner box" and a mechanism delivered food pellets at fixed, non-contingent time intervals, regardless of the bird's behavior. The pigeons, seeking a pattern or control over the food delivery, began to associate whatever random action they were performing at the moment the food appeared with the reward.

I think we humans have similar psychology, i.e. we tend to associate superstitions about patterns of what were doing when we got rewards, if they happen at random intervals.

To me it seems we are at a phase where what works with LLMs *(the reward) are still quite random, but it is psychologically difficult for us to admit it. Therefore we try to invent various kinds of theories of why something appears to work, which are closer to superstitions than real repeatable processes.

It seems difficult to really generalize repeatable processes of what really works, because it depends on too many things. This may be the reason why you are unsuccessful when using these descriptions.

But while it seems less useful to try to work based on theories of what works -- although I had skeptical attitude -- I have found that LLMs can be huge productive boost -- but it really depends on the context.

It seems you just need to keep trying various things, and eventually you may find out what works for you. There is no shortcut where you just read a blog post and then you can do it.

Things I have tried succesfully: - modifying existing large-ish Django projects, adding new apps to it. It can sometimes use Django components&HTMX/AlpineJS properly, but sometimes starts doing something else. One app uses tenants, and LLM appears to constantly struggle with this. - creating new Django projects -- this was less successful than modifying existing projects, because LLM could not imitate practices - Apple Swift mobile and watch applications. This was surprisingly succesful. But these were not huge apps. - python GUI app was more or less succesful - GitHub Pages static web sites based on certain content

I have not copied any CLAUDE.md or other files. Every time Claude Code does something I don't appreciate, I add a new line. Currently it is at 26 lines.

I have made a few skills. They are mostly so that they can work independently in a loop, for example test something that does not work.

Typically I try to limit the technologies to something I know really well. When something fails, I can often quickly figure out what is wrong.

I started with the basic plan (I guess it is that $30/month). I only upgraded to $100 Max and later to $180 2xMax because I was hitting limits.

But reason I was hitting limits was because I was working on multiple projects on multiple environments at the same time. The only difference I have seen is that I have hit the limits. I have not seen any difference in quality.

Swift and iOS was something that didn’t work so well for me. I wanted to play around with face capture and spent a day with Claude putting together a small app that showed realtime video of a face and put dots on/around various facial features and printed log messages if the person changed the direction they were looking (up down left right) and played a sound when they opened their mouth.

I’ve done app development before, but it’s been a few years so was a little bit rusty and it felt like Claude was really helping me out.

Then I got to a point I was happy with and I thought I’d go deeper in the code to understand what it was doing and how it was working (not a delegation issue as per another comment, this was a play/learning exercise for me so wanted to understand how it all worked) - and right there in the apple developer documentation was a sample so that did basically the same thing as my app, only the code was far simpler and after reading through the accompanying docs I realized the Claude version had a threading issue waiting to happen that was explicitly warned against in the docs of the api calls it was using.

If I’d gone to the developer docs in the beginning I would have had a better app, and better understanding in maybe a quarter of the time.

Appreciate the info on spend. The above session was on the $30/month version of Claude.

I guess I need to just keep flapping my wings until I can draw the owl.

Subjectively interacting with an LLM gives a sense of progress, but objectively downloading a sample project and tutorial gets me to the same point with higher quality materials much faster.

I keep thinking about research on file navigation via command line versus using a mouse. People’s subjective sense of speed and capability don’t necessarily line up with measurable outcomes.

LLMs can do some amazing things, but violently copy and pasting stack overflow & randomness from GitHub can too.

The time I save on typing out the program is lost to new activities I otherwise wouldn't be doing.

If you tried it roughly prior to https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-note... give it another shot. f you tried it after and found it lacking then this doesn't apply.

I am reading between the lines here, trying genuinely to be helpful, so forgive me if I am not on the right track.

But based on what you write, it seems to me you might have not really gone through the disillusionment phase yet. You seem to be assuming the models "understand" more than they really are capable of understanding, which creates expectations and then disappointment. It seems to be you are still expecting CC to work at a level of a senior professional on various roles, instead of assuming it is a junior professional.

I would have probably approached that iOS app by first investigting various options how the app could be implemented (especially as I don't have deep understanding of the tech), and then explore each option to understand myself what is the best one.

The options in your example might be the Apple documentation page. It it might be some open source repo that contains something that could be used as a starting point etc.

Then I would have asked Claude to create a plan to implement the best option.

During either the option selection or planning, the threading issue would either come up or not. It might come up explicitly, in which case I could learn it from the plans. It might be implicit, just included in the generated code. Or it might not be included in the plans or in the code, even if it is explicitly stated in the documentation. If the suggested plan would be based on that documentation, then I would probably read it myself too, and might have seen the suggestion.

When reviewing the plan, I can use my prior knowledge to ask whether that issue has been taken into account. If not, then Claude would modify the plan. Of course, if I did not know about the threading issue beforehand, and did not have the general experience about the tech to suspect such as a issue, nor read the documentation and see the recommendation, I could not find the issue myself either.

If the issue is not found in planning or progamming, the issue would arise at later stage, hopefully while unit/system testing the application, or pilot use. I have not written complex iOS apps personally so I might have not caught it either -- I am not senior enough to guide it. I would ask it to plan again how to comprehenively test such an app, to learn how it should be done.

What I meant by standard SWE practices is that there are various stages (requirements, specification, design, programming, testing, pilot use) where the solution is reviewed from multiple angles, so it becomes likely that this kind of issues are caught. The best practices also include iteration. Start with something small that works. For example, first an iOS application that compiles, and shows "Hello, world" etc. and can be installed on your phone.

In my experience, CC cannot be expected to independently work as a senior professional on any role (architect, programmer, test manager, tester, pilot user, product manager, project manager). Junior might not take into account all instructions or guidance even if it is explicit. But it can act as a junior professional on any of these roles, so it can help senior professional to get the 10x productivity boost on any of these areas.

By project manager role, I mean that I am explicitly taking the CC through the various SWE stages and making sure they have been done properly, and also that I iterate on the solution. On each one of the stages, I take the role of the respective senior professional. If I cannot do it yet, I try to learn how to do it. At the same time, I work as a product manager/owner as well, to make decisions about the product, based on my personal "taste" and requirements.

I mean I'm definitely still in the stage of disillusionment, but I'm not treating LLMs as senior or expecting much from them.

The example I gave played out much as you described above.

I used an iterative process, with multiple self-contained smaller steps, each with a planning and discussion stage where I got the AI to identify ways to achieve what I was looking to do and weigh up tradeoffs that I then decided on, followed by a design clarification and finalisation stage, before finally getting it to write code (very hard sometimes to get the AI not to write code until the design has been finalised), followed by adjustments to that code as necessary.

The steps involved were something like:

- build the app skeleton

- open a camera feed

- display the feed full screen

- flip the feed so it responded as a mirror would if you were looking at it

- use the ios apis to get facial landmarks

- display the landmarks as dots

- detect looking in different directions and print a log message.

- detect the user opening their mouth

- play a sound when the mouth transitions from closed to open

- etc

Each step was relatively small and self-contained, with a planning stage first and me asking the AI probing/clarifying questions.

The threading issue didn't come up at all in any of this.

Once it came, the AI tied itself in knots trying to sort it out, coming up with very complex dispatching logic that still got things incorrect.

It was a fun little project, but if I compare the output it just wasn't equivalent to what I could get if I'd just started with the Apple documentation (thought maybe it's different now, as per another commenter's reply).

It's also easily completeable in a day if you want to give it a try :-) Apple Developer reference implementation [here](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Vision/tracking-th...).

> By project manager role, I mean that I am explicitly taking the CC through the various SWE stages and making sure they have been done properly, and also that I iterate on the solution. On each one of the stages, I take the role of the respective senior professional. If I cannot do it yet, I try to learn how to do it. At the same time, I work as a product manager/owner as well, to make decisions about the product, based on my personal "taste" and requirements.

Right, this is what I do. I guess my point is that the amount of effort involved to use English to direct and correct the AI often outweighs the effort involved to just do it myself.

The gap is shrinking (I get much better results now that I did a year ago) but still there.

>The threading issue didn't come up at all in any of this. > >Once it came, the AI tied itself in knots trying to sort it out, coming up with very complex dispatching logic that still got things incorrect.""

Yes. These kind of loops have happened to me as well. It sometimes requires clearing of context + some inventive step to help the LLM out of the loop. For example my ad pacing feature required that I recognized that it was trying to optimize the wrong variable. I consider this to be partly what I mean by "LLM is a junior" and that "I act as the project manager".

> I guess my point is that the amount of effort involved to use English to direct and correct the AI often outweighs the effort involved to just do it myself.

Could you really have done a complex mobile app alone in one day without knowing the stack well beforehand? I believe this of stuff used to take months from a competent team not long time ago. I certainly could not have done one year ago what I can do today, with these tools.

You will certainly understand a program better where you write every line of code yourself, but that limits your output. It's a trade-off.

The part that makes it work quite well is that you can also use the LLM to better understand the code where required, simply by asking.

The difference between delegating to a human vs an LLM is that a human is liable for understanding it, regardless of how it got there. Delegating to an LLM means you're just more rapidly creating liabilities for yourself, which indeed is a worthwhile tradeoff depending on the complexity of what you're losing intimate knowledge of.

In the end the person in charge is liable either way, in different ways.

Real world responsibilities to manage, which sometimes can be hindrances at certain levels, but no functional society lets people just do arbitrary things at any speed regardless of impact to others in the name of a checklist. I mean that if I ask a person on my team that I trust to do something, they'll use a machine to do it, but if it's wrong, they're responsible for fixing it and maintaining the knowledge to know how to fix it. If a bridge fails, it's on the Professional Engineer who has signoff on the project, as well as the others doing the engineering work to make sure they make a bridge that doesn't collapse. If software engineers can remotely call themselves that without laughing, they need to consider their liability along the way, depending on circumstance.

Maybe that’s just the level I gave up at and it’s a matter of reworking the Claude.md file and other documentation into smaller pieces and focusing the agent on just little things to get past it.

It doesn’t have to be exactly how I would do it but at a minimum it has to work correctly and have acceptable performance for the task at hand.

This doesn’t mean being super optimized just that it shouldn’t be doing stupid things like n+1 requests or database queries etc.

See a sibling comment for one example on correctness, another one related to performance was querying some information from a couple of database tables (the first with 50,000 rows the next with 2.5 million)

After specifying things in enough detail to let the AI go, it got correct results but performance was rather slow. A bit more back and forthing and it got up to processing 4,000 rows a second.

It was so impressed with its new performance it started adding rocket ship emojis to the output summary.

There were still some obvious (to me) performance issues so I pressed it to see if it could improve the performance. It started suggesting some database config tweaks which provided some marginal improvements but was still missing some big wins elsewhere - namely it was avoiding “expensive” joins and doing that work in the app instead - resulting in n+1 db calls.

So I suggested getting the DB to do the join and just processing the fully joined data on the app side. This doubled throughout (8,000 rows/second) and led to claims from the AI this was now enterprise ready code.

There was still low hanging fruit though because it was calling the db and getting all results back before processing anything.

After suggesting switching to streaming results (good point!) we got up to 10,000 rows/second.

This was acceptable performance, but after a bit more wrangling we got things up to 11,000 rows/second and now it wasn’t worth spending much extra time squeezing out more performance.

In the end the AI came to a good result, but, at each step of the way it was me hinting it in the correct direction and then the AI congratulating me on the incredible “world class performance” (actual quote but difficult to believe when you then double performance again).

If it has just been me I would have finished it in half the time.

If I’d delegated to a less senior employee and we’d gone back and forth a bit pairing to get it to this state it might have taken the same amount and effort but they would’ve at least learnt something.

Not so with the AI however - it learns nothing and I have to make sure I re-explain things and concepts all over again the next time and in sufficient detail that it will do a reasonable job (not expecting perfection, just needs to be acceptable).

And so my experience so far (much more than just these 2 examples) is that I can’t trust the AI to the point where I can delegate enough that I don’t spend more time supervising/correcting it than I would spend writing things myself.

Edit: using AI to explain existing code is a useful thing it can do well. My experience is it is much better at explaining code than producing it.

`database-query-speed-optimization` "Some rules of thumb for using database queries:

- Use joins - Streaming results is faster - etc. "

That way, the next time you have to do something like this, you can remind it of / it will find the skill.

In this case the two tables shared 1:1 mapping of primary key to foreign key so the join was fast and exact - but there are situations where that won’t the case.

And yeah this means slowly building out skills with enough conditions and rules and advice.

I laughed more at this than I probably should have, out of recognition.

When I’m writing my own code I can verify the logic as I go and coupled with a strong type system and a judicious use of _some_ tests its generally enough for my code to be correct.

By comparison the AI needs more tests to keep it on the right path otherwise the final code is not fit for purpose.

For example in a recent use case I needed to take a json blob containing an array of strings that contained numbers and needed to return an array of Decimals sorted in ascending order.

This seemed a perfect use case - a short well defined task with clear success criteria so I spent a bunch of time writing the requirements and building out a test suite and then let the AI do its thing.

The AI produced ok code, but it was sorted everything lexicographically before converting to a Decimal rather converting to Decimals first and sorting numerically so 1000 was less than 900.

So I point it out and the AI says good point, you’re absolutely correct and we add a test for this and it goes again and gets the right result but that’s not a mistake I would have made or needed a test for (though you could argue it’s a good test to have).

You could also argue that I should have specified the problem more clearly, but then we come back to the point that if I’m writing every specific detail in English first, it’s faster for me just to write it in code in the first place.

"Write unit tests with full line and branch coverage for this function:

def add_two_numbers(x, y): return x + y + 1 "

Sometimes the LLM will point out that this function does not, in fact, return the sum of x and y. But more often, it will happily write "assert add_two_numbers(1, 1) == 3", without comment.

The big problem is that LLMs will assume that the code they are writing tests for is correct. This defeats the main purpose of writing tests, which is to find bugs in the code.

Run Cursor in “agent” mode, or create a Codex or Claude Code “unit test” skill. I recommend claude code.

Explain to the LLM that after it creates or modifies a test, it must run the test to confirm it passes. If it fails, it’s not allowed to edit the source code, instead it must determine if there is a bug in the test or the source code. If the test is buggy it should try again, if there is a bug in the source code it should pause, propose a fix, and consult with you on next steps.

The key insight here is you need to tell it that it’s not supposed to randomly edit the source code to make the test pass. I also recommend reviewing the unit tests at a high level, to make sure it didn’t hallucinate.

I feel this is a gross mischaracterization of any user flow involving using LLMs to generate code.

The hard part of generating code with LLMs is not how fast the code is generated. The hard part is verifying it actually does what it is expected to do. Unit tests too.

LLMs excel at spewing test cases, but you need to review each and every single test case to verify it does anything meaningful or valid and you need to iterate over tests to provide feedback on whether they are even green or what is the code coverage. That is the part that consumes time.

Claiming that LLMs are faster at generating code than you is like claiming that copy-and-pasting code out of Stack Overflow is faster than you writing it. Perhaps, but how can you tell if the code actually works?

Good luck!

- MANDATORY: Get more intimate with my Neovim. I've always kind of half-arsed my editors / IDEs, I always found it annoying to become a deep expert. This must change; surface-level skills rob you of productivity. I already am hugely annoyed by my typing speed, which is quite excellent but still not enough to work almost at the speed of thought. I want to achieve something near to these levels.

- OPTIONAL: Integrate closer with one ore more LLM agents for coding. I have not paid for any yet but copying-pasting from a web UI gets tiring. Sometimes you really just want to say "OK, now remove that duplicate test and include that edge case" and see it materialize in 20 seconds. I am not against paying, it's just that so far the paid tiers have not been a blocker. Well, seems like they are now.

- MANDATORY: Prioritize body. I have health conditions and I have a relatively good visibility how to fix them. I regularly end up desperately trying to solve more and more problems on the computer just so I don't get up and start a workout. I started turning this around but it's way too slow and time and age don't wait for anyone.

In general: connect better with myself, forgive myself all the previous mistakes, understand why and how they came to be and remove the root causes, put myself on a better path. And above all: be more true to myself.

To be even more precise, regaining focus unlocks many other skills, prioritizing the physical health included. I am still working my way towards that.

But ruined health made me laser-focus on my wife and my work and I ignored many other things. Much to my shame, I don't even have a home media center and I have all the skills to make it happen and have it be much better than f.ex. Netflix or Disney+ UI.

It's all about carefully picking my battles, at least in this stage of life. Lack of focus and trying to be everywhere led to me making dozens, if not hundreds, of easily avoidable mistakes. I am hellbent on never allowing that again.

I'm actually not that convinced of these productivity gains in the context of IDE tricks. The cost of learning + tool-lock seems steep compared to the actual productivity gains. I'm switching fairly regularly between IDE's, and even if VS Code is the default, the only reason I'm considering learning it in depths is because some people incessantly comment on these things during pair programming.

But whatever the editor/IDE, There’s always some neat tricks that will help you, especially around editing and tools integration.

There are Zed and Helix of course and they are on my radar but... not enough focus and energy for such big quests.

As for speed, I know Neovim can do much more than I use it for and I want the speed. When I can code even quicker my thought just flows through my fingers and the result is always good. But I have not been like that for years (ever since I gave up Emacs) and I want it back (and no I wasn't that much faster with Emacs either).

The first point is the hardest. It affects every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to really tackle it. This is the first year where I feel the need to take drastic action to achieve some kind of improvement.

What’s your plan? How is it working?

- Schedule time for it

- Understand that I will have slip ups and that's okay

- Make it hard to do the bad things (in this case, I have domain blockers to stop me redditing, I move my phone to another room etc.)

- Make it enjoyable. For me it's finding a particular energetic DJ set and just bopping along while I do the focused work.

And so on.

What I do I would today call "reconciliation" or "making peace". Let me explain.

On the one hand, I start recognizing in a colder, more methodical and mathematical manner, what things I did screw up in my life and why. I drill down and understand what emotions, unmet needs and un-addressed trauma led to these faulty decisions. Then I say: I understand why I did it but this only worked against me, it's time to change it and put myself on a better path. And by "better path for me" I don't mean only financial and career success; I mean those _and_ being happier and calmer.

On the other hand, I allow my more beastly / primitive / emotional / immature side to show up. I don't shun it, I try to sympathize with it and somewhat validate it. That's basically treating a part of yourself like an angry and lost kid: you do feel for them but want them to stop doing damage. But you also want to not force anything on them; you want them to understand and internalize they are only hurting themselves and others (in this case: other parts of you) with zero benefit for anyone involved.

---

It's not easy. I had a very rocky start in life. Sure I did not sleep under bridges but growing up in a shitty Eastern European town with a gay brother and you yourself being the nerd who effortlessly gets all A grades and is also good at karate, physically attractive and liked by girls sadly had a ton of downsides that many people are blind of. Almost everyone hates you for being different and they feel threatened by you while all you want is to fit in and be a part of a friendly group. It was and still is a big tragedy, one I don't claim I have managed to come to terms with even as of today.

---

But what I do lately is talk to my more primal side: "Look, I really understand how much you hate doing X and Y. I hate them too! But what else would you do? We did it your way for so long, you had an almost complete full reign and look what happened -- now we all suffer from severely diminished physical and mental health, we hate our life and often our work, we know that we wasted our best years on pointlessly rebelling against things we could never change. Where did all that bring us? Please, work with me. I understand that you never feel heard because we never achieved the life you wanted. But I can't see any shortcuts. Do you? If not, then let us please take the long but much safer road to our goals. That way we'll still get there one day. If we are not making progress then we'll talk again and readjust strategy and maybe do things more your way. But in the meantime, can we do things my way for a while? Please?"

Or something very similar.

But all that is 99% specific to me. You really have to find your own way to your deeper and more primal / emotional side. It exists and very often sabotages you because you never give it the wheel. Being civilized does this to us and no, I am not saying you should go outside and beat someone to death with a ratchet wrench of course. I mean that you should find a way to do the things you truly want, regardless of the cost.

I am NOT doing this well at the moment. For example I am too chicken to give up programming. But as mentioned above, I am trying to reconcile a few factors the best way I can for the moment. Maybe if that unlocks more energy and more motivation then the time would be ripe for more drastic measures.

One step at a time.

And be a touch assertive when you need to. I found I can't just put down the phone so I changed what I do on my phone (books instead of doom-scrolling). So far it works okay-ish. I am fine with a gradual progress.

I want to get better at speaking to people. I love conversing with people who have a lot to say, but I feel like lately I struggle with coming up with things to say myself. Especially if it's someone I'm not very familiar with. It's not even necessarily a shyness thing or something like that, I've just got a bad habit of carrying an internal monologue that I don't share even when it'd be appropriate, because I don't feel like it's necessary. But communication shouldn't be limited to what is necessary.

That said, PFA only compliments your classical syllabus, not replaces it.

I don't do anything anymore these days to advance my career in SWE. Maybe because I am quite jaded because job market sucks, and the job itself sucks (making the rich richer), and any extra time I need to do to advance my career is just doing leetcode monkey grind.

I want to change it this year. I do CRUD apps, and I am very boxed in my brain, thinking that CRUD apps is the only programming there is. I often marveled at people who create database, compilers, emulators, 3D engines, version controls, text editors, etc. Those people are like wizards to me.

I wonder how can I be creative like that? Like, how can you just wake up one day and decide to create magic.

I want to learn how to do those. Any advice is appreciated.

Also I want to do it in Zig because I've never worked with manual memory management language before, and I figured might as well.

I started learning infra via AWS CDK (TypeScript). And by osmosis learned a lot about cloud native application architecture. Which changed my way of creating web apps entirely and rejuvenated my love for software. Still going strong 5 years later. Now with much stronger focus on platform engineering and not working on features much.

https://codecrafters.io/

Writing my own compiler would be compelling but I somehow have a problem to do things only for sake of learning. Would love to have the knowledge tho. Anyway happy new year!

Pick a language you love, and put together a text editor, or even just a quick utility to search through all your files for a keyword and show the results in a window. Write your own Clock app for Android, just to fix that little niggling detail that no other app quite gets right.

I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to put things together, once you start.

The point isn't to build something anyone else would care about - don't worry about the polish, you don't need to publish it, you don't even need to use it yourself. The point is just to make something. Although, personally, I now have a collection of random utilities that all make my life a little bit better, and it's nice knowing that any time a simple app like "Clock" or "Calculator" bugs me, I COULD fix it.

We are inheriting about 50-100 bonsai plants from father. All my life I’ve been wondering how he’s been caring for them, but never gave a chance to actually learn from him.

He is not doing well and we don’t know how many years he has left.

That’s why 2026 will be the year of finally learning the craft from him, taking time to acquire his techniques and in general just spend more time with him.

Also, 'systems' doesn't mean code here. It could be business processes, people processes, ways of working, etc. AI is eventually going to impact all of it (it has already really), and that means being able to think about how to build systems that work well, and especially how to describe systems so that AI can help improve them.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-syst...

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/systems-thinking-...

But what will happen is that I use my working days writing code/producing software, evenings to make dinner and be with family, and nights gaming with friends.

Weekends are for recharging.

And that is completely OK.

It is a healthy balance between getting stuff done, recovery, and enjoying life.

To avoid burnout again, I take a day or two off whenever I feel like I need some time off.

Learning it all is also about learning those other things, too.

This has helped me a lot, makes me realize I want to learn how to relax better, to sleep better, and to slow down better.

Thank you!

"Life" is also a skill that needs practice.

I've digested Wirth's THE paper. And the XINU book, as well as the BSD book.

Anyhow it's for my own use on my own hardware, but it must be beautiful. I've been encouraged by feedback on my Forth code's clear Forthiness, in the way of small, comprehendable word units. That add up to poetic top level loops like OVER PROCESS OVER SCHEDULE IDLE

Edsgar Dijkstra, The THE multiprogramming system (1968)

Niklaus Wirth, Project Oberon

Seems like kind of strange / yet somewhat appropriate choice since Forth "traditionally use neither operating system nor file system." and "A full-featured Forth system with all source code will compile itself". Bootstrap your own operating system on a computer with literally nothing.

Interesting to read about though as a tangent, very different kind of language. "grammar has no official specification" "looks the word up in the dictionary" and then does whatever the dictionary specifies.

Good luck on the project though, seems like it fell out of use in the 80's and only got recovered recently. The Forth Interest Group comments on the subject are funny too. [1] "What ANS Forths are available?" -> "The simple answer is: none" Apparently somebody (Vincent Hamp) got it to work on Thumb-2 ISA (ARMv7-M and newer) though. Tiny. 7kb flash, 320B of ram. [2]

[1] https://www.forth.org/ansforth/ansforth.html

[2] https://gitlab.com/higaski/Shi

I've started with a FIG-Forth kernel in 9900 assembler, which fits into 8K. Many authors worked that code up to the 1990s branch I grabbed.

To bring up the board, I cross-assemble to produce two Flash EEPROMs, plug them in, and power up. The Forth kernel looks at block 6 for customizations where I tell it to compile some source packages I want from Flash. One of these is -ASSEMBLER, which lets me create short chunks of native machine code to work on very low-level things like bit I/O, the SPI and I2C peripheral behavior. Very good for debugging initial hardware.

When I'm happy with some code, I add the source to the next EEPROM build.

Block numbers were originally 1K chunks of disk, but can refer to any kind of storage like pages of ROM/RAM, or even to a process' virtual address space.

As for tech skills in 2026, I’d love to develop a photogrammetry pipeline mixing shoulder mounted SLAM scanner, DSLR terrestrial photography, and aerial LiDAR data sets. I’m lucky to have access to these data sets, just gotta put the pieces together.

I’m already familiar with UAS (unmanned aerial systems) photogrammetry and mixing that with terrestrial photos for high detail models. Aerial Lidar and SLAM datasets are something new I’ve been working with over the past 6 months.

    > new volunteer undertaking

Check with your local department to see if they offer CPR and basic first aid courses. If your local FD (fire department) doesn’t offer any, neighboring town stations may.

I live in a city with well-connected public transport (Singapore) so I don't feel the need to learn. However, this year I travelled to some rural areas in Japan and started to feel the pain of relying solely on public transport which is either extremely sparse, or sometimes non-existent which limits the places I want to visit. That's why I felt like if I obtain this skill, I can explore more places in my travels

Although I have "known" how to drive for a long time, I didn't get my formal license until much later in life than most people, for similar reasons to yours.

Now that I have it, I kick myself for not doing this earlier, but as they say: the best time was ten years ago, the second-best time is now.

Owing to the city life I often go up to six months without driving anywhere, but when I finally get out on the road again it feels great. Country driving is amazing, in any country where people drive safely. It's even pretty nice where they don't. City driving still stresses me out, but I'm determined to get better at it.

Good luck! If you find yourself having trouble getting the license in Singapore, there are other countries where you could get a license more easily, and with that license you could drive in third countries.

Two low-risk and cheap ways to develop relevant driving skills are bumper cars[0] and go-karts[1]. This may appear to be silly at first, but both involve the same hand-eye coordination and decision skills of vehicular driving (though the latter is no where nearly as fun as the others).

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_cars

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-kart

On a bike, this mostly reduces pedaling; in a car this can reduce unnecessary braking, safer driving distances, which make you a more predictable driver.

I believe 100% that nobody should be allowed behind the wheel of a motor vehicle before obtaining cycling proficiency.

In the park, I made it a hard point not to ride the bumper cars because I thought it would mess with my muscle-memory as the designated driver. If not for that, I really love bumper cars. However, I've found that responsiveness of bumper cars vary a lot per park; it either depends on the maintenance or the maker of the rides. And IME, none of them are really comparable to even the shittiest cars I've driven (e.g., the ones from the driving school, the assigned car for my license test).

But my bigger concern that day was the fact that the bumper car mindset is not the roadcar driver mindset. For learners, the free-for-all chaotic nature of the track is not even a good simulation! Not even if you're driving somewhere like India or China.

Speaking of simulation, I really want an affordable but legit way to practice dealing with outlier driving scenarios. Like, what if my brake fails in the highway, what if I get a flat while doing 100KPH---stuff even the safest, most defensive drivers can't entirely rule out. Anyone know of games that might fit the bill?

That and I'm trying to re-learn Spanish to a useful degree¹ - better attentiveness to the task would help with that too.

--------

[1] I did pretty well at GCSE level three decades ago, then never used it again. I fancy spending time over there in future and don't want to be that guy who turns up and expect everyone to speak some English.

As in, it’s all very well to reverse engineer something for your own edification or benefit, but sharing the fruits of your labour with others would be so much better.

And further, serendipitously discovering (possibly abandoned) reverse engineering efforts on GitHub is better than nothing, but having a community working on such things, sharing progress and techniques, and offering a central point of discovery would also be so much better.

I used to, when I was in a classroom or at a bar. Actually managed to get quite good at it through sheer boredom in grande école. Then life happened and that faded away, alongside my mental health. Recently I've rediscovered doodling while attending ACM CCS 2025 as an independent (long story) and I want to improve my mental health in 2026, to the point where I can draw regularly again.

Remember that paper is cheap and that experimentation is valuable. Make all the bad art you can. The cost of all the paper I wasted in the last 5 years is probably less than the cost of a pizza. There is a valuable life lesson in there about being okay with making mistakes so that you can learn from them.

Nowadays I always carry a notebook, and more often than not pens and watercolours. You can build a really tiny kit out of makeup palettes.

I also loved taking painting lessons and going to live nude drawing at one of my favourite pubs. Making art is such a pleasant disconnect from work and digital life.

Once you get into it, there is an amazing assortment of papers that can cost up to a pizza per sheet. Especially if you're going for the larger formats.

https://arches-papers.com/arches-range-of-papers/watercolor-...

https://drawabox.com/lesson/0

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395540

In any case, practice. Keep drawing, and try drawing the same thing multiple times. Don't just start over, fix your mistakes. Step back and take time off to let the mistakes come out.

Above all, remember to have fun. Mistakes are an integral part of learning, and if you take yourself too seriously, you will never make any. Waste as much paper as you need, if it means that you will keep practicing.

Besides that, there are plenty of resources to learn particular topics/techniques out there. For drawing people with any degree of realism, you'll need at least drawing proportions at first and then anatomy later on.

While you can brute-force it from zero on your own like I did, I wouldn't recommend it. You'll learn faster if you study it like a proper discipline.

Drawing on paper allows for a wide range of physical setups, such as using a notebook on your lap or on a table, large sheets mounted on a wall, or a board on an easel. Each configuration engages different muscle groups. Large-format drawing relies primarily on shoulder movement, whereas smaller, more detailed work involves the wrist, forearm, and fingers. I'm convinced that deliberately training hand–eye coordination at multiple scales (finger–eye, wrist–eye, or shoulder–eye), is beneficial in learning to draw better.

It is also a good idea to experiment with a variety of media: pens, pencils, chalk, charcoal, and different surfaces such as paper, wood, or canvas. The differing tactile feedback and resistance will improve your motor control. You don't need to spend a fortune on this, but don't limit yourself to the cheapest color pencils and toilet paper.

That said, if your primary goal is accurate photo replication, it's probably easiest to start with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain [1], along with some YouTube tutorials.

[1] https://www.drawright.com/

As for the subjects, being a horny teenager at the time I mostly drew scantily clad women. Sometimes portraits/caricatures of teachers or other students, mostly on request. All together, that led to an unfathomable number of hijinks.

Thankfully, the one time that a teacher came across their caricature, it ended well. A fellow student requested it while in class (of handwriting Java of all things). She then took my handout and brought it to the teacher, proudly stating with glee "look at what boricj drew!". Cue the laughter. Then the teacher stated flipping pages and stumbled upon the rest of my usual bodywork, so to speak. Cue the laughter again. By that point, I was rolling on the floor, my sides hurting.

I don't think I'll ever top that, but the reception of my doodles at the conference by academics reminded me of that past. Hopefully I'll manage to rekindle it.

I really want to get more into microcontrollers, and design some more technical projects. I've been wanting to make a portable point-and-shoot camera for a couple years, though I've never been knowledgeable in that area to do it very well. Though, I'm finally getting to that point.

On a non-electronic-designing front, I'd love to learn more about networking and radios. I'm working on my homelab right now, and just got a nice switch to connect some free 15-year-old office PCs I also have. I'd love to get into AREDN, which is a 802.11 mesh network that can run on amateur radio frequencies.

I also want to write more about my projects on my website (https://radi8.dev,) where hopefully I can share what I work on more often than I currently do.

Even if I don't pick up swimming as a workout, I like that it will open up new activities through different watersports.

I swam for the first time in years a few months ago, and was surprised how exhausted I was after 30 minutes of treading water! I work out and go on frequent long runs, but I was totally spent from that. I too would love to get into it again, it's definitely a great exercise.

I know people who are plenty buoyant: they aren't fast swimmers!

* Learn complex analysis!

* Get a better workflow for writing my notes to myself (e.g., Obsidian) and for publishing my blog/website (have a marginally-functional Hugo instance right now). Small thing, but the kind of important-but-not-urgent thing that it's easy to put off!

So I want to build up 3d modeling skills.

I am not surprised but its much much slower to get a physical product business going than just writing some code and launching.

Quite the adage but I have come to realise that I only ever learned to work, not to make money. I make a good living from consulting. But selling your time only gets you so far.

So I'll probably hire. And probably find out all my previous bosses weren't so wrong with their complaints after all.

The most profitable (and effort efficient way) is to routinely invest in a broad basket of stocks over a long period. Ie Voo and Hold.

Does it follow then that no-one is beating the index consistently?

Of course there are people who are not a statistic. Maybe not everyone is made for it, but that doesn't mean noone is out there beating the market.

Maybe its hard if you're a hedge fund, but I'm talking about individuals with relatively small accounts.

Moreover if you can get an edge that is even 2-3% over a coin flip all you need is risk management to make money.

Not understanding this is how you go broke. I traded for a number of years and did well. It was not hard to regularly beat the market, especially in futures and options.

Personally I like to do primarily tech stocks and mix it up doing swing trading (holding multiple days) with a bit of scalping as well (buy / sells over minutes).

At first I lost a lot of money scalping but now I seem to have a much higher success rate - you start to notice certain patterns in the way stocks move if you watch the charts long enough, and I've been learning to have more conviction in my positions.

Here's a good video that makes a case for this. Even if you don't agree, you might find some of the points he makes interesting. But tl;dr, he argues that index funds basically always outperform other methods, so one should primarily invest in things like that.

[0] https://youtu.be/T71ibcZAX3I?si=5kEkLoUhHDkajlyy

So who's on the ends of the bell curve?

You're assuming that you need privileged information that is not available, but what I'm trading is basically the big player moves - indicated by movement volume in a stock.

You don't need all the info, there are emergent patterns that result for stocks that make big moves over time.

Not every stock that matches one of these patterns will be a winner, but you can base a strategy around this that allows you to have enough success, especially when you combine this with other attributes of the stock (and market conditions) at the particular point in time.

I'm openly aware that so far I'm in the negative. However most of this is due to me not having sold when instructed to (holding onto "favourite" stocks). Very close to break even currently, so no harm done after 6 months playing in the market.

Audio programming with C++. I was a professional film/game composer for the first 10+ years of my career, but when I started programming I was mostly interested in solving problems that required web and infrastructure skills. Also, I always looked at C++ as something to tackle once I was a better programmer -- I now think I'm a pretty okay programmer and am ready to take it on. I'd like to eventually do a deep dive into Rust as well, but I'm focusing on C++ first, as the vast majority of audio programming is still done in C++ and likely will be for the foreseeable future, and I think learning Rust will be more valuable once I've run into many of the pain points that it addresses.

Non-technical:

Improve my archery. I started this year and love it.

I think of this completely opposite. C++ and audio is the incumbent relic that will progress one funeral at a time. Librosa and Pyo are just incredible in python but for offline processing.

Rust and audio would be really cool in terms of wasm. Anything VST is IMO a complete waste of time. That was saturated 15 years ago.

    > Thinking about getting a personal trainer, because I try to stay active, but have no idea how to actually work out.

Edit:

Another thing I just thought of: If a personal trainer is too expensive, consider signing up for a free trial of one of a million different online apps that help you build and structure a workout. Example (no shill here): https://rpstrength.com/. There are lots of competitors. Don't worry about getting everything perfect on the first try. The real trick to exercise is finding what works for you. Dr. Mike (from RP) is constantly banging the drum about experimenting with your own body and health through exercise and diet. Ultimately, you know yourself better than anyone else on this planet.

The bigger hurdle is the intimidation of the gym. It doesn't help that the gym will be packed on January 1st. I deload every January to avoid the gym as much as possible in January. It will be back to normal by mid February. A new lifter would be so much better off waiting until March 1st to join.

Walking 30 minutes a day to get your cardio up will almost certainly help your brain chemicals improve after a few weeks and no new skills needed.

Hope that helps a little bit. It gets better sometimes!

    > I've written about

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/on-burnout-mental-health-and...

https://www.escuela-hablamos.com/en/understanding-the-common...

I want to be able to speak and listen at at least a B1 by the end of next year. We will be spending a bit over a month in Costa Rica next year and I want to get as immersed as possible.

Work related get better at pre-sales. Currently, I’m a staff architect at a cloud consulting company leading post sales implementations. While there is some ambiguity when it gets to me, for the most part I know the shape of the business problem they want to solve, working in pre-sales has a higher level of ambiguity. They can’t outsource pre sales since it involves travel

As far me, I learned a little in school decades ago so I knew basic grammar. DuoLingo gives me a guided learning path to explore. But I use ChatGPT to create drills like creating sentences using words and phrases “at an a2 level using present and past tense verbs” using whatever I need to practice.

I practice speaking using Apple’s voice to text and not ChatGPTs voice to text since it is a lot less forgiving.

Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year: learn full-stack, practice vibe coding, basics of graphics programming (update to the latest ways)

I understand that means master of none, but this is a play around year for me. In theory AI should make it easier to try new things, we shall see about how it works in practice.

> Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year: learn full-stack, practice vibe coding, basics of graphics programming (update to the latest ways)

Therein lies the problem.

To want to "focus on the task at hand" and then express the desire to "try being a bit of a jack of many trades" is a mutually exclusive goal set.

If you want to improve focusing skills, then it is best to pick one thing from the "many trades" and master only it before beginning another. If the "ability to focus on the task at hand" is not really all that important in the grander scheme of things and topically bouncing around is where you find happiness, then I humbly suggest to not beat yourself up about focusing on "the task at hand."

Either is an equally valid choice which none need judge, since it is your own after all.

This month my focus is on full-stack, and I don't move on to the next project until I get the basics right on that.

> it is best to pick one thing from the "many trades" and master only it before beginning another

Exactly this thanks, but my aim is only "get comfortable", not "master"

This. My control of my focus has been reduced to the point of disability at times (seriously worrying, when in middle age)

> Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year

But this, honestly, is at odds with it. It will be difficult to do these two things at once (source: trust me bro, but no really do trust me).

Rather I would suggest a strategy, if you want to learn lots of things: ask yourself, what small set of goals are all those things in service of? What could you gain if they all pointed mostly in one direction, and how will you keep a slow, low-level, long term focus on that direction?

(I am writing this comment to myself, as you can probably tell.)

I must develop (re-develop) planning skills, because my management of time is poor and my management of my direction in life non-existent. I have a broad set of underdeveloped talents that point to me being able to do a lot more stuff for more people if I wasted less time and just steered them in a couple of directions that will have slow-growing benefits.

Apart from progressing some life challenges, what I would like to do is design one complete physical prototype every two months, to move my brain away from everyday web development and towards something that helps people again.

I have CAD and 3D printing skills, I am learning what I would need to get work CNC milled, I have just enough awareness of embedded computing possibilities and I have a couple of interests that can be used to drive product ideas forward or at least provide a personal context for learning.

Probably photography, initially; I have already made some things and used them for my own photography work, and I have ideas for more. The goal would be Tindie-type sales or at least to get tools into the hands of like-minded friends.

I have spent the last year really developing my "CAD thinking" and now it is time to just make things, completely enough that they could be sold at a sort of boutique scale.

https://blog.rahix.de/design-for-3d-printing/

I really just ADHD'd the hell out of it, I suspect [0], and absorbed everything I read. I was in financial difficulty and things were expensive so it took me a couple of years to get me from "I'd like a 3D printer" to "this 3D printer is affordable but viable and even if I never learn design there are plenty of tools I can make with it that will save me money".

In that time I read everything I could about what I'd need to learn, convinced myself that I was not so clumsy and inept I couldn't maintain a printer. These days printers don't need so much mechanical knowledge to get started.

On the CAD side of things, I learned a bit of OpenSCAD, found it basically helpful to make one simple thing but also frustrating and disappointing, joined really useful non-public Facebook groups where people were working on similar things, decided to get properly into FreeCAD, and dug in with the Mango Jelly Solutions videos on Youtube (which actually are now organised into a course structure, but weren't really then).

The thing that motivated me mostly was having simple real things I wanted to make for a project I was working on (though my brain being what it is, I still haven't got round to that exact project...)

If you have a need for a thing you would like, and you're able to break it down into simpler projects, particularly if they are things you might find useful along the way, it's not very difficult to find the motivation to learn these two things.

The positive feedback loop is so strong, and 3D printing is such a concrete way to learn CAD and design because you get to hold your design so quickly: I designed this thing in CAD, I printed this thing, wow it works but I could improve this, I need to learn this new thing in CAD, I printed it, it works but… etc.

Pretty soon you find yourself staring at some real world object on your desk and modelling it in CAD for fun.

The really interesting thing is when you begin to understand that the design of things is fundamentally influenced by the tooling used to make them. When you grasp how 3D printing and injection moulding differ, for example, and start designing your own items with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of 3D printing, rather than just to look like an existing plastic part which was moulded, then you're really getting there.

[0] hilariously I am still not formally diagnosed. Though I'm pretty sure I could be diagnosed just based on these two comments.

I'm still reading the rest of this and your other comment, thanks so much. Inspirational.

The problem is exactly that, yes. If you want a simple shape and maybe to stick a thread on it (one of the first things I printed) then OpenSCAD has the basics and there are really interesting libraries.

But if you get into something complex, you end up building your own scheme and then constantly gardening it. The complexity never gets truly abstracted away because you can never truly work in a higher order way.

FreeCAD is a long way from perfect, but what it is, that you need, is a space where you can reason about geometry in a way that lets you learn. And if you want code-CAD, you can do it with python macros, or limited bits of OpenSCAD in that workbench, or you can use CadQuery/Build123D and generate STEP files for some of it, and then build on those.

I would still say I don't know CAD anywhere near as well as I'd like to. But I know where to start, I've learned the terminology, and I am able to think in CAD in a way I never expected to.

But yeah, thinking in CAD is probably the major step here.

FreeCAD is obviously not a commercial grade CAD package, but it’s not because it is weak conceptually: it’s not dissimilar to Solidworks, Onshape or Fusion. It’s weak in terms of UI flow and its CAD kernel is flawed in some ways (as you probably already know: fillets, chamfers, drafts, thicknesses/shells).

I don’t believe there is so much to learn to get from FreeCAD to one of those packages, at least where core concepts are concerned, so I carry on with what I am doing.

But on the other hand I think one learns a concept best from multiple perspectives, and all of them, essentially, have a free, student or cheap (e.g. Solidworks For Makers) tier, so probably the answer for us is to do some learning in one or two of those alongside.

There is a good video on YouTube by Deltahedra where he does a Solidworks certification exam using FreeCAD, incidentally.

* CW (also known as Morse code) - I'm not able to have an amateur radio station at home, so I have to work portable/QRP. Given current band conditions, CW is one easy option to make contacts

* Learn a "low level" programming language, likely C - I never had any kind of formal CS education and kind of fell into the field, initially doing web development and then data engineering. Most of my career has been dominated by Python with a smattering of Java and Scala. Maybe this year will be the year I learn something a little lower down the stack!

If you've already programmed in Python you'll know enough to recognize that he makes a few logical leaps in the later videos (where you have to read up on topics to fill in the gaps), but overall I thought they were really good.

I also liked NASA's "The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code" and their C style guide from 1994, both of which helped me achieve the simplicity and clarity I was after.

If you're familiar with web programming and data engineering, WebAssembly might be a good way to get into low-level programming. I've written a few web extensions in Rust, compiled down to WASM, and lots of low-level languages have WASM targets now.

- Build something boring that makes money. Excitement is optional; users are not.

- Use AI less like a chatbot and more like infrastructure, background processes that think while I sleep.

- Go back to fundamentals that compound, graphics, systems, taste.

- Experiment selectively; curiosity without commitment.

- Invest in people, not “networking.” Fewer pings, more real conversations.

- Protect focus like equity.

Technically, apply myself more to projects at my job, learn how to fit in our flow better. I've been using AI to program some goofy projects, and I've found a good medium between vibe-coding and auto-complete, where I make it draw up a plan for every commit, and then I ask it to implement it, and if the generated code is wrong I undo the changes and revise the plan to be more precise. It's relatively easy to verify the plan, not as easy to verify the code, but it's still easy to debug the code and figure out what's wrong.

The burden shifts more to creating small modules with stable interfaces.

I have bought the Nancy Faber adult piano adventures book 1 too.

Any tips are welcome.

- There are 12 keys on the piano just repeated - A scale can start on any of those 12 keys - The "home" key of the scale get labels with a roman numeral one, I - The rest of the keys in the scale get roman numerals ii,iii,IV,V,vi,vii - The I,IV,V are all upper case to represent major chords, the lower case for minor chords - Most pop songs use I,IV,V from a scale. In C-major scale, C, F, G major chords. - You can start on any key on the piano and if you play the same sequence of I, IV, V, you'll get the same song, just transposed into a different key. (the scales are slightly different due to even temperament for advanced ears)

So, learn songs by the chord structure first. It is easier to remember and you'll start to recognize patterns in other songs and unlock them faster.

I practiced enough to learn to play Satie - Gnossienne No. 1 in the right hand and then sold the piano.

My fav music is Chopin, Satie, Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Ligeti on piano.

The distance between starting from zero on the guitar, to anything ever composed for the guitar is a 100X less than starting from zero on piano to Ligeti.

Learning to solo on electric guitar, play the flute, play the alto sax to me makes so much more sense than trying to learn to play piano or classical guitar as an adult. Classical guitar is hard enough. Piano is just a whole other level to that.

A monophonic instrument is just going to be so much better bang for the buck in terms of time woodshedding. Or a percussion instrument.

this is the blues. just learn how to play a blues progression on the piano and you'll learn what this poster is trying to teach.

— Learn Rust. I'm halfway through the Rustlings exercises and I'll continue with more challenges. Advice is welcome. I might also ask LLMs to pose as teachers and create exercises for me and check them.

- Cooking. This has been something I neglected all my life and I really want to get better at it. It's so fundamental to quality of life.

- Persian language. Studied it for six months, I can read and write the script and I understand basic sentences, but I want to get better at it. If there are any Persian folks reading this, ping me. It's a beautiful language and culture.

Here's some advice I've given about learning Rust in the past. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38020654

There are also project-based resources beyond Rustlings like Entirely Too Many Linked Lists[1] you might check out. I've found Gjengset's videos[2] great for intermediate content, and they include both project and lecture formats.

Best of luck!

[1] https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@jonhoo

    > Cooking

- Contributing to Homeassistant community by integrating non-standard zigbee devices. A lot of lighting devices in my house are zigbee. There are some companies that deviate from the standard protocol though to force you to use their hub or software.

I recently bought a stainless steel pot set which already seems like such a game changer in terms of cooking due to how much better sauces come out due to better fonds. So I want to see what else I can do to push things forward again and generally level up my cooking

Also want to do better with skincare. Partially to age gracefully but I’ve always had dryness here and there off and on on my face. I’ve been in India all month and it got worse, but, got better when I bought some coconut oil. I think the oil acts as a barrier to prevent moisture from escaping.

Also would like to play with some mlops tooling. I do a lot of infra / DevOps stuff, which I can do in my sleep at this point. So I haven’t really been growing in a specific vertical much aside from just generally getting better at software engineering (communication / prioritization / clean and simple architectures).

Also would like to learn linear algebra. Reading a book on how that works with ML and it’s been actually super satisfying seeing how all the math connects. The book is called why machines learn

Not only great for cooking, but it can also help with wrist strength - you may need to ease into lifting the pan with a single hand.

- Recreational programming: graphics programming, something to support my odd project (a "recreation" of the bad software from "a company" "I worked for"). I already wrote a hacky command language that is intentionally tedious to use :) Next is the user interface!

- I have a plan also to go through Wirth's Oberon Compiler Construction and his Algorithm text using Oberon. If there is a project in it, I want to maybe bootstrap a simple Oberon compiler in Pascal then rewrite in Oberon (without caps!)

Non-technical: - I want in the future to expand my range of project options from my employer, so I want to rev-up my mind again in this country's language and go through the thickets of folk's heavy dialects.

- Eat better. If I can help to avoid my gut issues at this point, I need to.

- Do more presentations, particularly in the more topics I have embraced (Pascal, compilers, etc.) as something pedagogical for others in my company of consultants.

I used to go when I lived in Warsaw and there was a pay-monthly-and-stay-as-long-as-you-want. Now I've moved and all the ceramics places charge per hour, which, apart from being expensive, is much less fun.

I hear there's a group of grumpy old women doing ceramics nearby. I want to infiltrate said group and learn from them.

- Language learning: I have a couple of languages that I want to focus on this 2026. Both for the enjoyment of learning and using said languages, and also because it will help me improve work-wise.

- OSS development: Programming was set aside these couple of years and I want to be active and help the community. Either by contributing to a project or an OS (9front is always on my mind).

- Be a good father and partner: this is one of my primary goals this 2026.

- More time for outdoor sports: As much as I like being indoors, playing with computers, I need to go outside and spend time in nature doing something that I enjoy (ie. running or surfing)

- Mindfulness and spirituality: Grown so much in the past couple of years and now is time for me to meditate on these topics.

- Last but not least, participate in the old-school internet: Be more active and talk to real people, read their blogs, donate to their endevours for a better internet, enjoy their art, etc.

May I ask which languages are you talking about here? and what methods you will follow?

Create a blog and post at least 8 times to it over the next 12 months, which would be improving my skills with writing and illustration.

Design at least two boards and get them through the prototype stage into bringup and running.

Become conversational in Ukrainian.

https://github.com/drmpeg/gr-atsc3

    > Become conversational in Ukrainian.