I want to quit my cosy, well paying, job and start building the products I have been wanting to build for quite some years now. I have been starting to use AI about 12 months ago and, as an experienced engineer of 30+ years professionally, I am blown away by how productive it makes me. What I used to be able to do in a week now takes me a day, what I used to be able to do in a month now takes me week, etc.
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.
"The decision of all decisions is to reject the default path. To answer the call to adventure. To finally begin writing the first chapter. To leave the tutorial and start level one. That's when your life starts."
How are you using AI and what sort of software are you building?
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
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.
> I have learned how to use Claude Code effectively
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.
Wow, you sound exactly like me - except I have a bit less years of experience. Let me know if you want to connect to help keep stay motivated (email in profile)
Wife and I started a 3d printing business. We just started a couple of months ago and have put our items in a few retail stores. Our goal is not to do this super fast but more like supplemental income. Also its fun to print stuff for ourselves. I already designed a finger mini golf game and may start to build my own board games out of 3d printed parts.
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.
I want be able to play music on the piano. I got a nice keyboard earlier this year, and have only really been inspired to dig into it since I got myself a circle of fifths decoder in the last couple of months. I'm confident now that I have the tools to learn and make concrete 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.
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
I want to be much more publicly unhinged and in general do a lot more art without worrying too much about why or what I'm trying to say. I've found a lot of beauty in shitposts this year and I want to develop my skills to really meaningfully contribute to the corpus.
— 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.
I am a fullstack frontend leaning engineer of 10 YoE (still employed). In the early days of my career I enjoyed learning about various programming languages and reading technical books (although mostly tutorials, nothing to deep technically). These days I don't do those things anymore because I am now older, a lot of responsibilities, and hobbies that I need to do, and also quite comfortable in my comfort zone in terms of my niche.
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 was in a similar situation a few years back. I wasn’t only focusing on CRUD, but it was a large part of my work too. Mostly working on web-based SaaS projects.
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.
Heh same here. Get stuck in crud apps because it's easy, comfy and well paid. I would like to start something entirely different than computer related but I'm limited to a flat. So something like mushroom growing, or hydroponics seems good.
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!
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.
Being entirely self-taught, I'm not sure how to describe my style. If I had to, it's kinda a nondescript knock-off of Gisèle Lagacé's recent webcomics.
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 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.
Reverse engineering. I cannot stand that every product I buy requires an app (that will break with the next upgrade/or lack thereof). I realise this is a problem possibly better suited to be solved on a policy level, but I rather learn some more reverse engineering skills (which can be both very rewarding as well as frustrating) than go into politics.
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
That's a very specific skill development. I'd ask why Forth, yet guess because "must be beautiful"?
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]
For the past year, I've been learning a lot more about electronics, and in particular, designing PCBs, getting them manufactured, and assembled. I've come a long way from where I started, making little LED flashers shaped like trees for Christmas last year (everyone has to start somewhere!) where I'm now making small products with some of the super cheap ATTiny chips and writing code for them.
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.
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).
This is a curious suggestion. Higher end go-karts I can't contest, but I've never found bumper cars to be anything like operating a car. It would probably help, but at some point they're going to need to drive something with more weight and horsepower.
The real way is just to ride a bike. You can ride it on the road so you'll learn how the road works as well as how to operate a vehicle. When I got in a car the only things that took time to learn were operating the clutch and manoeuvres in tight spaces (you need to develop spacial awareness that you won't get from cycling). If I had learnt to drive an auto it would have been trivially easy after years of cycling.
Same here! I lived in big cities all my life and am used to the convenience of good public transport. Want to travel and rent a nice car, just when needed.
I always feel the jump in price from standard to nice rental car is too much to bother with (like a factor of 2.5-5x). So I drive a lot of crappy rentals, but they’re just a way to get from point to point.
I plan on learning driving this year too! I think I will still continue using public transit because I enjoy doing research things while on transit (which of course can't be done while driving) but I want to learn driving.
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.
Stock trading can be quite lucrative if it's a good match. Have a look at Qullamaggie on YouTube.
> Edit, I say this as someone that has been learning to trade the last 6 months. To be completely transparent I've actually overall lost money doing this, but have also brought my account back up from having halved to almost break even a couple times now and can definitely see the possibility of doing very well. If I was better at following instructions I would 100% be profitable. The YouTuber I mentioned doesn't sell any courses.
> Edit 2, screw you guys for the downvotes. I'm sharing something I've found useful. You don't have to buy into the idea, but there are some people who do very well off of trading. Hence "if it's a match"
Scheduled for Fire 1 (basic Fire academy) in 2026. Looking forward to developing basic fire fighting skills and strengthen my knowledge in this new volunteer undertaking I started in mid 2025.
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.
learn spanish and schematic design with pcb
I'm self taught programmer blessed to be working in the embedded space this year and I want to take my love for low level further and learn to build hardware from scratc
- Vastly and in depth expand my knowledge of data architecture approaches. I'm an analytics engineer but have no experience in high level planning of architecture and I feel like I'm missing a lot of knowledge of the field.
- Learn data engineering skills like handling event streams. I'm very happy with my analytics engineer position, but it seems like standard data engineering is a very desired skill for any new career opportunities.
- Learn how to manage a small SaaS company and the product. I'm in the finishing stages of a platform that I have been developing by myself(while my cofounder is the industry expert). Neither of us has knowledge on what it takes to launch and sell this product, for which we know there is demand in the industry.
- Create practical real life ML workflows. I have only theoretical experience since I never had the need or opportunity to work with a more real scenario. This is both from personal interest and for career growth.
- Start and actually approach university in a meaningful way. I have a respectable career, but no higher education, which has always weighted on me
Some non-technical:
- Force myself into more social situations, especially with absolutely non-tech people.
- Just started treating ADHD, so hopefully wrangle that
Good luck to everyone in achieving their goals and exploring new paths!
To me it's deep learning compilers since mid 2025. I am a person who can't learn just from reading books, so 80% of time I learn by doing (contribute to PyTorch) and 20% of time I read books (now: Engineering a Compiler from Keith Cooper and Linda Torczon) and talk to LLMs to fill gaps in my understanding.
My main quest now is to build a bridge [0] between PyTorch and universal GPU computing world - which I believe WebGPU might become. What it requires is to build is 1) a runtime for executing PyTorch ATen operations on WebGPU by running WGSL shaders and 2) a compiler, so you can use full PyTorch power with @torch.compile
I would like to learn more about Web development and related knowledge (networking, security). Currently my programming knowledge is primarily system languages+python. I'm thinking of building a few websites / apps from scratch, and perhaps hosting my own server. Recommendations for frameworks or do's/don'ts are very welcome.
Second thing is networking skills at my (future) job.
One thing I regret from my PhD is not seeking collaborators out more actively and building my network. Although I'm moving to industry, I've realised that having a strong professional network is vital for job security and can make the job much easier and more fun.
For self-hosting: Buy a cheap VPS and use something like Coolify, Dokploy, or Dokku if you don't need a UI. These are half way in between "managed" PaaS (e.g. Vercel, Netlify, etc) and "hosting it yourself". Self-hosting is important experience but setting up reverse proxies, nginx, database backups, port-forwarding, firewall rules, secrets management, dependency updates, etc is not trivial. You should absolutely learn how to do those eventually but it's important to get something up and running first and the software I mentioned does just that for you
For building websites: If you don't already know HTML/CSS/JS definitely start with a vanilla site. No matter what framework is in right now, having the fundamentals down is absolutely a huge boost. So start with a simple static site. If you already have that knowledge, don't go crazy. React is basically the "boring technology" at this point and its not going anywhere anytime soon. Use Vite to create a basic React app
For web development I would say avoid high-level frameworks as much as you can. Most of them are built for hand-holding developers which is counterproductive to learning the fundamentals and are usually inflexible to demands outside the "happy path".
* Get less scared about applying to do stuff! I'm leaving my longtime job---I've taught advanced math to super-smart high schoolers; I'm quitting to be a visiting professor at Deep Springs College for a semester and then ???---and in the past, fear of applying to things (jobs, grad schools, writing residencies) has been a major blocker.
* 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!
Learn more saxophone, learn more jazz piano. Get better at ear training.
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 want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
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.
> I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
> 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.
> I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
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.
Develop a calistenics practice. Ive been to the gym more on than off over the past few years and feel like I’ve plateaued. I also had a minor thing that I’ve gone to the physio for recently and I prefer the routine of doing those exercises (which would be similar to a calistenics practice in a lot of ways) to going to the gym. Kettlebell and pull up bar to be ordered when I’m back from India
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
I want to give away my tools for free and take on more ambitious projects, like building more capable browsers and local LLMs to get rid of corporate chokeholds. But that would probably never come true, because I would be tied up making money just to survive, rather than being able to give things away or take on more ambitious projects.
- Climb a V8 at my local climbing gym! I presently project V5's, and I think the scale is super-linear (but personally it doesn't feel logarithmic to me). So that would be a significant increase, probably near the edge of what I could really achieve in a year.
- Get our business (mydragonskin.com) to a point where it pays us standard engineer salaries. So far we've been extracting significantly less than our market value.
- Acquire (romantic) partner that I believe will be my person; find "The One"
I started learning Latin in 2025, and I'm pretty happy with my progress. I can read intermediate level pedagogical texts -- mostly adapted Greek and Roman myths. In 2026 I want to get my proficiency up to the point where I can comfortably read the first book of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. This is doable, many of the texts I'm reading now were designed to teach the vocabulary and grammar so High School students could slog through it.
De Bello Gallico is much more intimidating than it is difficult. Caesar wrote using pretty simple language. Once you learn the main geographic and military terms it's a fun read!
but the other things such as writing, just can't do it without LLMs's help. Looking up things, I defaulted to LLMs.
So in 2026, I just want to stop relying on LLMs.
Lol but I do like building LLMs (training from scratch, pre-training, fine-tuning, etc.). as a matter of fact, I'm pre-training a 1b model for last 2 days.
I'd like to get a full QPSK based OFDM modulator/demodulator implemented in an FPGA. Means improving my Verilog skills, my FPGA tool familiarity, and really understand how to implement OFDM modulators.
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.
- Launch my own hand-rolled paper trading solution by mid to late 2026. I want to focus on strategies that prevents heavy losses, rather than actively looking for profits. If I succeed, go live in 2027.
- I hope to complete 3 semesters with a B or above in the ongoing Online Masters Degree program I've enrolled for.
- Do more coding with AI.
- Be prepared for job interviews - even though I have no plans to change jobs. This year my rustiness and lack of interview readiness has cost me "dream jobs" (from my POV)
Non-technical skills:
- The usual. Lose weight, eat mindfully, gain strength, learn the language of my country.
How to build and deploy web apps. I worked as a developer for many years (before becoming a product manager), but always in desktop apps. I still code for fun, but I never made the jump to web apps. Now with AI that's easier than ever, so I'm going to do it.
Python. I played around with it three years ago, and did about 30 Project Euler problems with it, but I've let that lapse. I'll work to pick that up.
I bought my wife a learn-to-draw kit for Christmas, but it's really a gift for both of us.
I need to improve my facility with Python and math and geometry sufficiently to finish up my current project, a previewer for G-code which allows creating design files programmatically.
Really need to get back to practicing archery on a regular basis as well (really need the exercise).
Hopefully I can also find more time for woodworking, and hopefully I can figure out how to calibrate my 3D printers so that I can print PETG and PETG-GF as readily as PLA.
I've already been working at it for a few weeks now, but I want to swallow my pride and stay up-to-date on interview skills (thankfully I'm safely employed but want to make sure I'm prepared if I need to be.) I do 2-3 leetcode problems a day and at least try to fully understand each line when comparing against the answer. I'm still pretty bad at it but instead of being terrified/anxious in the future I'd like to be confident that I at least can do my best. And my best is being prepared as opposed to just hoping I magically intuit a whiteboard problem out of thin air.
Technical: release a simple, focused product. AI makes it easy to spam things out that look good. I would be psyched if something catches just a little bit of attention. I feel like my main limit is creativity now. Mine has been stifled by 15 years of rote web dev.
Non technical: I made a conscious decision to push career and technical things aside to spend more time living life (hobbies, family). I’ve since fallen behind in my career, but I’ve had more interesting life experiences I suppose. I do get jealous of people’s titles and promotions sometimes, but I don’t want their jobs. The competition to make others rich right now is enormous. Fucked labor market. Seems like a loser’s game (I just tell myself that since I can’t compete)
I want to build the AGI god in order to bring abundance, wealth, and prosperity to all of humanity.
Aside from that, I'd like to shore up the cracks or gaps in my mathematical foundations, and learn more advanced mathematics.
I'm still really confused about thermodynamics so that's another topic that I would like to revisit. I've never neen able to convince myself that our current understanding is correct.
Honestly, I want to read and study more college level textbooks about every single subject.
To expand my knowledge of product management and JavaScript enough to build a strong prototype of app/business i have in mind with the help of Lovable and other ai tools.
Already, I know enough to know that just prompting without a solid foundation is going to be unpleasant in so many ways.
And then, once I’ve proven it out hire real coders.
Depression is a strange thing. In my case, the causes are plainly visible to me or any passer-by: I don't have much in the way of connections, assets, or responsibilities. Surely, it wasn't (and isn't) bound-to-be: my upbringing and environment lack little, and when I've had some of any of the three, I've done better for myself.
I want these things, but I abase myself such that I can barely act at all. Maybe it's a tyranny of being a social animal where the humiliated keep themselves low out-of-sight through some natural pack instinct.
As a higher animal, surely there's a way out of it. And of course there is. But it's a tangle: how can you connect to anyone when you feel completely humiliated? When the act of any connection makes you feel ill and behave strangely? How do you build assets and security when you're sickened by responsibility? And why can your instincts –designed to guide and protect you– screw you over so badly? When a bright, sunny day surrounded by loved ones seems like a trip to hell, how do you even start to work through that?
I have a lot of goals, but there seems to be this bottleneck that prevents moving meaningfully on any of them. The thing is: I know to get out the other side, I need connections, responsibility, work, etc. But I seem to be getting worse at it, not better, and the years are just flying by.
I'm pretty intensely depressed, so I think I'd like to learn how to be a little less of that. I've tried so many things, but I guess there's always more. Thinking about getting a personal trainer, because I try to stay active, but have no idea how to actually work out. Seems like a good skill to learn, and should help somewhat with the crushing weight my brain seems to be in constantly.
I've written about getting out of some giga-depression a few years ago, but having a good therapist was massive. Working out kept me busy and mitigated symptoms, but I don't think I would have improved without a strong psychologist.
Hope that helps a little bit. It gets better sometimes!
I'm in a similar position but figured out how to work out last year. it's not a panacea, but working out is quite fun and is a great skill. I never had a personal trainer, but the best part about having one would probably be that they could set you up with some plans to follow, removing all the initial guesswork. The hardest part about working out for me is trying to figure out a goal to optimize for that's not too far away but not too simple either.
Working out does SO MUCH to help with depression. There’s a lot of literature to support this, and plenty of anecdata as well. Good luck, you can do it!
Same here. I really want to stop peddling Microsoft stuff and support m365. Don't know where to go from here though. But if there's a will there's a way right?
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 want to try once again to learn piano. Previously, many years ago, I took lessons for 1.5 years but gave up because it was just too hard and I wasn't enjoying it. This time, I plan on trying to self learn. Been watching YouTube tutorials recently and as soon as I return from my trip, I will try once again.
I have bought the Nancy Faber adult piano adventures book 1 too.
I want to quit my cosy, well paying, job and start building the products I have been wanting to build for quite some years now. I have been starting to use AI about 12 months ago and, as an experienced engineer of 30+ years professionally, I am blown away by how productive it makes me. What I used to be able to do in a week now takes me a day, what I used to be able to do in a month now takes me week, etc.
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.
"The decision of all decisions is to reject the default path. To answer the call to adventure. To finally begin writing the first chapter. To leave the tutorial and start level one. That's when your life starts."
Good luck!
How are you using AI and what sort of software are you building?
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
For me, it has gone through stages.
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.
> I have learned how to use Claude Code effectively
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.
You can achieve a lot on the $30 plan.
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.
Wow, you sound exactly like me - except I have a bit less years of experience. Let me know if you want to connect to help keep stay motivated (email in profile)
Wife and I started a 3d printing business. We just started a couple of months ago and have put our items in a few retail stores. Our goal is not to do this super fast but more like supplemental income. Also its fun to print stuff for ourselves. I already designed a finger mini golf game and may start to build my own board games out of 3d printed parts.
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.
I want be able to play music on the piano. I got a nice keyboard earlier this year, and have only really been inspired to dig into it since I got myself a circle of fifths decoder in the last couple of months. I'm confident now that I have the tools to learn and make concrete 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.
Get better at Spanish. Reading and writing, I’m hovering around an A2 with decent vocabulary.
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
I want to be much more publicly unhinged and in general do a lot more art without worrying too much about why or what I'm trying to say. I've found a lot of beauty in shitposts this year and I want to develop my skills to really meaningfully contribute to the corpus.
I just wanted I support your enthusiasm for shitposting. The meta irony hidden in these posts is lovable.
Off the top of my head:
— 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.
I am a fullstack frontend leaning engineer of 10 YoE (still employed). In the early days of my career I enjoyed learning about various programming languages and reading technical books (although mostly tutorials, nothing to deep technically). These days I don't do those things anymore because I am now older, a lot of responsibilities, and hobbies that I need to do, and also quite comfortable in my comfort zone in terms of my niche.
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 was in a similar situation a few years back. I wasn’t only focusing on CRUD, but it was a large part of my work too. Mostly working on web-based SaaS projects.
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.
Heh same here. Get stuck in crud apps because it's easy, comfy and well paid. I would like to start something entirely different than computer related but I'm limited to a flat. So something like mushroom growing, or hydroponics seems good.
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!
I want to draw again.
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.
What subjects or style do you like to draw?
Being entirely self-taught, I'm not sure how to describe my style. If I had to, it's kinda a nondescript knock-off of Gisèle Lagacé's recent webcomics.
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 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.
Reverse engineering. I cannot stand that every product I buy requires an app (that will break with the next upgrade/or lack thereof). I realise this is a problem possibly better suited to be solved on a policy level, but I rather learn some more reverse engineering skills (which can be both very rewarding as well as frustrating) than go into politics.
Write an operating system in Forth.
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
That's a very specific skill development. I'd ask why Forth, yet guess because "must be beautiful"?
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 hope to explore AI on edge devices and see how far it can get me.
New models like functiongemma are promising and I think we may be at a point where consistent tool calling is all we need.
For the past year, I've been learning a lot more about electronics, and in particular, designing PCBs, getting them manufactured, and assembled. I've come a long way from where I started, making little LED flashers shaped like trees for Christmas last year (everyone has to start somewhere!) where I'm now making small products with some of the super cheap ATTiny chips and writing code for them.
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.
I want to learn driving.
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
Great idea!
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.
> I want to learn driving.
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
This is a curious suggestion. Higher end go-karts I can't contest, but I've never found bumper cars to be anything like operating a car. It would probably help, but at some point they're going to need to drive something with more weight and horsepower.
The real way is just to ride a bike. You can ride it on the road so you'll learn how the road works as well as how to operate a vehicle. When I got in a car the only things that took time to learn were operating the clutch and manoeuvres in tight spaces (you need to develop spacial awareness that you won't get from cycling). If I had learnt to drive an auto it would have been trivially easy after years of cycling.
Same here! I lived in big cities all my life and am used to the convenience of good public transport. Want to travel and rent a nice car, just when needed.
I always feel the jump in price from standard to nice rental car is too much to bother with (like a factor of 2.5-5x). So I drive a lot of crappy rentals, but they’re just a way to get from point to point.
I plan on learning driving this year too! I think I will still continue using public transit because I enjoy doing research things while on transit (which of course can't be done while driving) but I want to learn driving.
Learn to make money.
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.
Stock trading can be quite lucrative if it's a good match. Have a look at Qullamaggie on YouTube.
> Edit, I say this as someone that has been learning to trade the last 6 months. To be completely transparent I've actually overall lost money doing this, but have also brought my account back up from having halved to almost break even a couple times now and can definitely see the possibility of doing very well. If I was better at following instructions I would 100% be profitable. The YouTuber I mentioned doesn't sell any courses.
> Edit 2, screw you guys for the downvotes. I'm sharing something I've found useful. You don't have to buy into the idea, but there are some people who do very well off of trading. Hence "if it's a match"
Scheduled for Fire 1 (basic Fire academy) in 2026. Looking forward to developing basic fire fighting skills and strengthen my knowledge in this new volunteer undertaking I started in mid 2025.
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.
learn spanish and schematic design with pcb I'm self taught programmer blessed to be working in the embedded space this year and I want to take my love for low level further and learn to build hardware from scratc
My main ones are career focused:
- Vastly and in depth expand my knowledge of data architecture approaches. I'm an analytics engineer but have no experience in high level planning of architecture and I feel like I'm missing a lot of knowledge of the field.
- Learn data engineering skills like handling event streams. I'm very happy with my analytics engineer position, but it seems like standard data engineering is a very desired skill for any new career opportunities.
- Learn how to manage a small SaaS company and the product. I'm in the finishing stages of a platform that I have been developing by myself(while my cofounder is the industry expert). Neither of us has knowledge on what it takes to launch and sell this product, for which we know there is demand in the industry.
- Create practical real life ML workflows. I have only theoretical experience since I never had the need or opportunity to work with a more real scenario. This is both from personal interest and for career growth.
- Start and actually approach university in a meaningful way. I have a respectable career, but no higher education, which has always weighted on me
Some non-technical:
- Force myself into more social situations, especially with absolutely non-tech people.
- Just started treating ADHD, so hopefully wrangle that
Good luck to everyone in achieving their goals and exploring new paths!
To me it's deep learning compilers since mid 2025. I am a person who can't learn just from reading books, so 80% of time I learn by doing (contribute to PyTorch) and 20% of time I read books (now: Engineering a Compiler from Keith Cooper and Linda Torczon) and talk to LLMs to fill gaps in my understanding.
My main quest now is to build a bridge [0] between PyTorch and universal GPU computing world - which I believe WebGPU might become. What it requires is to build is 1) a runtime for executing PyTorch ATen operations on WebGPU by running WGSL shaders and 2) a compiler, so you can use full PyTorch power with @torch.compile
[0] - https://github.com/jmaczan/torch-webgpu
I would like to learn more about Web development and related knowledge (networking, security). Currently my programming knowledge is primarily system languages+python. I'm thinking of building a few websites / apps from scratch, and perhaps hosting my own server. Recommendations for frameworks or do's/don'ts are very welcome.
Second thing is networking skills at my (future) job. One thing I regret from my PhD is not seeking collaborators out more actively and building my network. Although I'm moving to industry, I've realised that having a strong professional network is vital for job security and can make the job much easier and more fun.
For self-hosting: Buy a cheap VPS and use something like Coolify, Dokploy, or Dokku if you don't need a UI. These are half way in between "managed" PaaS (e.g. Vercel, Netlify, etc) and "hosting it yourself". Self-hosting is important experience but setting up reverse proxies, nginx, database backups, port-forwarding, firewall rules, secrets management, dependency updates, etc is not trivial. You should absolutely learn how to do those eventually but it's important to get something up and running first and the software I mentioned does just that for you
For building websites: If you don't already know HTML/CSS/JS definitely start with a vanilla site. No matter what framework is in right now, having the fundamentals down is absolutely a huge boost. So start with a simple static site. If you already have that knowledge, don't go crazy. React is basically the "boring technology" at this point and its not going anywhere anytime soon. Use Vite to create a basic React app
For web development I would say avoid high-level frameworks as much as you can. Most of them are built for hand-holding developers which is counterproductive to learning the fundamentals and are usually inflexible to demands outside the "happy path".
* Get less scared about applying to do stuff! I'm leaving my longtime job---I've taught advanced math to super-smart high schoolers; I'm quitting to be a visiting professor at Deep Springs College for a semester and then ???---and in the past, fear of applying to things (jobs, grad schools, writing residencies) has been a major blocker.
* 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!
Out of curiosity, why are you quitting teaching? If you’re a high school teacher, I have to assume that it’s not the money.
Learn more saxophone, learn more jazz piano. Get better at ear training.
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 want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
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.
> I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
> 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.
> I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
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.
How did you develop your CAD and 3D printing skills? Did you use any online courses?
Talk to a psychiatrist about ADHD.
Why, so they can ply them with adderall?
So they can get access to medication that may help improve their life?
Develop a calistenics practice. Ive been to the gym more on than off over the past few years and feel like I’ve plateaued. I also had a minor thing that I’ve gone to the physio for recently and I prefer the routine of doing those exercises (which would be similar to a calistenics practice in a lot of ways) to going to the gym. Kettlebell and pull up bar to be ordered when I’m back from India
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
If you're into the gym and cooking, consider getting a cast iron frying pan.
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.
I've got a wok (I make mapo tofu every now and then) and definitely agree!
I want to give away my tools for free and take on more ambitious projects, like building more capable browsers and local LLMs to get rid of corporate chokeholds. But that would probably never come true, because I would be tied up making money just to survive, rather than being able to give things away or take on more ambitious projects.
- Do the splits!
- Climb a V8 at my local climbing gym! I presently project V5's, and I think the scale is super-linear (but personally it doesn't feel logarithmic to me). So that would be a significant increase, probably near the edge of what I could really achieve in a year.
- Get our business (mydragonskin.com) to a point where it pays us standard engineer salaries. So far we've been extracting significantly less than our market value.
- Acquire (romantic) partner that I believe will be my person; find "The One"
Tech:
1. Rust, I quite like it but I still need AI assistance.
2. Desktop app dev, I'm making one in Tauri and love it, now I want to "go native."
3. Lower-level AI stuff, so far everything has been with APIs, and while that's great it feels a little too abstract.
4. Leetcode pattern matching. (Grumble grumble, but when job-hunting in Rome...)
Differently tech:
5. City driving. Thanks @kenrick95 for reminding me!
6. Color grading, and video editing in general.
7. The Thai language (speaking and reading).
8. Writing for the public.
I started learning Latin in 2025, and I'm pretty happy with my progress. I can read intermediate level pedagogical texts -- mostly adapted Greek and Roman myths. In 2026 I want to get my proficiency up to the point where I can comfortably read the first book of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. This is doable, many of the texts I'm reading now were designed to teach the vocabulary and grammar so High School students could slog through it.
De Bello Gallico is much more intimidating than it is difficult. Caesar wrote using pretty simple language. Once you learn the main geographic and military terms it's a fun read!
I'm still good at what I do, so I'm looking forward to better models to help me atrophy and shrivel my remaining skills :)
I'm good at coding so hate using LLMs for coding.
but the other things such as writing, just can't do it without LLMs's help. Looking up things, I defaulted to LLMs.
So in 2026, I just want to stop relying on LLMs.
Lol but I do like building LLMs (training from scratch, pre-training, fine-tuning, etc.). as a matter of fact, I'm pre-training a 1b model for last 2 days.
I have had to put programming aside in 2025, probably for the rest of my life, so 2026 will be the year I reskill and reinvent myself.
But most importantly, I want to finally become as kind, patient, and charitable as I have always wanted to be.
May I ask why you have had to put programming aside?
I'd like to get a full QPSK based OFDM modulator/demodulator implemented in an FPGA. Means improving my Verilog skills, my FPGA tool familiarity, and really understand how to implement OFDM modulators.
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.
The latest over the air TV spec. is using OFDM, it's called ATSC 3. That's if you're looking for real signals to test your receiver on.
I got a headset and wanted to do vr apps but found the medium to addicting and now I just play with no desire to create.
Technical skills:
- Launch my own hand-rolled paper trading solution by mid to late 2026. I want to focus on strategies that prevents heavy losses, rather than actively looking for profits. If I succeed, go live in 2027.
- I hope to complete 3 semesters with a B or above in the ongoing Online Masters Degree program I've enrolled for.
- Do more coding with AI.
- Be prepared for job interviews - even though I have no plans to change jobs. This year my rustiness and lack of interview readiness has cost me "dream jobs" (from my POV)
Non-technical skills:
- The usual. Lose weight, eat mindfully, gain strength, learn the language of my country.
I find it difficult to read "hand-rolled paper trading solution" without thinking toilet paper. "focus on strategies that prevents heavy losses"
I donno, I think I kind of like somebody else's skill objective about trying out shitposting. It's the age deucine (credit @naasking).
How to build and deploy web apps. I worked as a developer for many years (before becoming a product manager), but always in desktop apps. I still code for fun, but I never made the jump to web apps. Now with AI that's easier than ever, so I'm going to do it.
Python. I played around with it three years ago, and did about 30 Project Euler problems with it, but I've let that lapse. I'll work to pick that up.
I bought my wife a learn-to-draw kit for Christmas, but it's really a gift for both of us.
I want to go full into indie hacking and learn atleast a new language this year
Lastly I must say with the help of AI i can now finally develop good frontends
I need to improve my facility with Python and math and geometry sufficiently to finish up my current project, a previewer for G-code which allows creating design files programmatically.
Really need to get back to practicing archery on a regular basis as well (really need the exercise).
Hopefully I can also find more time for woodworking, and hopefully I can figure out how to calibrate my 3D printers so that I can print PETG and PETG-GF as readily as PLA.
I've already been working at it for a few weeks now, but I want to swallow my pride and stay up-to-date on interview skills (thankfully I'm safely employed but want to make sure I'm prepared if I need to be.) I do 2-3 leetcode problems a day and at least try to fully understand each line when comparing against the answer. I'm still pretty bad at it but instead of being terrified/anxious in the future I'd like to be confident that I at least can do my best. And my best is being prepared as opposed to just hoping I magically intuit a whiteboard problem out of thin air.
Does being "emotionally strong" is a skill to improve?
Technical: release a simple, focused product. AI makes it easy to spam things out that look good. I would be psyched if something catches just a little bit of attention. I feel like my main limit is creativity now. Mine has been stifled by 15 years of rote web dev.
Non technical: I made a conscious decision to push career and technical things aside to spend more time living life (hobbies, family). I’ve since fallen behind in my career, but I’ve had more interesting life experiences I suppose. I do get jealous of people’s titles and promotions sometimes, but I don’t want their jobs. The competition to make others rich right now is enormous. Fucked labor market. Seems like a loser’s game (I just tell myself that since I can’t compete)
Use transformers to predict prime numbers.
Good luck with this!
I want to build the AGI god in order to bring abundance, wealth, and prosperity to all of humanity.
Aside from that, I'd like to shore up the cracks or gaps in my mathematical foundations, and learn more advanced mathematics.
I'm still really confused about thermodynamics so that's another topic that I would like to revisit. I've never neen able to convince myself that our current understanding is correct.
Honestly, I want to read and study more college level textbooks about every single subject.
To expand my knowledge of product management and JavaScript enough to build a strong prototype of app/business i have in mind with the help of Lovable and other ai tools.
Already, I know enough to know that just prompting without a solid foundation is going to be unpleasant in so many ways.
And then, once I’ve proven it out hire real coders.
Marketing so I can show the stuff I’ve been making off
(Non-technical skill) To live with ambition.
Depression is a strange thing. In my case, the causes are plainly visible to me or any passer-by: I don't have much in the way of connections, assets, or responsibilities. Surely, it wasn't (and isn't) bound-to-be: my upbringing and environment lack little, and when I've had some of any of the three, I've done better for myself.
I want these things, but I abase myself such that I can barely act at all. Maybe it's a tyranny of being a social animal where the humiliated keep themselves low out-of-sight through some natural pack instinct.
As a higher animal, surely there's a way out of it. And of course there is. But it's a tangle: how can you connect to anyone when you feel completely humiliated? When the act of any connection makes you feel ill and behave strangely? How do you build assets and security when you're sickened by responsibility? And why can your instincts –designed to guide and protect you– screw you over so badly? When a bright, sunny day surrounded by loved ones seems like a trip to hell, how do you even start to work through that?
I have a lot of goals, but there seems to be this bottleneck that prevents moving meaningfully on any of them. The thing is: I know to get out the other side, I need connections, responsibility, work, etc. But I seem to be getting worse at it, not better, and the years are just flying by.
GenAI security. I work in the security space as an engineering manager but need to be more versed in LLM focused attack vectors.
Outside of work, I’m really into Roman history so I’ll keep learning about that.
I want to learn how to be bored again.
I also want to learn how to ask better questions.
I didn't realize it was important to be bored until I read/watched this: https://hbr.org/2025/08/you-need-to-be-bored-heres-why. There are some pointers in there that you might find helpful.
One thing that's helped me is solo hikes which I've done many times before. I still do them for workouts and use them as an opportunity to get bored.
I'm pretty intensely depressed, so I think I'd like to learn how to be a little less of that. I've tried so many things, but I guess there's always more. Thinking about getting a personal trainer, because I try to stay active, but have no idea how to actually work out. Seems like a good skill to learn, and should help somewhat with the crushing weight my brain seems to be in constantly.
I've written about getting out of some giga-depression a few years ago, but having a good therapist was massive. Working out kept me busy and mitigated symptoms, but I don't think I would have improved without a strong psychologist.
Hope that helps a little bit. It gets better sometimes!
I'm in a similar position but figured out how to work out last year. it's not a panacea, but working out is quite fun and is a great skill. I never had a personal trainer, but the best part about having one would probably be that they could set you up with some plans to follow, removing all the initial guesswork. The hardest part about working out for me is trying to figure out a goal to optimize for that's not too far away but not too simple either.
Working out does SO MUCH to help with depression. There’s a lot of literature to support this, and plenty of anecdata as well. Good luck, you can do it!
My #1 goal for the next year is to find a job that would re-ignite my passion for engineering.
I just can’t longer spend my life doing stupid corporate nonsense work contributing to widespread enshittification of the world.
Same here. I really want to stop peddling Microsoft stuff and support m365. Don't know where to go from here though. But if there's a will there's a way right?
I want to learn how to sit, stare at the wall, do nothing, and be happy about it.
I probably need to learn Go.
Tech:
1. Releasing a solo product. 2. Writing more about code and the intersections of the field in history and world events. 3. Trying to do more talks.
Not-tech:
1. PR like there's no tomorrow. 2. Run two half marathons. 3. Move out of Florida.
Technical:
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 want to try once again to learn piano. Previously, many years ago, I took lessons for 1.5 years but gave up because it was just too hard and I wasn't enjoying it. This time, I plan on trying to self learn. Been watching YouTube tutorials recently and as soon as I return from my trip, I will try once again.
I have bought the Nancy Faber adult piano adventures book 1 too.
Any tips are welcome.
What was too hard if I may ask? Maybe your teacher focused on the wrong things for/with you?
Me too! I'm using Alfred's Adult Piano course book.
Have you started yet? How is it going? Self learning?