A Look Back And A Way Forward
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards - Soren Kierkegaard
Intro
I haven't written down my thoughts like this a long while. Trying to develop the habit of putting down my thoughts publicly, starting out with looking back at 2025 and what comes this year.
2025 was one of the those years that promised a lot but delivered little. Felt like too much pulling and pushing to even execute the basic plans.
Lessons From 2025
I learnt a lot about myself in 2025. The kind of person i want to be; be it an engineer, leader, son and partner. As the last year of my 20s , there was a lot of introspection as my 10 year plan I made in 2015 ended in 2025. I felt weird looking at goals I had set for myself at 19 in 2015, seeing how wrong I was about what I wanted in life. 10 years of growth and maturity has definitely changed the way I see life.
Lot's of technical growth and lessons also came my way, got to build a private blockchain for client at work using hyperledger fabric, built a media pipeline that used LLM for verification ( scaling it to be a true RAG system this year). Got back to my first love (C++) again, learning to build more with C++.
2025 was about going back to the basics in every aspect of my life.
AI Coding
😅 What can I say, the machines are coming. Skynet is coming online, the war of the machines is upon us 😆
On a more serious note, AI has gotten exponentially good last year while also reaching a plateau. My use of AI last year has been small, testing the waters seeing what it can do and what the limits are.
What I learnt is when it comes to agent mode the friction I hated with AI code completion was gone but replaced with context mismatch as I call it. When you do not have a good enough structure for your project , the AI determines that for you which 2/3 is bad. That's where plan mode wins, I love using plan mode more than the actual coding agent, as I am able to give it direction instead of the other way round.
2025 pushed me back to the fundamentals - here AI was a huge advantage, better than what I had when I started writing code in 2013. I spent more time building small technical system gaining more understanding of basics which is far more important to me than the hype of the latest shiniest tool.
I used AI as a thinking aid, not a replacement - a way for me to explore faster while staying close to how things actually work.
It felt like a quiet return to why I started programming in 2013 in the first place, that I give AI the win.
This year I hope to not just get better as using AI as a TOOL but transition fully to AI Engineering.
Celebrating My 30th Birthday
15 January, the faithful anniversary transition from my 20s into a 30+ young man 😄
Looking forward to my 30s, more adventures, taking more calculated risks than I did in my 20s.
Build, build and build for stability, that's how I want my 30s to go.
For now cheers to 3 decades on this beautiful blue rock floating through the cosmos we call home
Looking Ahead To 2026
2026 is about compounding; turning experiments into assets. Its going to be about depth, leverage, and finish lines.
Looking ahead into this year, this year is all about stability and peace of mind. Working on things that would help me achieve stability and peace. Going back to being a my stoic roots which have been guided by these famous words from Epictetus
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters
Looking forward to exploring foundation AI models as I transition from a Software Engineering to AI Engineering. I would keep on building a lot of foundation tools as I did last year, going back to more basics as this is why I fell in love with programming over 12 years ago.
Definitely would be writing more, using this little space as my own public log to put down my thoughts as the come.
Bienvenido 2026 🥳