2025 Retrospective - A Year in Review
As we approach the end of 2025, I find myself reflecting on another year of growth, challenges, and discoveries. This retrospective captures the key lessons I learned, my expectations for 2026, and my personal plans for the coming year.
Learn
Career Transition and Certifications
I switched this year from technical project manager to IT/Cloud architect. I am very happy with this new role and I think it suits me better. I also passed GCP Professional Architect certification.
AI Coding Agents
Coding agents are a real deal. When I saw Cursor agent mode beginning of this year, I even stopped my current consulting mission to go back developing features for Track App.
LLM Progress
Despite most analysts saying we reached a "plateau," LLM models performance is still improving release after release. The last example is Opus 4.5 which is still blowing my mind.
Dumb Phone Experiment
I was able to live for a year with my SIM card in a dumb phone. But it was hard: I still have a smartphone at home on wifi for banks MFA, listening to music in offline mode while practicing sport and I had to rely on my wife's iPhone for GPS during car trips. I also had to print tickets and got as a gift a proper camera to take pictures.
You can read more about my initial digital detox journey and dumb phone research in my previous article: My Phone Digital Detox Journey
Expect (for 2026)
AI-First Development
I expect every developer will be prompting LLMs instead of coding the old way as a primary way of working.
Autonomous Home Robots
I expect we will use first autonomous robots in homes.
Real-World Deep Learning
I expect we will see first "World Models" rolled-out to the public.
What I plan for 2026
Certifications and Skills
Pass Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certifications.
Dumb Phone Upgrade
A dumb phone upgrade, I keep up with dumb phone but writing messages without even T9 is no longer possible.
Here's to another year of discovery and exciting new technologies. The journey continues...