2025 Leaps, 2026 Plans

The holidays are a good time to step back, reflect, and share a quick update on where things stand and what's pulling my attention as we head into 2026. No deep dive this week but we will be back next week.

A Year of Big Leaps

2025 was a year of putting myself out there in ways that felt both exciting and terrifying.

The book finally shipped. After a year of writing, rewriting, and wondering if anyone would care, Clean Architecture with Python launched in the spring. Putting a book into the world is a strange experience. You spend months crafting something in relative isolation, then suddenly it’s out there for people to judge. The response has been gratifying, but the vulnerability of that moment stays with you.

I left AWS. This was the big one. After over 6 years of comfortable employment at a leading tech company, I walked away. The comfort was precisely the problem. There’s so much happening in AI right now, and I had limited time to pursue it, to experiment, to go deep. Researching and writing full-time has given me that space. The trade-off is real. No steady paycheck, no corporate safety net. But the alignment between my curiosity and my daily work has never been stronger.

Portland AI Engineers became a thing. Co-founding this community has been one of the unexpected highlights of my year. Portland has a stellar tech scene, and the response was immediate (~1k members and growing). We’ve had engagement from remarkably diverse people doing fascinating work. Monthly meetups have become something I genuinely look forward to, not just facilitate.

What’s Pulling My Attention for 2026

Three areas are shaping my focus for the coming year.

More live, local workshops. In 2025 I had the opportunity to volunteer at Build with AI community events. Great experience that I plan to expand on. I’ll be helping to design and deliver targeted AI workshops. The plan is to test formats locally, then adapt what works for remote and self-serve delivery.

AI-first development, explored properly. Coding assistants keep getting better, faster, and cheaper. The trajectory is striking. What does it mean for our craft? Where is software development changing most? Where is it surprisingly unchanged? These questions deserve sustained attention. Costs and latency have reached levels where we can genuinely explore what it means to build an application with AI at its core. Not AI bolted on, but AI as the foundation. I want to spend serious time in that space.

Sharing my AI toolkit. Throughout 2025, my personal productivity setup has evolved significantly. The tools and systems I use daily for research, writing, and development have matured to a point where I think they could be useful to others. Expect more content on this front. What actually works in practice, not what sounds impressive in a demo.

See You Next Week

This isn’t my end-of-year sign-off. I’ll have one more post before we close out 2025. Consider this a mid-US-holiday check-in. A quick wave from my desk to yours (or from my local Caffe to yours as the case may be).

Thanks for being here. The transition from enterprise engineer to independent writer and researcher has been the boldest and most rewarding shift of my career. Having readers who care about this work makes it possible.

More soon.

— Sam