Pretty slow year in tech for me due to moving country then city; it's been such a big year personally!

The job market

The dev job market still sucks. I haven't given this much thought so not sure the reasons behind this.

AI

AI has solidified its position, not as the omnipotent force we all predicted, but as just another tool in the toolkit for developers and non-developers alike.

It seems like a big source of FOMO for companies and there have been countless 'junk' AI tools created. I think that once the hype dies down a little the AI market will mature more and it will become just another engineering specialisation. The decent AI tooling is definitely here to stay.

Side projects

As per last year, moving country (again) and moving back to my much-loved city of Brisbane, I haven't taken much time for side projects. I have been getting into the Advent of Code this year though, which has been great!

I taught my wife a bit of Python -- we got as far as making a web scraper in just a couple of weeks! (she had zero programming experience)

Goals for next year

• I want to get more involved in the tech community, possibly open source if I find the time
• I want to create a better format for these annual reviews, possibly including personal stats (which I track using an app I built)
• More side projects, which I will write blog posts about

Hopefully with my lifestyle settled down a bit, and getting into a rhythm I will be able to make the time for this to happen.

There just aren't enough hours in the day!