About 10 months ago I was unemployed.
Unemployed for a week, but still. Then I joined my new workplace, and never touched my blog up until today.
So, how was it going?
Work
Hell yeah, I already spent twice as much time here than I did on my previous place. It’s going rather great.
The guys are great, the project is something new and requires self-development, the work is easy.
As they say - the hours are short, the pay is fine and I sleep well.
Hobbies
Yeah, so the finances are getting tight recently, so I am quitting (or reshaping) existing hobbies, and “picking up” new, practical hobbies. Gardening, anyone?
I built a shed in my backyard, because, well, I needed it anyway, and doing it myself is a good way to save money. I cared for my lawn with all the labor-intensive practices. And other practical “jobs”.
Side projects
Oh, that one was intense.
First, Evy. I kinda stopped working on it in 2025 altogether. I have a feature branch with rather big new feature, but I just don’t feel like it matters anymore.
What’s crazy about it, though, is that Evy keeps growing, somehow! It is not that well ranked in Google, but people are coming. There are approximately 10 new users per month, with every 20th or so user sticking. It is literally useful for some. So useful, that some users leave feedback! I think I should get back on it some time soon, refresh it and introduce some asked features. Not now, though.
Second, I participated in some “startup-ish” projects here and there. In a typical developer fashion - let’s build a platform, and then find a user for it. It doesn’t work that way, though, haha.
Third, I started working on 2 personal “startup” ideas. But this time it’s different. I am actually starting with problem discovery, user validation, etc. Coding is the last thing I want to actually do. Time to mature and stop writing the code nobody needs. Especially, it is now very easy not to focus on the code when working on the idea.
Which slowly leads me to the next paragraph.
AI
I have written about vibecoding almost a year ago. Well, well, well, how the turn tables.
I kinda didn’t believe back then that the vibecoding is feasable, or very productive for complex tasks, or produces a good code.
Whelp.
Nowadays I am only writing about 10% of the code I ship. AI agents and “vibecode” is unseparable part of my work routine now. It is kinda funny, or ironic, even.
AI is now much, much better than me on insanely complex tasks. I have been translating Gravity Defied mobile game from Java implementation for Nokia phones to JavaScript, so it could run in browser and a canvas. I stumbled on a very obscure issues, because older Java handles integer differently, has different bit operation precision, etc. At first, I abandoned the project and forgot about it. But as I saw AI growing in reasoning skills, I just fed the issue to the AI. I was flabbergasted when after few backs and forths it found (or at least, located) issues, and could fix most of it in a matter of few hours.
AI is now much, much better than me on boring, repetitive task. I just feed copilot (or whatever) with a task to bootstrap a new endpoint, new domain in a service, etc., and it does it in a matter of seconds, almost perfectly every time. Then, style adjustments and opinionated implementations are what my 10% contribution consist of.
Now, everything is an understanding, requirement, design, decision problem. Coding is just something that AI is doing for me.
Lucky me to start transitioning towards Team Lead / PO roles recently?
What’s next
I am very serious about building a startup.
Building a product is no longer a bottleneck.
Hence I am now trying to learn as much as I can regarding entrepreneurship, sales, design, and other very human and very personal things.
But that might actually be the topic for the next blog.
Wrapping up
It was hell of the year. World’s changed. I changed. Still going strong.
Kind disclaimer: This blog is still 100% AI free.