December was a very nice wrap up for the year, in which I could get a lot more done than in previous months. Big changes, lots of catching up, and an overall bump in productivity. While not everything is yet perfect, it certainly helped to improve morale.
Achievements
Back to personal studies
First off, after a long stretch (almost half an year!) without being able to focus on personal studies, I was finally able to get back to it. While I am not entirely back to my normal pace, I made a lot of progress in both books I am working through, and put some time into it most weeks. I am almost finishing Rich Dad, Poor Dad now.
Blog posts
I was also able to set aside some time during the holidays to write several blog posts I had been planning to. These were all based on projects I undertook in the last three months of the year, but that I was too busy to document.
Here they are:
Attending TDC
December is usually the month in which The Developers' Conference (TDC) has its Porto Alegre edition. This year was no different, and fortunately I was once again able to attend it in person. This is the third year in a row that I do this, and it is always one of my favorite times of the year.
Just like last year, this edition was smaller than the normal version of the event. While last year it followed the "AI Summit" format (which I highly dislike), this time it used the "TDC Experience" format, which I found better than the AI one, but still not as good as the full version. The event took place in a different venue from the classic Uniritter campus - while I liked the space (inside the Barra Shopping), I felt it had a less distinct atmosphere. Nevertheless, this time I was able to attend it together with other colleagues from my company and even my team, so it was overall a great and pleasurable experience.
The talks themselves focused more on seeing AI through a more mature and seasoned perspective, keeping the high expectations while starting to recognize and analyse several of the possible pitfalls it offers. I think this shows the "growing up" of the software development ecosystem with regards to this technology, and I only wished my company was at this stage as well - unfortunately, we are only now getting into the "starry-eyed adolescent" phase, a good 3 years behind the whole world.
Downpoints
While there were no major negative points this month, I do feel I am not yet fully back to speed, after all the chaos of changing jobs and moving to a new place. There are several days in which I still get stuck with some minor problem to solve and can do no useful work. Thankfully, these have been getting rarer lately.
Plans for next month
January is usually a month to plan things and set up new routines. The only thing I am mostly convinced I will be focusing on for next year is improving AI skills, so I expect to already get started with some of that. But mostly it will be coming up with a solid plan for 2026.
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