Some Thoughts and Plans for 2026

I wanted to write this blog article during the week prior, but I decided to fully enjoy the holiday break. That said, a late happy new year to anyone reading this!

I think it would be nice to set some goals for this year. It’s okay if ever I don’t meet some of them within this year, but it’s nice to have something to strive for. Generally, these are my goals:

Build at least three projects that solves a problem I have.
Be self-sufficient without AI.
Get a job after graduating.

I could make these goals more descriptive by using the SMART framework, but I’ll leave it as is for the sake of brevity.

Building Meaningful Projects

I’ve already completed The Odin Project last year, so I technically already have some projects under my belt. But, the projects I’ve built while following that curriculum, are a bit generic in my opinion.

Building those projects were useful since I was learning various programming concepts at the time, but these aren’t really “my” projects if that makes sense. These days, I don’t think a simple messaging app or an oversimplified social media app is gonna cut it.

I want to build applications that I am proud to show, and I want to have solid reasons why I’ve built these projects. It doesn’t have to be super complex or intricate, but it should at least genuinely solve a problem of mine. At the end of the day, we are problem solvers, and so I should be building apps that solve them.

For instance, near the end of last year, I discovered this concept called spaced repetition. Essentially, it’s a way to retain information, by writing them down in flashcards. The frequency of when you practice with these flashcards is spaced out, depending on how often you’ve got them right.

I won’t go into detail about it, but feel free to check out the absolutely dope interactive website I’ve linked above, which goes into detail on what spaced repetition is.

I thought that this would be something I could do to retain the fundamentals. Admittedly, I do sometimes forget something that I should know deeply. Or maybe I do kind of know it, but I’m not sure if I’m using the right terms to explain the said concept…

And so I’ve searched a lot about what app I could use to practice, and many people suggest Anki. I’ve tried it for a few weeks, and it… works just fine. Though, I have two pain points with it:

First, the UI is pretty bad. And second, it’s not easy to write code in it. Sometimes, I want to include lines of code or code blocks in my flashcards, but the only option you can do is to use the code tag. And even then, there’s no syntax highlighting, so it looks pretty rough…

With that being said, this is a great opportunity to create a simple spaced repetition app that is geared towards solving the pain points I’ve mentioned above. And even better, I can also use this opportunity to learn about new frameworks or libraries that I want to learn.

I Just Can’t with AI

I personally find it so difficult to navigate around this era where AI is slathered everywhere. A lot of people say that if you don’t use AI, you’ll be left behind. But if I use too much AI… then I just become a vibe coder. For people just wanting to start out with their careers, it’s an absolute headache.

From my personal experience, I learn much better when I go slower, taking the time to read the documentation, and using AI super duper minimally. Like for generating mock data. Or giving examples of basic concepts from a framework.

While it takes more time to get a project to a working state, I at least actually learned something. I find that when I finish a project where AI was involved, I’m left thinking that I understood what I just made, but in reality I don’t. If I can’t explain the codebase of my project, then it’s clear that I didn’t learn much.

Put simply, I just want to be self-sufficient without AI. I want to be at least skilled enough, where I don’t need AI by my side to build an application.

At this point in my career, I think this is the right way to go. As someone starting out, I should be much more focused on learning, than trying to be “productive” by being heavily reliant on AI. Once I become self-sufficient, I think only then, that would be a good time to integrate more AI into my workflow.

Hopefully… A Job

It’s expected that I graduate this year, I just have to finish my thesis.

I’m not really concerned with that right now, and so I haven’t made my own system to track my job applications and such. Initially though, I do plan on applying to the internship I worked at before, and at a company where a family relative of mine works. So, I’m hoping that goes well.

But, until that day comes, the priority right now is to just keep coding and learning.

That’s about it. I also have some other personal goals outside of programming-related stuff, but I decided not to talk about them here.

As for the coming weeks, I plan on building the spaced repetition app I talked about with Next.js. I also plan on learning some Tailwind while I’m at it.

And again, a late happy new year to anybody reading this. Hoping that you also find success this year!