Quite a lot of programming in the first half of 2025. Almost none since then. Of my current projects:

  • bascule is in maintenance mode, but continues to be used to drive this website
  • I like API viaduct, but it's only used for cantilever
  • cantilever has never managed to become a feature complete replacement for bascule
  • caternary, the web and android editor for cantilever, kinda works for the basic use cases
  • amber charge tracker gets the occasional update, mostly by AI coding these days
  • project kuiper is dead, thankfully
  • my raspberry pi isn't even switched on; the e-ink display is still stuck showing "14:17 Thu 30 October 2025"

I have found myself lacking enthusiasm and time for any of these projects. Cantilever and Catenary are intimately connected; one can't really work without the other. I don't enjoy UI development, either in the web or in Jetpack Compose for android, and most of the work needed is in the front end. But without a working front end, there's little point on working on the Cantilever website generator code.

For my Amber project, I have added a couple of features, and I used the app every time I charge my card. But the last couple of changes have been written almost entirely using AI coding agents such as Junie, and there's something kinda demoralising about that. I definitely want to continue to explore AI agents, but I think I'd rather do it with something greenfield and probably lower level.

At the back of my mind, there's always this niggling desire to write a computer game. Every time I do, it ends in tears. If I do try again sometime, I must promise not to make it even harder by doing it in Kotlin – I should just learn GDScript and Godot, or C# and Unity. Something practical and widely used with plenty of supporting documentation.

So what do I want to do? What would I like to learn next?

  • Something lower level; perhaps coding in ARM Assembly, or C, or a modern low-level language such as C3, Zig or Rust
  • Continue and extend API Viaduct, but the cold-start times of AWS Lambda functions are too long. Could I recompile the code to run as a native executable? Or perhaps use GraalVM?
  • I'd like to explore public clouds outside Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. I'm increasingly dissatisfied with the US-centric nature of the cloud. However, none of the European cloud services are really geared towards serverless applications.
  • Something actually relevant to my work – learn Microsoft Azure cloud, learn C#, learn Terraform and Bicep perhaps. Doesn't sound very interesting though.
  • Resurrect my Raspberry Pi and use it as mini home server, for a local Git server, an advert blocker... Earlier this year I set up a cloudflare tunnel to my Pi and a Gittea server, which synced and backed up my Github repos. Then the SD card on the Pi died :(.

Lots of options. No actual need for any of these things. I hope I can find an engaging and useful project for 2026.