2026: A New Year, A Clearer Mindset
A reflection on 2025 and the work ahead
Opening
Today’s coffee is Lavazza House Blend Perfetto—smooth, balanced,
and steady.
It feels like the right cup to open a new year.
As 2026 begins, I’m not thinking about resolutions. I’m thinking about
alignment. About where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, and how we carry those
lessons forward without losing ourselves in noise, hype, or urgency for
urgency’s sake.
Before we rush ahead, 2025 deserves a proper look.
A Reflection on 2025
2025 was not a year of shortcuts.
It was a year of hard conversations, incremental progress,
and honest realizations—especially in the IBM i community. We spent less
time asking what tool should we use and more time asking why are we
doing things the way we are.
A few truths became hard to ignore:
- Modernization is no longer
optional, but fear around it is still very real
- Legacy systems don’t fail because
of age; they fail because of neglect
- Skills gaps aren’t just
technical—they’re cultural and organizational
- Tools alone do not change teams.
Mindsets do
We saw momentum building. Git adoption increased. VS Code became less
controversial and more commonplace. Conversations around AI, automation, and
developer experience moved from “someday” to “soon.”
But 2025 also reminded us that change without leadership creates
anxiety, not progress.
What 2026 Demands From Us
2026 is not about chasing trends.
It’s about intentional evolution.
For developers, that means expanding beyond language loyalty and
embracing systems thinking:
- RPG proficiency paired with
modern free-form practices
- A real understanding of how a
DBMS works—not just SQL syntax
- Comfort with Git, branching
strategies, and pull requests
- Awareness of testing, automation,
and documentation as first-class work
- The ability to diagnose and
repair damaged objects, broken dependencies, and fragile environments—not
just write new code
For managers, the responsibility is heavier—and clearer.
The Manager’s Role in Making This Work
Modern skills do not emerge by accident.
If we want modern developers, we must create modern conditions.
That means managers must:
- Create psychological safety so learning doesn’t feel like
failure
- Protect time for skill development, not just
delivery
- Normalize curiosity, experimentation, and asking
questions
- Reward progress, not just output
- Model learning instead of pretending we already
know everything
It also means recognizing that resistance to change is often rooted in
fear—fear of irrelevance, fear of breaking something critical, fear of losing
hard-earned expertise.
Our job isn’t to dismiss that fear.
Our job is to guide people through it.
The Work Ahead
2026 will bring better tools. Smarter IDEs. More automation. More
AI-assisted development.
But the real work remains human:
- Teaching teams how to think, not
just what to use
- Building trust between experience
and innovation
- Treating modernization as a
shared journey, not a forced migration
If we get that right, the technology will follow.
Final Sips
I’ll finish this cup of Lavazza House Blend Perfetto the same way
I plan to approach 2026—calm, focused, and deliberate.
No grand promises.
No empty buzzwords.
Just steady progress, better conversations, and teams that grow stronger
together.
Here’s to a new year done right.
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