Captain’s Log, Stardate 2025.12: We’ve completed another orbit. The nacelles are glowing, the cloud bills are astronomical, and the spreadsheets are still trying to take over the bridge. It’s time for the 2025 Year-End Retrospective.
For the developers, IT Directors, and Business folks who have been following Coder Radio, my blog, or the journey of Alice, this year has been defined by one thing: The Pragmatic Pivot. We’ve moved away from “hype-driven development” and back toward building things that actually work.
1. Cloud Smart: The Great De-Complexification
2025 was the year we stopped worshiping at the altar of “Cloud Native” and started being “Cloud Smart.” We saw a massive shift away from infinite microservices and toward the Solid Trifecta and Rails 8.
- For VPs: It was about reclaiming the budget. We stopped throwing money at AWS for complexity we didn’t need. We learned that platform specific conveniences come at a price, specifically platform lock-in.
- For Devs: The “Keep it Boring” mantra took hold. If the Borg can maintain a collective consciousness with less overhead than some of our Kubernetes clusters, we knew we had a problem.
2. AI: The Power Saw, Not the Captain
The “AI will replace us” panic of 2024 has cooled into a sensible reality: AI is a Type-2 Phaser. It’s a specialized power tool. It’s incredible for token-slashing and clearing the “Toon World” boilerplate, but it doesn’t replace the need for architectural judgment; you might think of the way forward as more a Seven of Nine situation rather than Commander Data.
- The Reality: We’ve integrated AI-assisted engineering in places where it makes (shout out to Warp and Claude) without losing the “why” behind the code. We’re using LLMs to build faster, not to stop thinking. In particular, ensuring greater automated test coverage via LLMs has been a big win for us and giving the AIs some ability to diagnose issues reported via our telemetry / reporting systems has also increased efficiency. We just aren’t at the place where AI is going to completely replace developers, but it’s understandable, given how much the public markets this year have rewarded head-count reductions, why public company CEOs are pushing that narrative and coupling it with mass layoffs of technical staff. My take is that this is ultimately a mistake and will begin to correct itself in Q3 of 26.
3. Alice & The Soft Launch of “Looking Glass”
In the enterprise, data is often trapped in what I call Subspace Interference—proprietary formats and legacy silos that make accurate reporting a nightmare. This year, Alice has been the Universal Translator, turning that mess into Snowflake-ready pipelines.
The Soft Launch: I’m excited to pull the cloak off Looking Glass.
- What is it? If Alice is the engine room, Looking Glass is the Main Viewscreen. It gives you a clear, real-time look into your data without the “Big Consulting” price tag all safely on your network and behind your firewall, ensuring maximum complaince.
- The Impact: For MRO, manufacturing, and industrial leaders, it’s about seeing through the fog of manual spreadsheets to find your actual margins. No more guessing.
4. The Open Source “Rug Pull” & New Frontiers
We saw some “Maintenance Mode” pivots this year that felt like a Romulan sneak attack—most notably the MinIO pivot away from long-term open-source support. It reminded every IT Director that “Open Source” is a spectrum, and you need a plan for when the licensing changes.
- The Silver Lining: On the flip side, COSMIC 24.04 has officially arrived. DHH’s Omarchy / Omakub have reinvigorated developer desktop Linux interest. These three distros are the professional “Daily Driver” desktops we’ve been waiting for. It’s fast, it’s sleek, and it’s the LCARS interface we actually deserve for our dev-heavy workflows. Simpler and nimbler alternatives to venerable but somewhat complex technologies such as Kubernetes are also emerging as are more standardized container management.
5. Startup Winter & Returning to Fundamentals
The era of “burn cash to find a vibe” has frozen over. We are firmly in a Startup Winter, and that’s actually a good thing for the pragmatists. The focus has shifted to ROI and niche expertise.
- The Tech: We’re (the “we” is my company The Mad Botter INC) seeing a surge in Edge/IoT work. Tools like our Dredger-IoT are bringing Ruby to the edge to collect real-world telemetry, while tools like (again ours) PG Lake Make are helping us build performant data lakes without the SaaS mortgage.
- The Takeaway: Whether you’re a VP or a Junior Dev, 2025 rewarded those who focused on Performance and a true commitment to open-source over Posturing and vendor lock-in.
What’s Next for 2026? We’re going to keep seeking out new efficiencies and boldly going where the spreadsheets fear to tread. If you want to see how we can help your team clear the subspace interference in your data, come say hi at Alice.dev.
Live long and prosper, and keep coding.
