2025 - Wrapped

Jan 1, 2026

2025 was a year of reset. At the start of the year, I felt stuck in a time loop, personally and professionally stagnant. After months of brooding and honest conversations with my spouse, Sneha, and a few close friends, I realised my mind was craving a more challenging environment. It’s a feeling that has been brewing for years, and this was the year I finally addressed it.

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Socialisation and Seeking Mentorship

For the last 15 years, I focused so intensely on work that I neglected my social life. While my colleagues are great friends, my “heads down, sleeves rolled up” approach meant my social circle rarely expanded beyond a small group in Bangalore and that too thanks to Sathya.

After talking with close friends Sathya and Bibhas, I decided to actively reach out to people I look up to. My first meeting with Shaan had a profound impact; it provided the spark I needed to restart my drive to learn new things. From there, I connected with Nilesh, Ankit, and Vinod. Listening to their perspectives helped me tweak my future plans. I’m proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone to seek abstract advice and seeing what fits. In 2026, I plan to push this even further.

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Learning Hardware

My career began with multitouch hardware and electronics, microprocessors were my favorite subject in engineering. However, a pivot at work from hardware to software led me away from that world for a long time.

A conversation with Shaan, coupled with my niece needing a metronome for her guitar practice, brought me back. Using RP2040 chips and Claude Code, I quickly prototyped a “deconstructed metronome” featuring a rechargeable battery and a display. To build the enclosure, I moved beyond Tinkercad to learn Fusion 360. With Gemini as a side-by-side tutor, I’m now designing simple objects with precise measurements. I finally feel like I’m gaining traction on a completely new skill set. I’m also working on building a unique macro-pad and tinkering with Vichark’s Shrike-lite FPGA: hoping to build a Chip-8 emulator.

Another day another experiment with Fusion 360. This time a-bit more precise and measured one. Gemini is quite useful as a side by side tool to ask specific workflow questions. pic.twitter.com/TAlVmkY93n

— Sharath Patali (@sharathpatali) December 29, 2025

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Open Source

After a decade-long hiatus from open source, I finally found the bandwidth to contribute again. I focused on ideas that were useful for work, and which could automate away some of my responsibilities. I built and open-sourced the basic version of Yantra, with many more features planned for the coming year. Claude code made it super easy to quickly build and prototype whole products at an accelerated pace. What a year it has been for LLM based coding! excited to see whats in store in 2026.

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Travel

To celebrate 10 years of marriage, Sneha and I traveled to Japan during cherry blossom season. It was an incredible experience—the culture, the food, and the people were all life-changing. I also managed to pick up a slight Gundam model kit addiction! We’re already planning to explore Northern Japan in the future.

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Media and Entertainment

Gaming: Open world RPG fatigue hit me hard this year, but handheld gaming helped me clear some of my backlog. I also picked up a Nintendo Switch 2 as I have a huge backlog of games that I purchased for Switch OLED but never got time to play. Some of the games I played this year:

• Dispatch — 9/10
• Donkey Kong Bananza — 8/10
• Doom 2016 — 9/10
• Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 — 9/10
• Alan Wake — 8/10
• ANNO: Mutationem — 8/10

TV/Anime: I spent my treadmill time catching up on some incredible animes and tv shows. Started lightly following F1 this year. Some of the notable shows I watched in 2025:

• Chainsaw Man — 9/10
• Gundam: Requiem of Vengeance — 7/10
• Murderbot — 8/10
• Pantheon — 9/10
• Terminator Zero — 9/10
• Dandadan — 9/10

Movies: Haven’t watched many but most of the ones I watched were in the theatres:

• Homebound — 9/10
• Fantastic Four — 7/10
• Jurassic World: Rebirth — 5/10
• Superman — 8/10
• The Thunderbolts — 7/10
• Robot Dreams — 9/10
• Blackberry — 8/10
• Mickey 17 — 8/10
• Avatar: Ash and Fire — 7/10

Books/Graphic novels: This is an area I want to improve; I’m hoping to trade doom-scrolling for actual books in the coming months:

• Absolute Batman — Scott Snyder — 9/10
• Nightbringer — Graham McNeill — 7/10
• Off to be a Wizard — Scott Meyer (Audiobook) — 8/10
• I Can’t Make This Up — Kevin Hart (Audiobook) — 8/10

There are several other media that I have started but not yet completed. Will do so in 2026.

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Fitness

I finally restarted my fitness journey after finding a gym that isn’t overcrowded. I’ve hired a personal trainer to ensure I’m doing things the right way this time around.

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Hopes and Resolutions for 2026

• Career: While I’m grateful for my job in this climate, I will be seeking out new challenges this year, might be at work or outside work. Positively looking forward to the change.
• Hardware Mastery: I want to become proficient in end-to-end product development, specifically mastering Fusion 360 and KiCad for custom circuit design.
• In-depth knowledge about LLMs: Dig deep into training AI models, get better at wrangling the LLM’s to make it do what I want. Keep up with the rapid changes!
• Mindfulness and Health: More reading, less scrolling. Lift more weight and walking 10k steps daily :)

Happy new year!