New Years Resolutions For Developers
Dev Leader Weekly 121
TL; DR:
Submit YOUR resolution you want feedback on!
AI. Content marketing. Getting uncomfortable.
Discuss YOUR resolutions on the live stream on Monday, January 5th at 7:00 PM Pacific!
New Year’s Resolutions
I wanted to do something a bit different this time and start my newsletter off by inviting YOU to share a software engineering related goal you have for this year that you’d like some guidance with! You can do so COMPLETELY anonymously at CodeCommute.com, and I will make a video response for you. You can see the submission form here:
I release ~5 videos per week on that YouTube channel, and I would be happy to respond to EVERY single one of you who wants some guidance for your software engineering goals this year. The submission form remains completely anonymous if you check the box.
And with that out of the way... I’ll share with you what I’m setting my sights on!
AI-First Software Development
I realize most of us are getting sick of it by now, but I still think the approach I started in 2025 has worked well for me: keep working with AI tools even when they seem stupid.
Yeah. Even when they are frustrating, hallucinating, etc... Don’t drop the tooling on the ground.
It feels kind of crazy saying this, but at the start of 2025 I remember feeling like using AI to code was great for auto-complete, but pretty frustrating for anything remotely complex. If I had to leave an LLM to do a few iterations of changes, I might as well have given it to a child to mash the keyboard.
Okay, it wasn’t THAT bad, but it was not really saving my time -- and driving up my blood pressure instead. BUT... I told myself that throughout the year I would make sure:
To not give up on the tools
To not ignore the new tools being released
To experiment with different ways to use the tools... to see what works and what doesn’t
Things got better. A lot better. A lot of the features I build in BrandGhost are done 80% of the way through on my phone using GitHub Copilot. I have to jump in for more complex things or when things go off the rails a bit.
In 2026, I want to keep this energy up. In fact, I have noticed I am perhaps getting TOO comfortable with my workflow, and I want to make sure that isn’t the case. The tools we have are changing so much and so fast that now is NOT the time to get too comfortable. I need to at least try things and break out of my comfort zone.
For me, this will include:
Using Cursor and vscode more. These get updates VERY regularly, and even Visual Studio often lags behind vscode.
Using Claude and Anthropic ecosystem more. If I wasn’t paying close attention, I would have missed Claude’s web agents!
Build and use more “peripherals” for my AI agents, like MCP tools and “skills”. This is largely untapped for me.
Do YOU have any focus areas like this that you’re going to be spending time on?
More Content... But Different
I’ve been consistently publishing content for Dev Leader now for 3 years. That’s 3 years of sharing software engineering experiences and perspectives every single day across social media platforms.
This takes a ton of time and effort, but it’s the exact reason I built BrandGhost. I’m now at the point where I have a LOT of content for Dev Leader, and I can focus on better content for Dev Leader. That means:
Better YouTube videos... and I am ALWAYS interested in hearing your feedback on topics you want covered
Getting back into technical blogs... Because if you look at my posting history, I haven’t published a technical blog in a long time. I think it’s important to keep up with.
More attention back to courses. For me to do a good job with course creation, I need a lot of focus and dedicated time.
But that’s not the biggest change...
I need to take all of the habits and systems that I’ve used to build Dev Leader over the past 3 years to supercharge BrandGhost’s marketing. This is where I will be spending a significantly larger portion of my time and effort in 2026.
The bad news: I am already operating at full capacity. The good news: BrandGhost itself is the tool I’ll be using to make this much easier to scale.
It should be low effort and low stress to post, but a lot more time and effort to ramp up the creation of new content.
This is my number one focus for 2026.
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
I’ve been trying to convince myself to do this for YEARS now... and it’s really really hard. But I have so much evidence that every time I do this, and do it seriously, I become a much better version of myself.
Every. Single. Time.
I worked in Digital Forensics and had zero idea what was going on at the start
I jumped into the deep end of management early on with no prior consideration for such a role
I turned on my camera one day to start making YouTube content... I no longer have a public speaking fear!
I switched from Body Building to CrossFit (my mortal enemy!), and it’s changed my life for the better
I took on ownership of deployment for all of the Microsoft365 services across the planet with no prior experience in the space
... I did the same thing for a part of the routing plane for Microsoft365, handling TRILLIONS of requests per day!
Every time I put myself into a new position like this, I was back to being a newbie. Each and every time, the imposter syndrome was immense. But each and every time, I stuck with it, and I made progress in ways that allowed me to grow.
To this day, I get awfully nervous about being put into a new situation. I want 2026 to be the year where I don’t shy away. I have enough evidence to know the reality... I need the habit.
How have YOU handled this in your career or other parts of your life?
Closing Thoughts
AI. Content marketing. Getting uncomfortable. That’s my 2026.
I’m focusing on things that are important to me that I know I need to spend more time and attention on. That means I need to be intentional about driving progress in those areas -- writing a newsletter about it isn’t enough!
Again, I would love to invite you to share anything related to software engineering or career development that you’d like some support with. I’ll get a video put together for you on Code Commute, and you can be part of helping other people make progress as developers!
Happy New Year, and may it be full of successes -- however that looks for YOU.
Join me and other software engineers in the private Discord community!
Remember to check out my courses, including this awesome discounted bundle for C# developers:
As always, thanks so much for your support! I hope you enjoyed this issue, and I’ll see you next week.
Nick “Dev Leader” Cosentino
social@devleader.ca
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