It has been a long time since I have written here and I've been reflecting on why. I thought it was due an update on where I am and what to expect going forward.
2025: An Introspective Year
The main reason for the radio silence recently is that 2025 has been a year of mostly looking inwards. This is all positive! A few years ago I made a bet on my business to transition my focus more to product development teams as well as changing primary software platforms from LabVIEW to Rust.
That has been very successful. Last year I really saw that approach take off and 2026 looks set to surpass all of my ambitions with the change.
Of course there has also been a big factor of AI really hitting the scene last year. I've considered writing about it a few times but the reality is that it is such a fast moving landscape that I've not had the conviction to stake a clear position. In fact, to this day I continue to evaluate and consider where it fits in my business without a definitive position either way.
All of this has led to spending the year really focusing inwards on process and infrastructure to support this change.
Project Duration Matters
One of the biggest changes has been that the project durations have increased dramatically and often require more collaboration than a test system that is delivered and largely working.
When I consider the projects I'm working on this week, there are some that have been near continuous development for 2 years, and others that have been running for a decade.
This has driven me to realise that I need to strengthen the engineering process around this development. When someone asks why something was built that way and the decision was made 5 years ago, generally only documentation can help you. I have some of that in a flexible form, but I now have designed out a process that I believe will work better and am in the process of building or integrating tools to make that a reality.
The other impact of this size is that the scope means you need different views on the system. The CRA is a figure in my mind where we need a good view into the security of the system separately to the development process. Traceability is key here and there are simply not great tools for small business on a budget. Again last year involved a lot of time spotting gaps and 2026 will hopefully be a year of filling them.
What's Coming in 2026
Firstly, a lot of projects to deliver! This is always going to take a lot of priority and it is set to be a busy year. I will be working with contractors to manage the capacity over time and so there is also an emphasis on tools that are going to enable the collaboration.
The other big focus is going to be getting these processes in place to be in a better place next year to balance these projects and understand the state. For me, this will mean time building a more integrated project flow through different tools or custom tools where it makes sense. By the end of this my goal is that my customers and I will have a much better view on the state of projects. Where are we? What needs to be done? What issues are we having?
Coupled with this will bet getting everything in place for a secure development workflow. This is already well underway and mostly needs some documentation around it and some suitable checkpoints to ensure it is being done. I hope by the end of the year to not only meet the bare requirements but be in a place where we can make it easy for customers to show compliance and security posture on our projects.
What About LabVIEW?
I'm still using LabVIEW on projects with existing use or need for FPGA but I will be doing a lot less. The reality is that LabVIEW adds friction to the goals above that just isn't there with Rust or other languages with a larger community concerned about the same things. This is making it harder to stay on top of some community work in the LabVIEW world such as organising CSLUG (still going well, but I can't offer as much) and G CLI is burning a hole in my GitHub inbox to review. I still want to keep these going but as you can imagine, it has slipped down my priorities.
I am excited for 2026 and G CLI with changes in LabVIEW and some of the community interest should make it a much better tool. My goal is to get some of those changes in soon and then hopefully help others start to take a bit more of the process around this and keep it up to date.
To 2026
I hope to be a bit more vocal as I learn a lot more about the process in 2026. Time to learn, experiment and teach is important to me and I hope to be able to structure and plan more of that over the coming year. I imagine there will be some content about the process changes. But I'm also experimenting with different platforms and processing techniques that I hope will make for some interesting opportunities for review and discussion.