Techstructive Weekly #74
Wrapping up 2025, completing Advent of SQL 2025 in sqlite, learning about CTEs, JOINs, JSON and FTS in SQLite, among the other things read, watched and learnt in the week of 21st to 27th December 2025
Week #74
It was winding down week, 2025, ending slowly, the biggest irony. The year was full of fast-paced, unprecedented models just dropping here and there. It was hard to keep up with the progress. It was getting overwhelming, no one is used to such a level of information. I was dreading with so much power in our hands. I couldn’t handle it and refrained it and thought it was better to focus on learning new things. I kept using AI tools at work, not by choice, but initially through force but then through necessity.
People made developers go fast, but they realised,
Solving problems and understanding the business needs was the core goal.
Yet, people thought and here we are with tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and 10 other CLI tools. I learnt the hard way to leverage this tools, to use only when the code was throw away, some scripts, and getting insights from logs. But never on actual bugs and features, it was draining, lacked the joy I get from actually making it.
So, at the end of 2025, I am a decent developer who cannot use AI tools. Yes! give or take, I would love to learn more in 2026.
Quote of the week
“I don’t fear a future with AI. I fear a present without thinking.”
Yes! That is what I believe in this year. I have stopped thinking it seems. If in 2026, we move very fast without thinking, I need to change for the better. The directions we take, everything is a decision, but on what ground, on what thought. If the thought are not 90% yours, you are not thinking enough.
Think, don’t let AI do it.
Created
Advent of SQL 2025 in SQLite
Read
You’re not burning out, you’re essentially starving
This was a good one
When you truly chase your highest potential, everything you thought was burnout will melt away. Because you weren’t suffering from too much work, you were suffering from too little truly important work. Like a boy who thought he was full until dessert arrives, you’ll suddenly find your hunger return!
Some really good points
Pause once a month to make sure you’re still on the right track. Stop once a year to triple-check you’re on the right track. But never get off this path towards your highest potential. Anything else will starve you existentially
This is true
We’re optimizing for less suffering instead of more meaning.
Yes
I woke up today so excited to get to work thinking it was Monday morning already. Instead of jumping right into it, I spent all morning making breakfast and playing with my kids, then wrote this post. When I’m writing about something personal, 1,000+ words can easily flow for me in an afternoon.
Just read the post!
This is well put.
I kind of hate this argument.
Why are we comparing ourselves to machines in the first place? We can grind, but with thinking what actually we are doing.
Because I equate grind to consistency, it sometimes feels like grind, and we need to overcome that emotion of letting it overtake us. But most of the days, the grind is a joy, we do it because we feel like doing it.
Man that was a good read!
I resonated with this a lot
This duality is exhausting. It forces you to lie by omission to people you respect. You can’t tell your team, “I can’t take that ticket because I need to study dynamic programming.” You just have to work faster.
I respect people above and behind me, but I too needed to move in life, support the things I was responsible for, get out of the grave situation I was pushed into. For that, I took some decisions, which I tried for, but nothing came off it, I wasn’t quite sure about the switch and left it when the offer came. Stranded here. I am feeling good here, but if I am not in another company by the end of 2026, something is wrong with me.
Let’s see!
Good lessons
Don’t say: “I tweaked the YouTube watch-time algorithm using X variable.
”
Do say: “I optimized a high-throughput distributed system to prioritize user retention metrics, reducing latency by 150ms through a custom caching layer.”
Man!!
My final conversation with my manager was heart-wrenching. I had prepared a script, anticipating a counter-offer or a guilt trip. Instead, I was met with soft and understanding empathy.
Yep
The interview fatigue is real, and the conversations are hard, but the clarity you gain on your own value is worth the struggle.
Got to go through it once and then there would be no stop for growth.
Grass looks green on the other side always! Damm
Ok! I agree and disagree. You need to have a zen mode in your editor, which just is bare bones, and one for full fledged stuff like LSP, AI-auto-complete, syntax highlighting and what not.
Editor is just a tool, it can’t code on its own(in 2025, still needs prompting), similarly to use it, it needs preferences.
Structured output can create fake confidence
Spicy take and true! Somewhat true
If your task is complex to get things out from image, or understand the context, it might hinder the quality.
But if your task is to simply do something straightforward tool calls, structured output beats everything.
Writing HTML by hand is easier and cheaper then debugging your SSG in 2025
Wow! We are moving at a pace where generating html from LLM is getting easier (not cheaper yet!) than generating it by code, whew! What a time to be in.
Ok, the VRAM and RAM is somethign is quite critical. If you have less RAM and much VRAM, its no use, you need to have sufficient RAM in order to run a good enough model, VRAM wouldn’t handle it.
13 Years of Rust and the birth of Rue
I see this a lot! People creating something that they wanted but didn’t had the mental energy for.
I see it as draining rather. I can’t watch it write code for me, its a dreading feeling to be in for larger durations.
It is pathetic, really. Watching it clog some code and done. Sigh what is left out then, to read code? Who loves it.
Vibe coding is cool and good if you just want the product in your hands, but if you care about the craft then please write it.
Watched
Yes, this is kind of nuts
Buble sort is the lowkey high value thing to learn and know of.
VIsualizing any sorting algorithm really makes you understand the flow better and it clicks almost everytime.
The Fundamentals by Kelsey Hightower
Ahh! How many people will say this, but yet we can’t follow it
Everything boils down to the fundamentals, having the basic thing to understand when something goes wrong. Rather we make it complex in order to be percieved as smart and even oversmart.
Will Turso be the better SQLite? Interview with Glauber Costa
This was a great interview. I love the mentality.
If software built with community in the Linux community can sustain after almost 3 decades, then why can’t a embedded database like SQLite can?
Turso is Linux Community but for SQLite (minus the toxic leadership)
Pekka is a great, humble and smart leader to be leading the Turso, SQLite rewrite in Rust.
I want to contribute to SQLite, but it feels I don’t know enough everytime I touch it, also I started learning SQL for this. I have gone so far and now there is no way I am turning back.
I had one itch for geospatial exploration in SQLite for Mumbai city. This weekend might be the time to do it, maybe next year.
Learnt
Using Tool calling in Google Gemini API
We can pass the tool as Code Execution block and it can essentially work as an agent in the api. This is a superpower to have.
Can imagine people creating workflows and all sorts of things with the api in gemini, and gemini, kid you not is a really good model, like it can just do things. (Not complex things, but simple things, it can do really well)
I played with Grok Imagine
Oh boy! These image and video models are getting really out of hands. I just uploaded my photo and boy came a introduction about me, like a one sentence greeting, but it was scary that it can do that, that quickly.
I underistimated how quickly these models will evolve, we might plateau out eventually, but still the progress made is mind boggling.
Tech News
Well its Christmas and end of year.
God! Dam! This AI labs have learned something from last year. We don’t have groundbreaking models now! 2025 was a rollercoaster.
For more news, follow the Hackernewsletter (#775th edition), and for software development/coding articles, join daily.dev.
But here’s my wrap in 2025
Wrote 50+ articles on SQL on #sqlog
Learnt about SQLite and solved 15 advent of sql #advent-of-sql-2025
All in all around 120 posts on my blog #blog
See you next year!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
(oh before that, there will be a 2025-yearly-review post)
Happy Coding!
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This article comes at the perfect time, I was just thinking about how bonkers 2025 felt with all the AI stuff, so glad I'm not the only one feeling a bit out of depth. I found your point about using AI for 'throw away' code but not for bugs and features super interesting and relatable – what made it so draining specificaly when you tried to use it for the realy core problem-solving parts?