2026 has, right out the gate, started as quite an eventful year. As with all years, I would encourage people to think thrice before making any sweeping changes and continue to evaluate soluations regarding independence, sustainability, and hidden traps regarding data security and privacy.
This year will see a new version of the Synavis framework, which will not only include a larger change to how the framework operates but also include encoding/decoding support and direct integration with data science libraries and a very interesting Jupyter demo, stay tuned!
Teaching
I have (almost) completed my certification by the Carpentries (Official Website)! This included a guided introduction on how learners learn, how courses can be setup and specifically what constitutes a code-along course. Carpentries are a very good starting point for novices to learn about coding and data analysis. There are some caveats: there is quite a few gaps to span if the goal is to establish a local software engineerung community at a research centre. There are a few good examples of consistent efforts improving the local community, such as HiRSE which operates from the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. This, however, goes beyond just providing courses on basics, as practical research work usually is beyond that.
Development
Synavis will see vast improvidements as I have explained before. Particularly in the form of APi and user friendliness. These changes do not come without effort and continuous testing will be necessary to retain the state of the software and permit its wider use.