Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 132: Looking Ahead to 2023 and Beyond

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 132: Looking Ahead to 2023 and Beyond

In the previous post, I showed a brief look back on what 2022 was like for me as an Automationeer. This time, however, I will be looking forward to 2023 and what it will bring to the Automation community. Specifically, I will describe some of my predictions for the New Year. The most important of them are as follows:

• Even more content, features, mods, and bugfixes: This is especially important, especially since 2022 saw the addition of a lot more content and features (including mods) than expected, in some cases replacing obsolete equivalents, some of which dated back to the Kee era of Automation. Moreover, 4.27 had a lot of bugs when it first entered open beta just before the start of 2022, but had become much more stable by year's end. That said, there is still room for improvement (in terms of content and stability, and I expect the Automation community to once again (over-)deliver in this regard.
• Increased standards for challenge hosting: Given that 2022 saw some of the most well-regarded Automation forum challenges (along with other challenges on the official Discord servers), it should come as no surprise that I would expect the challenges scheduled for launch 2023 will raise the bar even further. By now I've learned many lessons about hosting and joining challenges, but there is still scope for me to improve my skills, whether as a host or as an entrant, especially when developing a car intended for entry in a forum or Discord challenge (not just in terms of engineering, but also for interior and exterior design).

Fingers crossed my predictions for 2023 are correct. I hereby wish it and everyone who contributes to it a Happy New Year!