2025 was a quiet but solid year: shipping projects, learning a lot, mentoring, experimenting with new tech, reconnecting with people, and enjoying building again.
Well, 2025 was one of those years that didn’t feel dramatic while living it, but surprisingly feels so good for myself. A lot of shipping. A lot of learning. A reasonable amount of confusion. And, somehow, a lot of joy. Sort of.
Careers
Shipping Things
So far I wrapped up three projects this year at Zero One Group, one long-running project that politely refused to die, and the other two that started and somehow shipped to prod server.
One of the new projects had me working full-stack, and for the first time in my life, I actively did not recommend NextJS for a new full-stack setup at my office. Idk, I just feel betrayed by NextJS (you should be careful on social media @rauchg). Beside of that the problem with NextJS is “too much” magic and abstraction that sometimes could be makes the development itself feels so wrong. Anyway, NextJS development server still sucks (I mean, really sucks).
Learning so much valuable thing from the projects this year and honestly I really proud of myself.
Small Teams and Clear Scope is Surprisingly Fun
After a long time of feeling neutral about work, I actually had fun building (again).
A big part of that was the setup. The team was tiny just two engineers and the scope was very clear. We weren’t inventing everything from scratch either; the project reused existing flows, design decisions, and mental models from another product. That meant fewer debates, fewer surprises, and more time actually building things. No unnecessary abstractions, shiny tech stack and just work that moved forward at a steady, predictable pace. Sometimes is so good to bring boring tech stack to project so I can avoid Nadiem Makarim yell at me “Just hyper experiment the hell out of everything you do”.
Mentoring
This year I started learning how to mentor and honestly it’s way more fun than I expected. I expected to mostly explain things but, instead, I got challenged by questions that forced me to re-evaluate assumptions I’d been carrying for years. Turns out mentoring is just learning, but with responsibility.
Freelancing
I went back into freelancing after a long break.
Not so much but it’s feel so good to back into market and that’s enough for now.
Self Development
New Languages, Same Curiosity
I started learning Golang and Elixir.
- Go feels like a very honest and straightforward language.
- Elixir feels like cheating, in a good way. But still, I haven’t found a real-world problem where Elixir is absolutely necessary, but learning it made me think differently about programming and that was worth it.
I also contributed a bit to open source, mostly by helping people unblock issues. Small things, but real impact.
AI Experiments
I went deeper into AI-related experiments, especially simple RAG setups.
TypeScript was reasonable.
Go was educational in the way only pain can be (lol). But still, glad I tried both and of course will do more next year.
First Time “Speaking”
I gave my first sharing session this year.
There were broken slides, (huge) visible nervousness and there was a moment where I questioned all my life choices.
And yet it went well. Would do it again (maybe). With better preparations.
Touching Grass, Eventually
Outside of work and learning, I tried to fix some human things.
This year I spent more effort:
- meeting people with similar interests
- talking face-to-face instead of typing
- reducing screen time
- trying to read books consistently (still very hard, still trying)
I worked on having better relationships with people in general.
Finally I'm dating again after more than two years.
I paid attention to how I talk and react, because apparently tone matters (who knew).
I also tried to exercise more, mostly because my lower back started reminding me that sitting all day has consequences.
Also, this year was my last normal year of college. Next year is thesis-only mode.
Also, writing a group thesis in an online program feels deeply cursed but I’ll survive (I hope).
Looking Ahead to 2026
For 2026, I’m hoping for:
- fewer tabs open (in browsers and in my head)
- deeper focus, fewer “rushed” decisions
- more teaching and mentoring
- healthier routines that actually stick
- finishing my thesis without losing my sanity
- continuing to build things that feel worth building
- and much more…
Closing Thoughts
2025 was a perfect year for me.
Not because everything went right but because I learned a lot, met good people, built meaningful things, and let myself enjoy the process again.
Happy new year. Here’s to building better things, asking better questions, and staying curious in 2026.