Soo... 2025 is basically over. How'd it go for you?
Here are two of my own DEV-centric highlights that come to mind:
- I'm proud to share we launched 30 DEV Challenges this past year. I'm hoping to bring that number up to 50+ in 2026 so that DEV becomes more and more of a hackathon destination for developers everywhere.
- I've also been very happy to see more people sharing their weekly wins in my #weeklyretro post. It's very fun seeing what everyone has been up to!
#weeklyretro
We're not doing a New Year Writing Challenge this year (we have something else in store to be announced on Jan 1!) so I wanted to start a discussion for anyone who'd like to take a moment to reflect on the last twelve months!
And if you don't have anything in particular to share, perhaps you'd like to try @dev_kiran's community app - DEV Wrapped - to see your personalized year-in-review DEV activity:
Here's mine:
It's always so cool when the community builds things around DEV!
Finally, I'd be remiss not to plug our final challenge of the year:
This is an opportunity to pitch any project you're proud of! It could be a dev tool, full blown app, previous challenge submission, or anything in between! The new video cover image feature works like a charm and will really make your submission pop.
Okay that's it from me! Tell me how 2025 was for you!
Top comments (83)
2025 has been quite a ride on DEV! π This screenshot describes it all π a year full of joy, learning, and connections in this amazing communityβ¦ π
can you tell mire about this screenshort , means which site is this ?
dev-wrapped.com/
Thank you
Welcome ππ»
A lot of necessary evolution β exhilarating at times and overwhelming at others.
2025 was, for me, the year I truly discovered AI.
Not in an abstract way, but as a real tool β for document analysis, report generation, conceptualizing ideas, and actually building applications.
It was also the year I discovered this platform, dev.to, where I genuinely feel at home. I published around twenty articles here and, more importantly, had meaningful exchanges with people who brought me a lot. Iβm thinking of you, Jess, of course, but also authors like Cesar, Sylwia, or Aaron Rose, to name just a few.
Iβm really looking forward to the challenge announced for January 1st, 2026 β which might well be the year I take a more active part in one of these challengesβ¦ this one or another π
I feel the same way - maybe itβs finally time for me to get involved in some of these challenges π
Thanks for the mention, Pascal. "I want to thank the Academy..." :P I really enjoyed your post about Agile. A good read!
Cheers Pascal. Happy New Year! β¨β€οΈ
Aw, thanks so much for sharing! @-mentioning @canro91 and @aaron_rose_0787cc8b4775a0 to make sure they see this π
Looking forward for the 1st of Jan announcement!!
And I think it is fair to share that three of the most cool additions to my 2025 edition were:
I started using DEV Community about a year ago. I kept learning new IT skills and sharing them with the DEV Community. I wouldnβt have been able to keep learning without the DEV Community, so thank you very much for such a great developer community!π
2025 taught me that teaching compounds faster than building.
I spent Nov-Dec documenting my work with MCP servers, Cloudflare Workers AI, and production RAG systems.
Result: 1,500+ readers on one article, GitHub forks and developers I've never met using my code in production.
The craziest part? The more I shared, the better my own code became. Writing forces clarity.
2026: Keep the feedback loop going. Build β Document β
Share β Learn β Repeat.
(PS: Dropping something today about companies accidentally
violating HIPAA with ChatGPT. Found 50+ cases on Upwork
alone...)
For me quite unexpectedly it became a year of open source. I was added to Hanami/dry-rb/ROM maintainers team and later this year got a job as Elixir OSS tooling developer.
It was objectively a terrible year for me. Fortunately, toward the end I rediscovered myself through writing and creativity - including here on dev.to π I think I can finally look to 2026 with hope π
Almost the same story π« .I discovered my passion for treks , climbing and solo travel in the second half of the year..
Since last year, writing have become my therapy too. Really enjoyed your posts about jQuery outliving modern tools :)
Thank you so much, Cesar π I was just reading your comment earlier - and Iβm really sorry for your loss. I also lost someone close recently. Writing has become a kind of therapy for me too, helping to process things and keep moving forward. And if someone actually wants to read it on top of that, thatβs just wonderful π
Jess, no new year challenge? π± I developed the habit of writing a "year in review" every year, so I'm doing it in the next few days anyway.
This was a year of ups and downs:
A year of mix feelings.
Did many things for the first time. A few of them:
I didn't achieve anything great in any of these, but I feel satisfied from what I experienced and learned. Peace <3
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