2025 Quick Recap

It's 1:33 PM, the year is about to end and my 2-year-old is sleeping, so I won't have much time to reflect on everything that happened in 2025, but here's a quick recap.

I didn't realize it until now, but I travelled quite a bit this year. We went on family vacations to Martinique in February, and Portugal + Morocco in late August. It was great to meet a cousin who's living in Portugal and that I hadn't seen in maybe more than ten years. I've also gone to Denver for my first Laracon US. Below is a map showing the places I've been to.

I hadn't been to a developer conference before, and this year I've been to two. First was Confoo 2025 here in Montréal. It was a lucky coincidence attending. I brought a friend to a PHP meetup at the end of 2024 and he won a raffle ticket, which we then shared. The keynote "Technology as Fashion" was a fun look into the cycles programming and software development go through since its inception.

Then, during summer, Laracon US in Denver. It had been a while since I wanted to go to a Laracon, and the experience could not have been better. I got to play golf for the first time and be caddy buddies with Jim from the Laravel team. All the talks were really well done, MC'd by none other than Aaron Francis, with a grand finale panel discussion featuring Taylor Otwell, Adam Wathan, Evan You and Jeffrey Way.

I got to meet Ben Holmen, Chris Morrell, Joe T. and a few other people I had already connected with online, but also got to know amazing people from the community and the Laravel staff, with a special mention to Ben Carr whom I met at the Mostly Technical Laracon Pre-Party and was a great hang, Jeremy and Phillip from the Nightwatch team who were so kind to a newcomer, and bumping into Mathias Grimm, who, to my great surprise, comes from a town no more than 100 km from where I was born in Southern Brazil.

I also had a side quest: getting an elephant poster signed by the team, and giving away some of my silly comics during the conference. It surprised me to hear that Matt Stauffer had already seen it around the internet and how he used to read Asterix when he was a kid. I hope a few people got a laugh out of it.

If all stars align, I may try and go to Laravel Live Japan next year, but it's still too early to know for sure.

I saw my kid go from barely walking and speaking to running around and making sentences. Things move so fast. He also changed daycare and he seems to be loving it. It's really rewarding seeing him laugh and enjoy himself. It's not an easy task being a parent, but it's a fun age. He's much more active and autonomous now. Don't grow too fast!

I won't go into much detail but I had a few setbacks later in the year that made me question if I was worth it or good enough, imposter syndrome kicking in, a lot of frustration. It made me introspect and learn about myself a bit more. I hope I can overcome some obstacles in the new year and shake those feelings off.

As for a few things I had set out to do in 2025, here's what happened.

Training for and running a half marathon was one of my biggest focuses. I started running in January despite our tough winters, sustaining the habit up until after Laracon and our trip to Portugal, when things fell off a little bit. I was able to get to the finish line, despite not keeping the best pace I intended to. All in all, I ran two 10Ks and the 21K, and will continue the trend in 2026.

I ended up not investing a lot of time to learn Elixir, even though I played with it a bit and reminisced about the lessons I had in university about the functional paradigm using Haskell. It's something I still want to explore but I guess I lack a concrete project or goal for it to make sense. Time is also limited, so we'll see.

The secret project I had hinted at ended up only making it to the proof of concept level. There's potential there but my attention went into running and I didn't pursue it past that.

That said, brainradio.fm, another proof of concept I had put together at the end of 2024, has finally seen the light of day. It took a year but, with Gemini 3 and Opus 4.5 in my corner, I was able to quickly iterate and ship something I think could be fun. I don't know about you but I often get a song stuck in my head, and can go days waking up to that song. I will keep track of them using brainradio.fm.

Well, the kid has woken up, so time to go.

Happy New Year!