I also established a sleep schedule with consistent going to bed time at or before 10pm and waking up before 7am; this did wonders for my productivity. I am still affected by anxiety and looking for ways to improve my focus in 2026. I am hoping that it will be my most prolific year.

I could not have done this all without several of my close friends and collaborators, to whom I owe a big thank you.

Got an internship

Rejected a lowpay job offer

Quit the 9 – 5

Built my own SaaS in 15 days as a self-taught dev

Got 250+ users on my app

Made my first sales before even consuming my 1-month stipend savings

Crossed $100+ in December revenue

Learned coding + marketing

Didn’t skip the gym

  Deadlift PR: 400 lbs @ 130 lbs BW

 Betting on myself in 2026

 Happy New Year

- Got 300+ stars on GitHub for my free, open-source project EasyInvoicePDF https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf

- Received a lot of great and useful feedback about my project on social media

- Moved to a new apartment - better and bigger

- Lost 5+ kg and exercised more than last year

- Visited Hungary, Austria, and Italy for the first time - Hungary and Italy exceeded expectations

- My project was featured in a large startup-related Telegram channel (50k+ subscribers)

Happy New Year

2025: My first full year of running my own business, and things really went well. Also had my second child, a beautiful daughter who is currently not sleeping well at night. I am so tired. I lost my dog suddenly - he was my first dog and my companion for nine years. I love that guy so much.

I spent a lot of time writing and sharing technical content, mostly about modern CSS. I didn’t expect much from it at first, but it slowly compounded.

Over the past year:

- On LinkedIn[0], my posts reached ~10M impressions and ~15k people decided to follow along.

- 1,800+ joined my newsletter.

- My blog[1] went from ~1–2 Google clicks/day to ~40/day.

- I published a book[2] about building UI with less JavaScript (185 copies sold so far).

What surprised me most wasn’t the numbers, but how much people care about clear, practical explanations and simple tools.

May 2026 be even better :)

[0]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theosoti/ [1]: https://theosoti.com/ [2]: https://theosoti.com/you-dont-need-js/

Still some five hours to go here in Norway, but it has been dark outside for a few hours already.

Dinner is just about ready, friends pouring in the doors as we speak and as for fireworks, seeing as we live quite rurally, a couple of kilos of dynamite is at the ready.

Professionally, 2025 has been kind to me. Got to visit Japan and Libya for the first time and am going back to Japan next week for a scientific cruise down to the Mariana trench or thereabouts; when back, I will start working on the next generation control system for our products, having spent the past few months trying to learn enough about control system architecture to hopefully avoid the most obvious pitfalls.

Oh, and I have learned from painful experience a few of the things NOT to do evaluating the current design...

The perfect square year is now over...next one is 2116. Silly thing to note, but I am thankful for being able to live in such a year. Additionally, 2025 was quite transformative to my life. Where I am today, in terms of career and personal connections, I wouldn't have expected to be here even two years ago.

Happy new year, this community has given me a lot and I’m grateful for you all.

It affected me so deeply and of course I didn't understand why, so I went head first into self-discovery to try and understand it. Not sure I 100% have the answer yet but well on the way.

On the bright side, I managed to keep the weight off I had spent 4 years losing (35 kg!) and of course work is as wonderful as ever for me. So all that was good.

Happy new year all - may 2026 be better year for everyone.

I’m going into 2026 about 100 pounds down since last new years. I’m excited to see what the future holds when I’m in the best physical shape of my life. GLP-1 inhibitors are a modern miracle (admittedly to solve a modern problem). I realize now I wasn’t active because I was fat, not vice versa. I rode hundreds of miles on my bike this year, towing my wheelchair using daughter along for the ride in a bike trailer. If you’re in a situation where you feel losing weight is hopeless, I strongly encourage you to consider these medications. It could change your life for the better, in strange ways you might not expect. I also paid off all my credit cards (and cancelled them) this year, and I swear it was only possible because losing weight has allowed me to be a better and more cognizant long term planner.

Here’s to a great year of self improvement and refinement. Happy new years everyone!

You guys are all truly wonderful, otherwise you wouldn't be here.

As from someone who started my own company last year and decided to dive into a dozen of projects, reached new milestones and a lot of success, but suffered from severe burnout and depression:

Remember - you can do anything, but not everything. Choose what to focus on and what makes you happy and go for it. Happy 2026!

Vibe coding helped me build several small games for my daughter and unlocked her interest in programming.

Wishing everyone a wonderful 2026 - it's going to be a great year!

2025 was bad in best way and good in worst way... Our government is increasingly autocratic in last decade to almost straight dictatorship but last year was year of protests that started cornering government. That led to increased oppression. It's worse for both sides but it's going in good direction albeit slowly. Spent 2025 in dozens of protests, rode bicycle across the country with students to raise awareness, was surrounded with young, great and positive people. Breathed tear gas and got beaten by police. But never felt more alive.

2026: I hope this government is done and gone in this year. Freedom is enough to get in a year.

started committing to healthier habits like going to the gym and jogging.

got some programming work experience under my belt.

started to cook for myself.

learned how to use a multimeter and fixed my house heating.

went to GDC and explored san francisco.

also finishing advent of code is always a highlight in my book :)

I was about to check out the GitHub activity summary like last year, but then I realized that a lot of things weren't actually pushed to GitHub this year. So I used Vibe-coded to take a look:

https://github.com/chaosprint/hindsight

I started this year with coding and finished it with coding. In between, I was preparing for and caring for my newborn.

Hope I can release something interesting in 2026.

This year let’s all act kindly towards others and learn and discuss things in civil tones. In a world where Reddit is the norm, make Hacker News a beacon of hope.

This year I got my PhD (focused in robotics) and walked the camino del norte (a pilgrimage in Spain). I am trying to transition from academia to industry without success (for now) and several threads here on HN remind me I am not alone in this.

Wish you the best people!

This year turned out to be bad due to burnout, hoping 2026 will be better for everyone!

We started traveling a lot post Covid and after all of the stars aligned for us. But this is the first year that we have done any international travel besides flights Mexico (cruises don’t count).

We went to Costa Rica (Manual Antonio), London with a day trip to France and Canada (landed in Buffalo NY).

We are going to see if Costa Rica is a good Plan B when we retire on paper (I am 51) it looks good. We are staying for a month next year. I work remotely.

As far as side projects? I plan to continue my 30 year next year streak of never doing anything software development outside of work. Between continuing to learn Spanish, exercise, and spending time with family and friends, I’ve got enough on my plate.

2025

  - Visited/lived in: Austria, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, UAE
  - Started (too many) side-projects
  - Managed to grow a number of projects / startups
  - Almost back to PRs: deadlift 155k, squat 90k, bench 80k

  - Focus on getting things done / releasing stuff rather than starting / release an app (iOS/Android)
  - Triple revenue
  - Visit 12 countries I haven't visited before (Morocco, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Malta, Cyprus, Brazil, Peru, Chile)
  - Deadlift 200k, squat 120k, bench 100k; lose 10k BW
  - Learn formatting on HN :)

In 2025 I:

- read 52 books with a total of 17924 pages

- hiked 41 times with a total of 533.1 kilometres

- wrote 225 blog posts --> https://peterspath.net

- moved 2781.2 kilometres by walking, hiking, biking, swimming, running, etc.

Here's to another year of complaining about AI, rewriting things in Rust/Zig, and warning about dangers of social media!

Switched to a Mac centric workflow for my personal projects and built many this year thanks to AI coding tools. Among them are Praval (pravalagents.com), Vajra Search (https://github.com/aiexplorations/vajra_bm25) and Todacomm (https://github.com/aiexplorations/todacomm). Open sourced Praval, Vajra Search, Deep Lyapunov and Todacomm on PyPI. Followed a lot of AI models and their development, apps and read a bunch of papers - and at work, built a whole bunch of them around agents with my team. Got rejected from a big tech job after 8 solid interview rounds. But that was a reminder that I have to be a bit more independent and seek professional validation less - something I have known for years but which I haven't been able to execute on. In any case I have seen my work as something that pays the bills and treat it transactionally, while using spare time for things I love learning about - software tech, AI, mathematics, aviation/aerospace engineering, Vedanta, to name a few.

Big challenges this year - personal health and well being. Took exercise more seriously. For a time I did morning runs, especially in the summer and autumn, but as winter has come, have become more sedentary. Diagnosed with severe B12 and D vitamin deficiencies but went on to get treated and get better.

Rejuvenated friendships with buddies I have known since college (20 years ago for me). Found it hard to relate to some of them but made some thick friends as a consequence and trying to build a more independent professional existence as a consequence. The habit of prayer and meditation I had last year (2024) waned a bit this year. I think there's a mental/spiritual center I need to foster there, and perhaps 2026 will be the time for it.

More here: https://www.rajeshrs.in/blog/ai-explorations/2025-12-27-year...

In 2025, I have learned Rust by creating a project in it (a web server), and learned a lot about web servers and reverse proxies along the way. I have seriously leveled up as a developer.

I have also created what's now the most popular project I have ever created.

I think in 2026, I'll go even further!

- Built a website for playing Riichi Mahjong https://online-riichi.com

I write this from St Thomas’ hospital in London, a few hundred meters from Big Ben, the London Eye and the centre of London’s iconic fireworks, which we watched a few hours ago.

My wife and I are here for the birth of our baby daughter, which will complete our family after being lucky enough to be blessed with two beautiful sons (aged 3 and 5).

My god the NHS in the UK is a miracle. We’ve had two difficult births previously, in Cambridge Addenbrooke’s hospital. We’ve always tried our best to have babies at the best local hospital (within 30 miles or so) with the best staff in the event something goes wrong. We’re at St Thomas’ after recently moving house.

After the two difficult previous births we gathered as much data as we could for this one, using a Data Subject Access Request on my wife and each baby to get huge volumes of data. We analysed this data, got insight from AI, spoke to experts and built our birth plan for our daughter around the data. Since our two previous difficult births were overdue, it was agreed my wife would be induced on the due date, if Labour hadn’t come along naturally.

That due date was yesterday, we spent the previous night in a top London hotel across the road from the hospital enjoying some time just the two of us, going out for dinner and some walks around London to get the oxytocin flowing.

We arrived at the hospital yesterday afternoon ready for induction, and heard the worst news imaginable - the baby had no heartbeat. Scans confirmed we had lost our daughter, most likely in the hours previous.

In the intervening 36-hour gauntlet, my wife has laboured, suffered and successfully given birth to our beautiful daughter’s perfect but lifeless body. My god, women are strong.

We were able to spend precious time together and dress our daughter. The services at UK hospitals for this type of tragedy are truly a wonder to behold. The nurses are some of the kindest and most dedicated people I have had the pleasure to meet.

Before all this, we joked that it would be my wife’s style to give birth to the baby during NYE overlooking the fireworks in a blaze of drama, with everything perfect and finished in time for a glass for champagne.

Instead, after we had created the memories we wanted to (around 23:30 UK time) the nurses invited us to a private darkened hospital room overlooking the London Eye. I carried our daughter to the room and brought my wife separately a few moments later. We watched the fireworks together, just the three of us, and comforted each other.

I know this is a sad story, but its purpose is not to be sad.

My wife is the eldest of three daughters, who were all expecting daughters within six weeks of each other in reverse order. The youngest went first with her first baby. The second sister went second with her second. And the eldest (my wife) went third with her third. Thankfully, the other two baby girls arrived safely and happily around their due date.

The purpose of this story is to raise the question that I can’t get away from in this last 24 hours – is [fate / the universe / the simulation / sod’s law] just forced to create perfect tragedies like this? Where the events would otherwise be so perfect as to be unbelievable, and so you are put back in your place?

It certainly feels like that at the moment.

My wife and I are strong and will get through it, thanks in no small part to the way the fantastic NHS has supported us on this harrowing journey. We will again gather as much data as possible and based on that, decide whether to rebuild our will and faith to try again. Either way, our family will be complete.

I’ve been comforted somewhat thinking of the scene in Only Fools and Horses where Del describes a similar situation to his bereaved brother Rodney as:

“A dropped stitch in life’s tapestry”

I have come to this site daily for ten years to be inspired and intrigued. So, thanks HN.

[I’ve sent this from a newly registered account because it’s too much for me to share publicly, or even discuss with family and friends at the moment, but somehow helpful for me to write words for strangers to read. I’ll email dang my other account to show I’m not some tragedy LLM bot!]

2025 wrapped: https://duti.dev/blog/2025/2025-in-a-nutshell/

Putting this down as my 2026 goal: At least one commit a day. Stop putting things off.

Thanks so much, HN, for this year.

H_N_Y from the Alps!

2025: - set up new facility for mfg of CVD diamond tech products - replaced awful old carpets at home with bamboo wood floors - lost 42 lbs (thanks, tirzepatide) - secured $ for a new CVD diamond system, build starts in January - road trip to see friends & family, some for first time in a decade

Wishing happiness, love, accomplishment and adventure to all!

May 2026 be a much, much better year than this one!

My wrap includes getting married, travelling to Italy, Slovenia and Germany, finally making a few sales of the app I'm working on, and dealing with residence permit. In 2026 I will continue working on my apps and hopefully make more sales, I hope to do some freelancing, fish more with dad and travel a bit.

There will be a new FIFA World Cup champion unless Argentina does the unthinkable.

No doubt regime change somewhere. Probably a massive cyber event that cripples critical infra. A magnitude 8+ earthquake in a populated area?

Hoping to see the start of the AI-powered technological singularity in 2026. The end of humanity is nigh and I can't wait to be melded to the machine. This life was kind of boring anyway.

For all of our sake I hope it will be better than 2025

2025 I'm proud of my 2025. I lost weight with a slow pace. I launched one of my projects and built on top of it and I'm currently at 99 items sold. Hopefull it will get to 100 by end of the year. Not gonna lie, bad stuff happened too, but I'm not gonna focus on those.

2026 If everything goes as planned, I'm hoping to see my my mother and brother after 4 years. I want live a bit healthier, and I want to grow the same side project. I really hope I scroll less shitty content.

This is the community I feel safe the most in and really helps me keep going everyday.

This year I sold my company, for a while I thought I will die with it. This year has been brutal in some ways, tackling lots of daemons and getting through them.

Wishing everyone a great new year celebrations with friends and family.

Love you HN.

It was difficult, but overall great year. Looking forward what 2026 will bring.

Finally got my first GitHub repo to 100 stars (yesterday!) so that is something I'm really dang proud of. This year, I do have my Cambridge A Level Examinations coming up, hopefully I don't mess it up as bad as I did for my O Level Exams...

https://app.ironcalc.com/?model=OIDKt-KaOnt-52CaU

          _\/
  <(-_-)>

Hope 2026 I can finish my todo list

- Got at least JLPT N5

- Work abroad

- Start working out again

Just kidding. AU!

I was laid off back in 2023 from my development job.

I'm hoping to be able to get back to work in the New Year after taking some time off.

Wish me luck!