2025 Year in Review

The 2025 I thought I'd have was very different from the 2025 I ended up having (in all the best ways), but it was still full of wins I'm proud of. From getting to stretch outside of Laravel at work, to speaking at Laracon US, to welcoming a new baby into our home, there was a lot to celebrate.

As I look back, I'm also using this as a launching point for my 2026 yearly theme: the year of creation.

Highlights

• Tried a new web stack at work
• Focused in on storefront flows
• Spoke at Laracon US
• Welcomed our third kiddo
• Set my 2026 theme + goals

Well, 2025, you've been a great year to say the least, even though you didn't really turn out at all how I had planned.

Looking back

I always like to start out my yearly reviews with a look back at what I had planned to accomplish this year, knowing practically nothing about what actually lay ahead. This year, given how off-track 2025 went almost immediately, how about we stick with a "quick glance", rather than any sort of deep introspection.

Here is what I had hoped to accomplish in 2025 and their current status:

• More written & video content - incomplete
• Increase Laravel activity on Twitch - not started
• More speaking engagements - completed
• Encourage & uplift - completed
• Lower mortgage payments - not started

Let's just say this wasn't a raving success, but the things that I did complete from my goal list for 2025 are things that I am really proud of, and I feel good about how they were completed, but we'll get into that later on.

For now, though, let's dig into how 2025 went at a high level!

Successes

Professional

Experienced a different web tech stack

At the start of 2025, I was one of a few of the Aryeo engineers who were moved to other teams throughout our org at Zillow. The plan was to help other teams that were integrating media into their systems by providing guidance and insight into how we handled media at Aryeo to make the integration process quicker and more streamlined.

To my surprise, for the first time in over a decade of doing Laravel development almost exclusively, I was working on a software project that didn't use Laravel! Instead, I was using Kotlin (with Spring Boot) and a little bit of Go to help build features into my new team's services. All in all, I really enjoyed Kotlin and Go, but I definitely missed Laravel. It was nice to try something new and learn about another tech stack in the industry, and, just like every time I've gone and experienced a new programming language or tech stack, I learned things that I can bring back with me to Laravel.

One of the biggest lessons I learned wasn't a new idea for me–types, while they can occasionally feel like they're getting in the way of fast, iterative development, can preemptively solve all sorts of unexpected continuity errors across the codebase. I've pushed for more use of PHP's built-in typing system for a long time, likely because I spent practically my entire degree program writing C/C++ code, and using strictly-typed languages like Kotlin and Go reminded me of just how helpful it can be to know exactly what types you are dealing with and expecting. When I was working in those stacks, I never had to worry if someone would try to pass in a piece of data that didn't match the expectations, and I never had to go digging in the documentation to figure out what types were allowed to be passed into a method in the first place.

Focused in on storefront flows

When I was moved back onto the Aryeo project after a few months, it was to a newly-formed team that was created to specifically handle the storefront side of Aryeo. Without going into the entire backstory of Aryeo and how the application is built (that's for another time, perhaps!), essentially the storefront team builds and maintains the part of the application that enables real estate photographers to sell their products and services to their customers–usually real estate agents.

As I was reflecting back on my move to the storefront team, I realized that it had been a very, very long time since I have had the opportunity to really focus in on one particular part of an application. Prior to Zillow, I have spent my entire career in one form of agency or another, and all of the roles that I had with regards to the projects we took on had me always thinking at a higher level about the product as a whole, on a technical and strategic level. I definitely still enjoy that sort of high-level technical product planning, but it's nice to have an opportunity to get to know one very specific part of the application well. Especially when it's the e-commerce part of the app, where I can finally dredge back up my handful of years working to build e-commerce solutions for clients!

Talked about Git Bisect @ UpstatePHP

One of the greatest joys of living in upstate South Carolina is that we have a vibrant community of folks who come together for the UpstatePHP meetup. We usually meet every other month or so (while taking a break around the holidays), and every time we do, I get the chance to hang out with other PHP developers in the area. Just like with conferences, it's incredibly refreshing to just spend a few hours in-person with all the folks I interact with online on a daily or weekly basis.

This year, I gave what, to me, is probably one of the best lightning talks I've ever given: "Hunting Bugs with Git Bisect". Git is a fascinating piece of technology, and it serves as the backbone for a vast majority of software projects. But, even though most of us developers use Git on a daily basis, there are a handful of powerful pieces of Git that most folks have never looked into. In this talk, I shared about the wonders and joys of git bisect, which, if you've never heard of it, trust me when I say that it's one of the best tools you can use to figure out the source of bugs and regressions in your codebase, no matter how far back they run.

I had a great time giving this one, and I have to give a massive shout-out and thank you to Bogdan Kharchenko for trusting me to come up with something interesting for our meetup!

Spoke @ Laracon US

Since I started writing Laravel applications back around Laravel 4.2, I have always admired the people who can get up on stage at a Laracon event and share useful information that is immediately applicable to the work I was doing at the time. So many incredible talks have stood out to me over the years from these events. "Cruddy by Design" by Adam Wathan, "State Machines" by Jake Bennett, and "Lessons from the Framework" by Luke Downing are three that stand out immediately to me as ones that have shaped me as a developer. Because of that, it has been a bucket-list item of mine to find something worth sharing with folks and share it at a Laracon.

This year, right as the CFP for Laracon US was released, I had an idea. With the (at the time) gentle ramp-up of AI agents being able to do work for us, and with my experience working at agencies where, in the span of just a few hours, I would be pulled in a million different directions, I thought that sharing my solution may be worthwhile. And thus, "Turbocharging your Laravel Development Workflow with the Terminal" was born.

I have been a lover of the terminal and all its tools for years now, ever since I was given a wildly underpowered laptop that would crash when I opened PhpStorm (no shade on the JetBrains folks–this was absolutely a hardware issue) and had to learn to adapt. One of the tools that I am most keen on is tmux–a terminal multiplexer that helps me organize, group, and maintain my place in my work when I'm jumping around from idea to idea.

Nevertheless, the Laracon organizers seemed to like my idea, and I was accepted as a speaker. To say that I was excited would be a VAST understatement–my wife still talks about how happy I was.

I need to write something longer and more in-depth about my experience as a Laracon speaker, but to keep it short, it was an amazing time. I met a bunch of phenomenal people, was very supported by the Laravel team (and other Laracon-adjacent staff), and, most importantly, got to share something I was passionate about on the stage in front of a room full of people I have known for ages online, but got to see in person again this year.

Laid some foundations for DevRel work @ Filament

2025 was a big year for Filament as well. We released our much-anticipated v4, which was by far our most impactful release yet. Dan Harrin and the team put in tireless hours to get Filament across the line for the launch, and by and large, it has been met with incredible reception.

Throughout the year, I worked closely with Dan to lay the foundations for DevRel work that will be bearing fruit in 2026. I can't say much more about it now, but, at the time of writing, you won't have to wait much longer to see how things have grown behind the scenes.

Dan and I also started our Filament podcast, Bright Ideas! We're definitely still getting into the swing of things, but now that we've both finished our massive life events (at least for now), we're poised and ready to go hard on the podcast in 2026.

I also managed to, in between everything else, get a few Filament articles written about some of our team members and our new releases. I can't in good faith mention our content without giving a huge shout-out to Eric Barnes of Laravel News for helping us push this content out to a wider audience.

Personal

New baby in the house

In the fall of 2025, we welcomed our third kiddo into the family. She's a happy, healthy, and very loved addition, and we're thrilled that everything went as well as it did. Our other two kids adore her (our oldest loves to take care of her, which is both adorable and terrifying all at the same time), and the dog is...whelmed.

As part of welcoming our little bean into the family, I was granted three months of parental leave by Zillow, which was unbelievable, to say the least. In those three months, I was effectively solo-parenting the older two kids while my wife took care of the baby, and it was some of the best time I've spent as a parent so far. Having the time and energy to focus 100% on my kids was something I didn't know I missed until I had it, and I'm really hoping for a day again soon where I can make that happen again.

Back to streaming

After taking a bit of a break from streaming to get my feet under me at Zillow, I've slowly started getting back into the streaming game. It's interesting this time around, with the dramatic rise of AI coding assistants, to try and figure out a balance between writing my own code and spinning my wheels for hours and just caving in and asking an AI for help. Admittedly, neither is incredibly fun for the viewer, but I still tend to lean more towards watching AI generate code being the least enjoyable of the two.

So far on stream, we've focused pretty heavily on building our own custom developer-focused Linux install. Once that is in a good enough place, I have a handful of other side projects that I've been itching to do but have wanted to save for stream, so prepare for a deluge of weird, quirky, and "just crazy enough it might work" projects to come!

As always, I want to give a massive thank-you to everyone who comes out and supports the stream. It's an absolute blast getting to talk with y'all in chat and share the experience of building things with you all.

Near Misses

Lack of video content

While I did in fact write more and (especially) speak more, I didn't deliver as I had hoped on my video content. Sadly, a lot came up in 2025 that I hadn't planned for, so the new content type on the block took a back seat to all the other things I had to do this past year.

Lower mortgage payments

This one was a little bit out of my hands, but my mortgage payment is effectively the same this year as it was last year, so no real progress on this one. I remain hopeful, though, that we'll get to a point where I can get these payments a little more in check and have more opportunity to save overall!

Goals for 2026

The year of creation

Every year I set out a yearly theme. This is in large part inspired by the Cortex podcast where, every year, the hosts come up with an annual theme.

This year, my annual theme is the "year of creation".

I've done a lot of work over the past couple of years laying the foundation for me to be able to create things quickly and easily, whether it's products or services or content on the web. Now, in 2026, I am ready to act on all of this prior work.

Professional

Become a subject-area expert at Zillow

Since moving on to the storefront team, I've spent a decent amount of time working with e-commerce and storefronts in general. This year, I want to lock in and become a subject area expert on storefronts and checkout flows as a whole. I want to understand, on a fundamental, technical level, how they work and how best to build them, specifically within the Laravel ecosystem.

Finish setting up my home office/studio

For those of you who have popped into my Twitch stream since early January of 2026, you may have noticed that I am no longer in the same space I was previously. The TL;DR here is that, because of the new member of the family, we've had to move all of our rooms around in the house. As a result, I'm in a new office, but, because of its relative isolation from the rest of the house, I have some more free rein to set up a more robust, easy-to-use recording setup.

In 2026, one of my primary goals is to get this setup finished. If I want to create more content in 2026 (see below), I need to reduce the barrier to entry. Ideally, if I can just sit down and work without having to set anything up, I am much more likely to actually do that work.

I'm already pretty close on this one, with just a few pieces here and there to get situated before the backdrop is ready to reveal!

Create more content – specifically video

In 2026, I want to continue my goal of creating more content specifically around Laravel, Linux, the terminal, and other technical topics. However, this year I want to put a heavy emphasis on video content. I'm already doing a bit of writing and a bit of podcasting, and I'd like to increase those in 2026 as well, but I really want to get video content off the ground this year.

This year, we're in an interesting place for content as a whole, but specifically video content. For a long time, I pictured myself creating tutorials and lessons about technical topics. However, with the rise of AI, people are looking less and less for tutorials, and more and more for interesting, story-driven content. I'm excited for this new era of content creation on the web, and I'm really excited to see where my style fits in with all of that.

Create something valuable

I've always been very interested in creating a SaaS and building something that is genuinely helpful to people. This year, I've moved slightly away from the goal of just wanting to build a SaaS. Instead, I want to create something that is valuable for people. I want to build something that adds value to their lives, makes their lives easier, better, more efficient, etc.

Creating something that other people consider valuable would be a huge win in 2026.

Personal

Create a custom Linux install for developers

I'm a Linux fan, that's no secret, and this year I want to finally build something reproducible and usable by others involving Linux. I have a lot of hopes and dreams of software to build for Linux, but it all starts with a solid foundation: I want to build a custom, developer-focused Linux install that I can easily set up on any machine.

Create a digital space for my analog hobbies

Outside of the technical work that I do, I am very, very into pens, paper, and stationery of all sorts. In comparison to my digital work, though, I don't have a real space where I can share the things I've learned about the wonders (and real benefits) of pen and paper. So this year, I have a little side quest that I want to go on which involves creating a space for me to share more about my love of analog things.

Collect two more Pilot Iroshizuku inks

I have long been a fan of the Pilot Iroshizuku line of inks, and over time, I have slowly started collecting them. I have two full bottles of the ink and three mini-bottles currently, and I'd like to collect two more by the time the year ends.

Thank-Yous

As always, when reflecting back on the year, I want to make sure that I say thank-you to a few of the folks who have made this year something special.

• Bogdan Kharchenko - for giving me the opportunity to share about git bisect at UpstatePHP
• The Laracon Team - for giving me the opportunity to share my love of the terminal at Laracon US
• Eric Barnes - for helping us get the word about Filament out to the Laravel community at large
• Twitch chat - for keeping me sane as we dive into the depths of Linux

And finally, I want to dedicate my 2025 to my family, especially my wife and our newest member. You all really made this year special and something to remember, and everything I do is because of you.

Here's to 2025, and on to a bigger and better 2026!