An end-of-year reflection on 13 conference talks, book recommendations, struggles with AI noise, unfinished projects, personal growth, and a quick look at the exciting new CSS corner-shape property.
It’s that time, “the most wonderful time of the year”, the time that we look back at the things we accomplished. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; in fact, I think this year was once again an emotional rollercoaster, a year with ultimate highs, climbing on stages I never thought I would be on, but also some lows, struggles, unfinished projects, and re-invention.
Conferencing
For this end-of-year post, I’d like to keep things brief. Those who follow me around know that I’ve spoken at 13 conferences this year. I am grateful that my company allowed me to attend. Some were on weekends, some were during my holidays, but it’s been a real pleasure speaking at so many of them and connecting with so many developers. I still haven’t figured out what exactly, but it looks like I’m doing something right. From PHP and JS conferences, to a dedicated CSS day, Frontend scoped conferences, and DevFest for big and smaller communities. It’s been an honor.
Not sure if we can call it a conference (I did count it for the 13), but I am also grateful for being a panelist on the stage of Google I/O Connect with Bram.us and Rachel Andrew. It’s not every day you get to sit next to someone and talk about the web who actually taught you to work with Dreamweaver back in 2003 (yes, I read that book).
Speaking of books….
Reading
What I love about traveling is that I get to read a bit more books from time to time. I have a few recommendations. For fiction, I read “The last wish”, the book that inspired the Netflix Witcher series. I really enjoyed this, but I also played the games in the past so it was about time I read a book about it. I also read a few non-fiction books. Here are a few of them:
- Atomic Habits
- Think again
- Bounce
But my favourite non-fiction was “Engineering Management for the rest of us”. Even tho I’m not a manager myself, this book taught me a lot, and I believe it is a must-read for anyone managing engineering teams.
Currently, I’m reading “This is for everyone”, the biography by Tim Berners-Lee. I like it a lot and hope to finish it by New Year’s.
Struggles
My biggest struggles at the moment are mostly about giving things a place… AI is evolving rapidly, and I’m sick of people shoving it down everyone’s throats. It’s not that I have something against it, it’s just that there is soooo much noise that doesn’t mean anything. I can’t hear another talk about “how cool something was made by one prompt”. I hope 2026 gets a bit more real on this topic, real usecases, real problem solving, real movement. Less cool and corporate wannabes, more quality and solutions.
And for my AI people out there who I connected with, I know it’s there, just… the noise…
I’m going to leave the AI topic for this article right here….
I did struggle a bit of writers block as well, and maybe I should let it go from time to time. Take time to absorb a bit more. I’m especially looking forward to playing around with some more CSS features aside from creating awesome select elements. Especially going to start the next year with scroll-triggered animations…
I’ve written 19 articles this year, and I’m carefully considering writing smaller ones on a more consistent basis, maybe a few more personal ones. I’m not going to write “ranting” articles; enough people are doing that already, I’m just not that kind of person. Keeping it educational, but maybe a little bit more personal.
Last year, I had a message. I don’t think it worked, so my wish is the same for all of us:
Converse, be patient, converse some more, scream later
And lastly, some lost projects… The CSS Next community group is currently on a pause. It just didn’t seem to catch on enough. I also noticed a lack of time on my hands for a project that didn’t really get enough traction. That is not due to the people there; I think everyone involved had the best interests and moved this project forward. I loved our Monday calls. I sure hope this is not completely the end, but for now, it is. Also my Oklch color picker project could use a bit of love. It’s not dead, but I’m not sure if I want to continue working on it. And I still have to fix some bugs on my little Guess who project.
I also set off this year to write better and draw better, which actually went quite well. My journaling went with ups and downs.
Still struggling with that weight… Conferencing didn’t help. But working on it (again).
Other Good things
So many good things in my life that I’m grateful for as well. My dad is currently cancer-free, my daughter went to the first grade (it’s crazy how fast these kids learn to read/write!), my parents got a really funny hyperactive Pomeranian dog (unfortunatly because we had to say goodbye to the last one). I got my golfing licence and won my first amateur game. There is a big stigma on this sport, unfortunately, but it’s not “elitist” everywhere. Seeing my daughter grow in character and develop hobbies is a great thing to witness. Not going to lie, it sure comes with its usual headaches, but that’s completely worth it.
So, next year?
Maybe a bit less conferencing, more time for my family, and figuring some things out career-wise. I’ve been an agency front-end developer for quite some time now. When projects are getting into trouble, I’m mostly the go-to nowaday but I do feel like I need to grow a bit in a different direction. I just don’t know in which direction and am not completely sure what is possible. I need to figure that out. I hope to grow in the non-purely-frontend-related tasks and do more for colleagues/developers close to me. We’ll see. This will be a big reflection I’ll have to make in the first half of 2026.
Also going to keep working on my fitness, and you know, just trying to be a good person. I will keep writing, I will keep speaking, I will keep building, I will keep learning, I will keep growing. And still be writing these articles by hand, mistakes included, because I enjoy the process, I don’t care if an AI agent writes in a better tone, grammar checks are all I need.
And for the web, well, I really hope I can get a bit more traction on this multi-thumb range slider proposal I’ve been working on.
CSS holidays card and corner-shape
Yes, this is quite enough now.
Did you hear about this new CSS feature, corner-shape? It’s inside CSS wrapped 2025, do check it out.
I do see some pixel issues depending on screen size, but I had a blast with these corner shapes to build a little holidays card out of CSS.
For example, you can easily create a star-like shape like this now:
.star {
width: 2vmin;
aspect-ratio: 1;
background: #e2e8f0;
border-radius: 50%;
corner-shape: scoop;
}
Happy Holidays!
