2025 Highlights

Inspired by Fogus, here are the great things I read, watched, discovered in 2025.

Highlights from 2024

Favorite Articles

In the belly of the MrBeast: Comment on HN is perfect: This idea that meaning is replaced by intensification. Helped me understand a lot about the world today.HN
Be aware of the Makefile effect: Insightful thoughts on the hidden complexities of build systems.
The year I didn’t survive: A raw and personal narrative shared in the Hacker News community.
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web: Ted Chiang’s brilliant metaphor for understanding Large Language Models.
Hixie’s Natural Log: Reflecting on 18 years at Google: Ian Hickson’s farewell thoughts on the cultural shifts at Google.
60 Hours a week? How about 4 uninterrupted hours a day?: Making the case that deep work matters far more than mere hours spent.
Our interfaces have lost their senses: A deep dive into the degradation of modern UI and UX principles.
Everyone knows all the apps on your phone - by peabee: Without governance, corporations go to lengths like this to harvest your app data for profit.
Lisp at JPL: The story of how Lisp was used at the Jet Propulsion Lab.
If You Are Useful, It Doesn’t Mean You Will Be Respected: A thoughtful piece on the difference between utility and respect in the workplace.
Why MCP’s disregard for 40 years of RPC best practices will burn enterprises: A critique of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for ignoring established distributed systems principles.
Morrick Insights on Technology: Commentary on modern user experience and technology trends.

Favorite Books

2025 was a miserable year of reading for me. Even though I read 17 books, most of them were boring. I suspect there is a recent trend of a story being deliberately stretched into a multi-book series to sell more copies. It dilutes the subject. That’s what made SciFi books like Dune great. They used to be short and yet very dense intellectual reads. Yet, thankfully I discovered a couple of books / authors which I loved. Here’s hoping for a better 2026.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett: I discovered Discworld series and this was the first book I read. It is very funny and witty. I read Mort after this which was also great. So now I have 30 more books lined up!

Favorite Movies

One Battle After Another: PTA’s latest doesn’t disappoint.
Kishkindha Kaandam: A low budget masterclass in screenplay.
Manjummel Boys: Simple story about friendship but executed brilliantly.
Sinners: I loved it for that 1 scene.
Jaws (1975): If The Thing had perfect screenplay, this has the best direction.
Constantine (2005): They don’t make movies like this anymore. For 2005, it has great visuals, the tone of the movie matches the subject matter and Peter Stormare as Lucifer is the best acting in a villain role. It’s a shame he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for his performance.
28 years later: The 20 minute sequence when Spike says goodbye to his mother elevates this otherwise average movie.

Favorite TV Shows

Andor: Probably the best show I have seen. It is anti-fascist art. Tony Gilroy’s writing is elite. The acting is great. Production value is top-notch. This show came out of Disney, now that’s just chef’s kiss. Highly recommended.
Adolescence: Sombre slow pace, prescient subject and incredible acting. Each 1-hour episode is a single continuous shot without any trickery!
Pluribus: A SciFi series with the direction & writing of Vince Gilligan. What else could you ask for? Rhea Seehorn carries the show as the lead actor.
Severance: Very heady SciFi series. The mysteries remind me of Lost, which worries me if they will be able to tie it all together.

Favorite Videos

Fear in Tech - Titus Winters - Keynote Meeting C++ 2024: Titus left Google while I was still there and I saw his last lecture where he teared up. If Software @Google had heart, it was Titus & people like him. I suspect that’s what made the engineering side of early Google so great. I wish to work with people like him one day.
Keynote by Cory Doctorow: If you haven’t yet encountered the concept of enshittification, watch this. I can see it in all the services & products I use. There are more videos about this: How Silicon Valley enshittified the internet and It’s not your job to fix the internet
SIGCOMM’25: Keynote by Bruce Davie: A sobering look at the reality of networking.
It’s Not Your Fault You’re Behind In Life – A Software Engineer’s Struggle: There is a deliberately built perception around pulling yourself up in a flawed system.
Tradeoffs in the Software Workflow - Titus Winters - ACCU 2022: More gold from Titus.

Favorite Gear

Fountain Pens: I started collecting fountain pens and have restarted writing after a long time. I collected a lot of pens and inks. Some of my favorite pens that I used in 2025 are Lamy Safari, Pilot Kakuno, Uniball One P and Hongdian M2. I am eyeing a few more pens but they are either not available in India or are way too expensive for me (TWSBI Eco, Lamy 2000, Pilot Custom 823, Diplomat Aero, Sailor Pro Gear, Pilot E95S, Pilot Vanishing Point). For inks, I would highly recommend Sulekha Swadhin series. They are wonderfully consistent. I am hoping to get my hands on Krishna Lyrebird, Iroshizuku and Diamine inks someday.
Router: I got GL.iNet GL-MT6000 (Flint 2) which is an OpenWRT compatible router. The setup was pretty straight-forward and the performance is top-notch so far (6 months in). I have not yet setup Pihole on it which is the plan.

State of plans for 2025

Restart Defogtech: Failed.
Write a book on Java: Failed.
Continue reading: I read 17 books in 2025 but it wasn’t a terrific year.

I changed 2 jobs in 2025. I spent months preparing for interviews and it was quite a stressful period of ~6 months. I could not give any time to my hobbies. I eventually joined Amazon as Principal Engineer in Q3 2025. I work in the India Retail, Selling Partner Services organization. I am PE of quite a large org (~120 software engineers and overall ~160 people).

Plans for 2026

New Job: As of March 2026, I am heavily into using AI agents to automate the SOPs that are used by Account Managers at Amazon to support the selling partners (merchants). It’s a very unique space and I am enjoying it so far. It’s a healthy mix of learning and contributing as an IC. I am also a convert to using AI coding tools, having been a skeptic until last year. Finally I get to code again and time is no longer a constraint. I have also been tasked with AI adoption across the org, which, without influence, is a herculean task but a challenge that I am looking forward to.
Reading: Reading a few fantasy series has made me appreciate my love for SciFi even more. Apart from great ones like Discworld, I am hoping to move away from fantasy and back to the world of SciFi.
Writing: Apart from reading books, I am hoping to at least restart writing short articles. Even though this blog has not seen much of an audience, I want to spend more time creating content.
Running: I joined a running club and have been consistent at it since September 2025. I can now run 10k at an easy pace. The social aspect of it has been very refreshing, meeting all kinds of people. Doctors, lawyers, people running businesses and the running coaches as well. Some communities tend to attract certain kinds of people and this one is full of humble and wonderful folks. I am targeting a half-marathon in 2026.

Deepak Vadgama