Devtalk 2025 Update!

Announcements
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Welcome to our annual update everyone :icon_biggrin:

In last year’s update we mentioned how 2023 was easily the year of AI, where it pretty much dominated most chatter in the dev world - so naturally we’re all wondering whether it continued to dominate in 2024 or whether something else grabbed the headlines.

While the trend certainly continued, it’s safe to say that something else actually took centre stage: it became abundantly clear that ethics in and around technology are more important than ever.

While this is something that many of us in the industry have talked about in the past, 2024 was the year it came to light for most in the general populous, and believe it or not, for most in the mainstream it was TikTok that was practically singlehandedly responsible for the revelation.

TikTok users suddenly discovered a stream of relatively unfettered views from their peers on their ‘For You’ pages. We’re not talking hate-filled ideologies here but opinions and coverage of stories and events that they say were clearly being suppressed in the mainstream media and on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. What are these suppressed topics you might wonder? The app’s users will tell you they are about things that matter to them - such as about the inequalities and hardships they face or the injustices they see in the world - all of which many users are saying almost always boil down to the “parasitic billionaire class” profiteering no matter what the cost to others or the planet, and since they control most of the media and those apps, they get to decide what is or isn’t suppressed. It’s left users pretty darn angry.

With 2024 being such an eye-opening year for many, how will the public react and use tech in 2025? What changes will the app makers introduce or governments insist on? But more importantly, what will you, as developers or potential developers of apps like these, do? :upside_down_face:

2025 sure is shaping up to be an interesting year! Let us know what you’ll be up to! Will you give users the kind of apps they’re crying out for!?

Ok, enough reflection! Let’s move on to what we have in store for you this year…

Our 2025 Giveaways!

We’re back with our awesome giveaways, giving away 5 prizes every month!

Will there be a Manning giveaway this year?

We’re not sure. The manager who we deal with is currently out of the office due to an unforeseen medical emergency and without an expected return date - we did try to get in touch with the person taking over their responsibilities but have not yet received a response. We’ll update this thread if we’re able to sort one out for this year.

For those of you who want even more chances to win, we have similar giveaways on the Elixir Forum and the Erlang Forums too!:

Elixir Forum

Erlang Forums

Discounts

Can’t wait? We got you covered!

  • 35% off any ebook published by PragProg!
    Simply use coupon code devtalk.com

  • 20% off ANY Pragmatic Studio course!
    Simply use coupon code devtalk.com

Don’t forget to check out our amazing sponsors who help make all this possible! :blue_heart:

In The Spotlight!

Proudly in association with our friends at The Pragmatic Bookshelf, we’ll be hosting more Spotlights in our Spotlight section. These will consist of an interview followed by the thread being opened up to questions from you, the Devtalk community.

But there’s more!

One participant from the thread will be randomly selected to win one of that author’s books if the Spotlight in about a PragProg author or one of PragProg’s books if it’s a non-author Spotlight.

As a highly community-orientated platform we love things like this! Thank you PragProg for helping make it happen!

Members of the Year

Platforms like this would be nothing without helpful members like you. Whether that’s through keeping members updated by regularly posting news or other interesting threads, documenting your learning journey or encouraging others to, welcoming and posting in other people’s threads or simply helping them the good old fashioned way by answering questions. If you consistently add value to the community we are likely to notice you!

Last year’s MOTYs

We’ve got so many awesome members here - all of you adding value in your own way, whether it’s by being active, helpful, or using the platform to announce blogs and podcasts - it all helps and we’ve tried to recognise as many of you as we can. (We’ve also just focused on the main Devtalk areas, rather than the book errata sections.)

If you’re named here thank you and well done - and please read the bit at the end as we have an ebook for you!

@alvinkatojr

@andrea

@apsori

@brainlid

@brennan

@chris.johan

@CloudRush

@conradwt

@dani

@DestyNova

@DevotionGeo

@dyowee

@Eiji

@faust

@gflashner

@iPaul

@jaeyson

@jkdiaz

@jmagnani

@joeb

@jss

@KnowledgeIsPower

@kokolegorille

@mafinar

@mercyf

@mindriot

@peterchancc

@ragamuf

@Rainer

:041: :041: :041: :041: :041:

As a thank you, we have an ebook for each of our winners! We’ll be using our Manning books this year so if you are listed above, please PM @AstonJ with your book choice along with your full name, email address and country of residence - we’ll then get these details sent over once we’ve heard back from everyone (please note it could take some time so please allow 6 weeks before chasing things up) :023:

Book Clubs

If you’ve been interested in learning something but haven’t got to it, or love the idea of reading a book with others or documenting your journey in a more solo journal - let us know! We have a number of books to give away as part of this initiative and would love to see more book clubs going, and if you have some friends or colleagues to join you even better! PM @AstonJ with your interests and we’ll see what we can come up with :smiley:

In Closing

We have lots in store for you again this year, but as we covered in our opening, we’re also excited to hear what you have in store for us! If you’re working on an app that will usher in the kind of change users are crying out for let us know on the forum!

Whatever you’ll be doing, we hope you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2025!

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Thank you, Aston! :heart:

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2025 here we go!!! :raised_hands:t5:

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Thank you @AstonJ … hope to be have more interactions with the amazing folks here and learn together!

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Thank you, Aston :heart:

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Thank you Aston. Hope you are staying safe, that storm is brutal!

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Thank you very much @AstonJ

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Been waiting for this forum annual update since January 1st clocked in(was wondering what happened… :smile: but I understood that it gets crazy around this time).

Happy to be on the list, but most importantly I’m glad the forum exists: it’s the only place I can get updated on global news.

Good work to everyone especially @AstonJ and @Margaret! Happy new year to both of y’all and everybody else. Let’s make this one count, like we always do!

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Thank you Aston.

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Much appreciated @AstonJ

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Happy 2025 everyone! Thank you @AstonJ!

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Happy new year everyone and @AstonJ!

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Thanks everyone - great to see you all back for another year of dev talk :smiley:

It’s been pretty mild around here, think you’ve had it a lot worse Toby!

Not you in this vid, is it? :upside_down_face:

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Great, thanks @AstonJ

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Thanks a lot everyone, it’s a pleasure to be part of this community =)

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Good stuff :slight_smile: I was in a less extreme area in one of the amber zones, think it was maybe 75mph gusts here so still rough but not like a lot of other areas.

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Good news :+1:

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