To stay on top of the tech industry (and to write my monthly newsletters), I read A LOT of industry articles every day.
At the end of the year, I like to reflect on what I've read over the year and see what has made the biggest impression.
These are the top 10 articles that I believe every one in the tech industry should read from this past year. Reading these articles has made me a better programmer/engineer/developer/human and I hope it will do the same for you.
#1 - The last six months in LLMs, illustrated by pelicans on bicycles
How do you keep up with all these AI updates coming out almost every day? The best resource of the month will show you the latest updates in the past 6 months with a cool little trick on how you can test out new LLMs as they come out... it might surprise you how effective this little trick is.
#2 - Thoughts on thinking
I think there is real concern here. You will need to make a conscious decision to use AI tools to improve your productivity, but without costing your ability to reason, be creative, and develop critical thinking.
#3 - An Unreasonable Amount of Time
A simple short story, but one that I hope inspires you to get 2026 started on the right foot.
#4 - Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?
This is an 18 lesson slide presentation by 2 professors. It asks an important question about LLMs and AI: Are they modern day oracles or are they bullshit machines?
I promise that if you take the time and go through the 18 lessons, you will come out the other end better informed about AI tools and how they work.
#5 - Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age
This is a great read to keep up with the AI trend (is anyone talking about anything else other than AI lately!?). The article describes well-suited real-life Coding Assistant use cases, and explains in detail the supporting practices that result in successful AI coding sessions.
#6 - Nobody Knows How To Build With AI Yet
We are in an inflection point in our industry. Make sure you're not following the herd blindly. Be the observer and make wise decisions in order to stand out.
#7 - Face it: you're a crazy person
Face it: you're a crazy person.
Itâs no wonder that everyone struggles to figure what to do with their lives: we have not developed the cultural technology to deal with this problem because we never had to.
We didnât exactly evolve in an ancestral environment with a lot of career opportunities. And then, once we invented agriculture, almost everyone was a farmer the next 10,000 years. âWhat should I do with my life?â is really a post-1850 problem, which means, in the big scheme of things, we havenât had any time to work on it.
#8 - Hacking Formula 1
The reason I loved this, is that it's so... easy, and it also teaches you some simple ways you can check for bugs inside websites yourself. I guarantee you will learn something or two from this writeup.
#9 - We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
... Yes this is actually a podcast and not an article, but it is too good not to share. Ilya Sutskever who is probably the top AI researcher (was head of AI at OpenAI and left to build his own "ethical" SSI company), shared his thoughts on the industry. Even though some of the things he discusses might go over your head, I think this should be required listening for everyone. Probably the best discussion I have heard all year around AI.
"These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing."
#10 - ZTM's Philosophy on Learning: The 10 Learning Commandments
I wrote this last year after many years of thinking about what ZTM stands for. Did I just pick my own article as a top 10 resource of the year? Yes... stop judging me!
I took a couple years off writing this post but brough it back by popular demand. You can check out previous year's editions here:
- Top Programmer Articles From 2018
- Top Programmer Articles From 2019
- Top Programmer Articles From 2020
- Top Programmer Articles From 2021
- Top Programmer Articles From 2024
- Took 2022 and 2023 off but all that matters now is that 2025 was a banger, right đŹ?!
Hope you found these articles as helpful as I did. If you did, share them with someone and then come back for next year's 2026 edition (put your email in that little box below so you don't forget).
By the way, my full time job is to teach people to code in the most efficient way possible as an Instructor of the Zero To Mastery Academy.
You can check out all of my courses here.
