My Best of the Year 2025: A year of transition, discovery, and code

Welcome to my very first article! As 2025 draws to a close, it's time for me to take stock of the last twelve months. This year is symbolic as it officially marks my entry into professional life and the end of my student status. In this debut post, I want to share the cultural, entertainment, and technological elements that shaped my daily life. I've structured this review into several main themes, starting immediately with the one that accompanies me everywhere: music.

Music discoveries

Music has always held a central place in my life. Whether I'm at home, visiting my parents, traveling, or commuting, it remains my faithful companion, glued to my ears thanks to my Bose headphones. For me, it is an inexhaustible source of imagination and the best way to escape. Musically, my 2025 will be marked by the discovery of a very particular genre: Barber Beats. A derivative of vaporwave, this minimalist and hypnotic style, often characterized by slowed-down loops of 80s-90s jazz or lounge tracks, has become my daily soundtrack since the beginning of the year.

Best album

For the best album category, I'm going to make an exception to my new passion for Barber Beats by stepping back in time. I award this title to the cult mixtape Hip Hop Soul Party by Cut Killer. Although released in the mid-90s, it was the very first CD I ever bought, a rare physical object in this all-digital era. This double disc is a masterclass that traces the genesis of French DJing, blending funk and hip-hop with impeccable technique and unique tracks. The transitions are flawless, and the album can be listened to for hours straight, demonstrating exceptional craftsmanship.

In parallel, I must mention Long Courrier. This is a personal project, a compilation I curated, which you can find on here. I gathered the best Barber Beats tracks discovered this year, all centered around a theme close to my heart: aviation. It is an invitation to stationary travel that I highly encourage you to explore.

Best artist and tracks

If I had to name the best artist of 2025, my choice would undoubtedly be Male Alchemy. This 21-year-old Brazilian producer is a Barber Beats prodigy. In just a few months, he has soared to the top of my listening statistics thanks to his stunning production quality. I have become an unconditional fan of his work. He also produced the two tracks I consider the best of the year: Black Star and Copacabana. You can find these gems directly on YouTube.

Cinema and Literature

Best movie

Moving on to cinema. I must admit that my consumption of films and series has been modest this year, with about ten viewings on the counter. However, one film managed to stand out and establish itself as my cinematic discovery of 2025: Wall Street. This masterpiece by Oliver Stone, originally released in 1987, completely engrossed me. In the space of a few hours, I was immersed in the cutthroat world of New York finance, fascinated by Michael Douglas's performance in the iconic role of Gordon Gekko. It's a classic that has lost none of its power.

Best book

On the literature side, I remained faithful to the universe of Frank Herbert. My best read of the year is undoubtedly Dune Messiah (often called Dune 2). I loved continuing the adventures of Paul Atreides, discovering the political and religious consequences of his ascension. This reading only increases my impatience to discover Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation, which promises to be magnificent.

Video games

Video gaming retains a prominent place in my life. For 2025, I have selected five significant titles. In the first position, unsurprisingly as it just swept the honors at the Game Awards, I place Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Developed by the French studio Sandfall Interactive, this game is a visual and narrative marvel. Its dynamic turn-based combat system is fascinating, and the story deeply moved me. For me, it is a textbook case of video game excellence, despite one small technical caveat: the performance under Unreal Engine 5 was sometimes a bit heavy for my configuration. My Ryzen 5 2400G didn't like it.

In second place, I highly recommend Dispatch. Closer to an interactive narrative series than a classic game, this title blew me away. It adopts the codes of Telltale Games titles, blending crucial choices, long cinematics, and light gameplay involving managing superhero agents. I devoured all eight episodes in one evening, captivated by the high-caliber voice acting, music, and character relationships. It is an intense experience of about eight hours that I recommend to everyone.

The third step on the podium is occupied by Final Fantasy VII Remake. This was my first contact with the Square Enix saga, and it was love at first sight. I fell for the gallery of characters, admittedly sometimes caricatural in the J-RPG style, but terribly endearing. The atmosphere of Midgar, the orchestral soundtrack, and the hybrid combat system won me over. Furthermore, I was impressed by the exemplary optimization of the title, which runs perfectly even on modest machines.

In fourth place, I remember Persona 3 Reload, the remake of the Atlus classic. Here again, it was my first foray into the Persona universe. It has that unique Japanese "touch," mixing slice of life, student life, and supernatural battles. The visual universe and especially the soundtrack are exceptional; I still listen to the music long after finishing the game. I do note, however, that the gameplay can become repetitive and the time management system, although innovative, sometimes proves a little restrictive.

Finally, I couldn't forget Palworld from Pocketpair studio. Even though it's the game I played the least in terms of hours (around 15 hours), it offered me my best moments of cooperative play with friends in a long time. The mix of monster capture and base automation is very addictive. Although the endgame still needs development, it's a title with enormous potential that I plan to revisit in the coming months.

Development, tech, and AI

On a professional level, my path as a Data Scientist took a decisive turn toward Generative AI. Unlike academic Machine Learning, or Deep Learning that I used to do, GenAI adopts a much more business and end-user-oriented approach. This transition boosted my software development activities.

Best software

In the software category, I had three favorites. The first is CirnoDownloader, a very useful small client for downloading Denuvo games. I will stop here. The second is Karakeep, a formidable self-hostable tool. It has become my go-to for saving, organizing, and sharing my tech watch and design inspirations with friends, particularly thanks to its collaborative features. The third software, which had a timid appearance in 2024 but exploded for me this year, is Immich. Praised by the Reddit self-hosting community, it is an open-source alternative to Google Photos. I installed it on my personal server, "Mercure," and now host all my photos there. The interface is rich, fluid, and incredibly well-designed.

Best tools

On the development side, 2025 was the year of revelations in terms of libraries and tools. I absolutely must mention Cline a VSCode extension that transforms the editor into a true autonomous agent. Thanks to the "Bring Your Own Key" (BYOK) system, I can connect the language model of my choice for it to interact directly with my code. It has become an essential daily tool. This brings me to OpenRouter, a unifying service that appeared in late 2024, allowing access to all LLMs on the market via a single API, with minimal overhead. In terms of user interface, I finally took the plunge into component libraries with Shadcn UI and Nuxt UI. After years of using "manual" Tailwind CSS, I discovered the comfort and efficiency of these tools for creating modern interfaces.

Best LLM

Regarding the language models themselves, the title of "Best LLM of 2025" undoubtedly goes to Grok Code Fast 1, developed by xAI. After testing dozens of models, this one stood out as a marvel of engineering. With a speed exceeding 100 tokens per second and a derisory cost, it offers an unmatched performance-to-price ratio for code. Its context and cache management system is particularly impressive, allowing it to process enormous requests for just a few cents.

Best projects

These tools allowed me to complete some great projects this year. The first, ALICE, is an agentic chatbot developed for my company, Agaetis. It's an advanced ChatGPT clone integrating a RAG system to interact with internal documents. I have great ambitions for its evolution in 2026. I also developed Monosky, the web player mentioned above for my music compilation, and Meteoresystemes, the showcase site for my freelance activity, whose design I am particularly proud of.

Best high-tech purchases

To conclude, I want to address my best purchases of the year. 2025 was marked by two major investments that improved my daily life.

Firstly, I ventured into photography with the acquisition of an used Canon 80D. Switching from a smartphone to a real APS-C sensor was a revelation. My goal is to specialize in military aviation photography, a demanding field that will require me to progress in theory and retouching.

The second is the Bose QC Ultra Gen 2. It replaces my trusty QC 25 after eight years of loyal service. While the sound quality remains faithful to Bose's excellence, it was the improvement in quality of life that stunned me: multi-point Bluetooth, intuitive physical buttons, high-performance microphone for calls... For someone who spends their life with headphones on, the comfort and QoL of this model are simply indispensable.

That concludes this review of my year 2025. I am delighted to have taken the time to write these words and share these fragments of life with you. Feel free to share the article or contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or by email to discuss.