Piccalilli's 2025 Year in Review: Achievements, Courses, and a Stance Against AI

2025 has been a stellar year for Piccalilli, marked by significant growth and numerous achievements. We're excited to reflect on our progress and share our plans for the upcoming year.

A Year of Prolific Content Creation

This year, we published an impressive 261,006 words across articles, links, The Index newsletter, and our premium courses, averaging over 700 words daily. This breaks down into:

• 50 articles
• 33 links
• 129 lessons across 2 courses
• 95 newsletter issues

Our Top 10 Most Popular Articles of 2025

We are incredibly grateful for our readership this year. Here are the top 10 articles published in 2025, which resonated most with our community:

1. Programming principles for self-taught front-end developers
2. A pragmatic guide to modern CSS colours - part one
3. Are people’s bosses really making them use AI tools?
4. A simple masonry-like composable layout
5. Printing the web: making webpages look good on paper
6. You can style alt text like any other text
7. JavaScript, when is this?
8. CSS nesting: use with caution
9. NaN, the not-a-number number that isn’t NaN
10. In praise of off-screen menus

While Piccalilli is strongly associated with CSS, it's gratifying to see JavaScript and design-focused content prominently featured in our top 10.

Key Launches and Developments in 2025

This year has been exceptionally busy, with substantial investments made into expanding Piccalilli's offerings.

Two New Premium Courses

We successfully launched two major courses:

• JavaScript for Everyone, authored by Mat Marquis, debuted in October. This comprehensive undertaking fulfills a long-standing goal to provide foundational JavaScript education, emphasizing core language principles over specific frameworks for long-term developer success.
• Mindful Design, our first video course, launched in November, created by Scott Riley. This course offers canonical design education, meticulously crafted to elevate the skills of designers and developers at all experience levels.

We are immensely proud of both authors for their dedication. The experience of publishing external courses has been invaluable, strengthening our position for delivering even more high-quality educational content in 2026.

The Redesigned Index Newsletter

We completely revamped The Index newsletter, moving away from third-party solutions to a bespoke system developed by Robb Owen. This new setup grants us full control over data, publishing schedules, and, crucially, powers every email with Markdown. This system, an extension of an API developed in 2024 for courses and billing, now leverages Postmark for email delivery, providing unparalleled control over templates. This redesign represents one of the most significant platform improvements this year, promising enhanced user experience.

Enhanced Article View

We undertook a major redesign of our article view. Moving from a left-aligned, sidebar layout to a central focus with "blow-out" elements, powered by CSS Grid, has significantly improved typography, readability, and overall content flow. We believe this new design offers one of the best reading experiences available online.

Our Firm Stance Against AI

Piccalilli has clearly articulated its principles regarding AI, taking a definitive stand against this technology. We believe it is our ethical duty to protect human creativity and jobs within our industry from technologies that often lack transparency and positive intent. We plan to actively advocate against the unchecked proliferation of AI in 2026, fostering an environment where honest discussions about its implications can thrive.

Looking Ahead to 2026

We anticipate an even more exciting 2026, with plans for:

• More Content: We will continue to expand our content offerings, building on the success of our guest authors, who contributed a record 19 articles this year and proved to be immensely popular.
• New Courses: Expect at least two more courses, including one personally authored by me, with possibilities for three or four new courses based on ongoing discussions.

Our commitment remains to provide practical, real-world education that empowers you to achieve your fullest potential.

A Heartfelt Thank You

We extend our deepest gratitude to everyone who engaged with our articles, newsletters, and link posts, supported us via Open Collective, and purchased our courses. Your support is invaluable and means everything to us.

Thank you also for the incredible feedback received this year through surveys and interviews; your insights are fueling our plans for improvement.

Finally, a massive thank you to the Piccalilli and Set Studio team—Leanne, Jason, and Vicky. Despite a challenging year, your hard work and dedication have made 2025 a period of immense pride and achievement. Let's take a well-deserved rest and come back stronger in 2026.