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My Plans for 2025

Feb 10, 202530 minute read

How I'm going to make my 2025 impactful.

Happy belated new year, everyone! I posted my 2024 In Review blog a week ago. Now it’s time to look forward to the remaining ~10-11 months of this year.

As with last year’s My Plans for 2024, this post is 40% a reference for anybody curious about my work… and 60% a form of self-motivation.

General Goals

My general 2025 goal is to make it as easy as possible to have great web development tooling. The primary ways I will do that are:

  1. Continue to maintain or otherwise contribute to impactful projects such as ESLint, Mocha, typescript-eslint, and Yeoman
  2. Build the best repository templating engine possible: Bingo
  3. Onboard create-typescript-app to that engine
  4. Consolidate common issue and pull request linting tasks into a GitHub-focused linter: Glint
  5. Increase the power and simplicity of developer tooling provided by create-typescript-app
  6. Stabilize tooling that converts from JavaScript to TypeScript and TypeScript to better TypeScript: ts-lift
  7. Socialize great developer tooling with Boston TS Club and SquiggleConf

Open Source

I’m a full time independent open source maintainer. I spend a majority of my time maintaining open source libraries I’m responsible for, as well as contributing to other libraries.

Finances

See my 2024 income breakdown in 2024 Finances in Review.

I took in a total income of roughly $60,191 for 2024. $46,561 of that was for open source work.

My high-level financial goal for 2025 is to grow my total income by ~25% to $75,000. I believe I can hit that through:

~$58.2k a year for open source is ~$4,850 a month. I think I can hit that through:

~$16.8k a year for other work is a little over ~$1,400 a month. I think I can hit that through:

I’d prefer to not consult at all. But my open source sponsorships are not likely to increase enough to hit my total income goal.

Larger Projects

These ecosystem-level projects are high visibility to many web developers. My work in pushing them forward helps make their areas of development incrementally better. It’s fun and humbling to think about.

typescript-eslint

I’m on the typescript-eslint maintainer team. Unlike 2024, I don’t plan on pushing for any major user-facing changes. I’d like 2025 to be a more calm year for my typescript-eslint involvement.

Documentation

Objective: Rework the website to better explain the project.

Objective: Publish ≥4 long-requested blog posts.

The landing page on typescript-eslint.io hasn’t been reworked in a long time. It prioritizes explaining what ESLint and TypeScript are over the benefits or definition of typescript-eslint. @ElianCodes led me through an audit of typescript-eslint.io last year. I’d like to apply the suggestions from that audit to the typescript-eslint website.

Additionally, many longstanding community gripes about typescript-eslint and typed linting come in part from us not explaining ourselves well. I want us to have published at least 4 more blog posts that answer frequent user questions. At the very least, that should include:

Issue Management

Objective: Finish the year with <250 issues

Objective: Close out ≥3 of 4 issues from 2019

Objective: Close out ≥20 of 26 issues from 2019-2020

We started 2024 with about 400 open issues in our backlog and ended with just under 300 open issues. I don’t like having many hundreds of issues in a backlog.

Some old issues might be reasonable to keep open but not important enough for us to prioritize. But having too many old issues inevitably crowds out important ones. The more issues exist, the less likely any one issue will be addressed.

I’d like to continue shrinking the backlog by ending 2025 with just under 250 open issues, or 50 fewer than what we have now.

We still have 26 issues from many years ago: 22 from 2020 and 4 from 2019. I’d also like to get through at least 75% of those.

ESLint

Objective: Consistently work as an ESLint team member.

I’m on the ESLint committer team. I still don’t have any big flashy goals around ESLint. For my second year I just want to be a good, reliable member of the team.

If I consistently apply >15 hours a month to ESLint, and the work is an acceptable quality, I’ll be happy.

Mocha

Objective: Provide first-party TypeScript types with Mocha

Objective: Release Mocha 12 with long-pending small breaking changes

Objective: Release the new Mocha website

I’m on the new Mocha maintainer team (mocha#5027 📌 Project Status: Maintenance Reboot). 2024 was mostly a “pick up the pieces” year for Mocha.

For this second year I’m ready to make more impactful changes. The biggest is mocha/milestone/66 v12.0.0: releasing a new major version with actual breaking changes. Fixing old annoyances and removing long-deprecated features will be good for the project but technically requires a new major version.

Separately, mocha#4154 🚀 Feature: TypeScript .d.ts type declarations is the single most requested issue people bring up with me when they hear I took on Mocha maintenance.

Lastly, I made a new version of the ancient Mocha website using Astro last year: mocha#5246 docs: add new website using Astro Starlight. I’d like to get that website fully launched this year, with the old website kept on something like old.mochajs.org.

Yeoman

Objective: End 2025 having triaged and reviewed all Yeoman issues and pull requests older than a week

Objective: Clean up all known out-of-date information on yeoman.io

Objective: Update yo and other packages to no longer print deprecation warnings when run

I joined the Yeoman maintenance reboot in January! 🎩

Our goal is to keep Yeoman afloat. We don’t plan on releasing any major breaking changes or earth-shattering new features. We mostly want to keep the project up with the basic expectations developers have around running tools.

Bingo

Objective: Create in-memory, Handlebars-based, and Blocks-based templating systems

Objective: Create an automated repository migration flow based on GitHub Actions

Objective: Release a well-documented Bingo v1

The Bingo project -formerly named create- is my take on a templating engine. Its feature set represents points that I think no existing engine comes close to capturing a majority of:

I find all that very exciting: especially the “Blocks” system I’d originally envisioned for it (create-typescript-app#1181 📝 Documentation: Long-term project vision). Also automated migrations, so I don’t have to keep manually updating old repositories to new tooling config files.

create-typescript-app

Objective: Release a stable create-typescript-app@v2 built on Bingo

Objective: Reduce root files from 19 to 16

Objective: Support monorepos

Objective: Close out 14 of the 19 open issues I’d filed through 2022 and 2023.

As of writing, create-typescript-app is almost ready to promote a v2 version rebuilt on Bingo from beta to stable. It’s only blocked on a few foundational rearchitectures in Bingo.

Firstly, I aim to continue reducing the number of root-level files produced by the template. Tooling fatigue is a real problem for web developers. Every file added to repositories contributes to that fatigue. I’m pretty sure I can get rid of three config files from CTA:

I’m also targeting two goals for 2025 that are carried over from My Plans for 2024 > create-typescript-app.

The biggest one is monorepo support. I personally want CTA monorepo support for my own monorepos such as emoji-blast and TypeStat (ts-lift).

The CTA issue tracker still has 19 issues from 2022 or 2023, 9 of which are features. 4 of those issues are status: blocked, leaving 15 issues that I should be able to close out. Adding a safe buffer of 1 issue leaves me with a goal of resolving 14 issues, or ~75% of the 19.

Glint

Objective: Make a stable lint experience for GitHub repositories — including issues and pull requests

Onboard Glint to be used in create-typescript-app

This section is copied over from My Plans for 2024 > Standalone GitHub Linter.

One of the biggest pain points I’ve had in managing GitHub repositories is standardizing practices around comments, issues, and pull requests:

create-typescript-app uses a few dedicated GitHub Actions to enforce some of those needs for now. But that’s inconvenient. I’d like to make a generalized linter for all those needs. It will be configurable with granular rules, plugins, and shared configs like a typical linter.

I haven’t started deep design work on Glint. But I’m confident I can make it a shining example of repository tooling.

TypeStat (ts-lift)

Objective: Rebrand, re-document, and stabilize TypeStat as a ts-lift monorepo.

Objective: Create a ts-initialize project within ts-lift that reliably converts projects from JavaScript to TypeScript.

Objective: Create a ts-enhance project within ts-lift that reliably improves TypeScript types when possible.

This section is partially copied over from My Plans for 2024 > TypeStat (ts-lift).

Two factors make me more confident in tackling TypeStat this year:

That better understanding of how to split up the project means I can really think through the architecture and documentation. Splitting ts-initialize and ts-enhance out of the shared core means I can focus them on doing their respective tasks.

…and, as much as I hate to cave to tech trend hype, it’s possible that ts-enhance could use AI to solve type generation challenges that would otherwise be prohibitively difficult. We’ll see.

Other Projects

These projects aren’t widely known names the way the larger ones. They’re smaller time investments that I think are valuable in their own right.

eslint-plugin-expect-type

Objective: Get adopted by DefinitelyTyped.

This section is partially copied over from My Plans for 2024 > eslint-plugin-expect-type.

eslint-plugin-expect-type is a handy ESLint plugin that allows enforcing ^? twoslash assertion comments and the like. In 2024 I’d expanded the plugin to encompass all the features I know DefinitelyTyped-tools uses in its @definitelytyped/expect equivalent. I think it’d be great to reduce lint rule duplication and onboard DefinitelyTyped to the same rule as other consumers in the ecosystem.

eslint-plugin-package-json

Objective: Finish achieving feature parity with other package.json linters

I adopted the ESLint plugin for package.json files in 2023 because I wanted to flesh out its feature set. Some rules exist in other package.json linters that are not yet available in eslint-plugin-package-json. You can see the full list of linter rules in eslint-plugin-package-json#42 📌 Tracking issue: comparison with equivalent other tools.

For 2025, I’d like to finish filling out that list of rules. This will involve creating granular APIs in package-json-validator, another project I adopted.

Mint

Objective: Publish a blog post fully describing my idealized general web linter

Objective: Prototype a general web linter with first-class support for cross-file linting

I’m not going to compete with ESLint in 2025. typescript-eslint is not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m burying this project goal deep in this blog post because I don’t want anybody to misread and think this is some big ecosystem competitor or drama.

ESLint is structurally focused on single-file linting: each lint rule is architecturally encouraged to only think of one rule at a time. Single-file linting falls apart when you add typed linting. See eslint/rfcs#102 feat: parsing session objects.

I think any modern web linter needs first-class support for cross-file linting. ESLint’s rewrite is positioned as the place for ESLint to work on that. Native speed linters are working on it, too: e.g. Biome’s noFloatingPromises rule.

I want to help work on cross-file linting — but have found it difficult to propose ideas given my lack of experience of actually writing a linter. And even for the ideas I’m confident in, not having a proof-of-concept linter to show my ideas working is a further detriment.

So, I plan on finally writing my own fresh, modern linter in 2025. 😱.

I’m first going to publish a blog post explaining all my ideas for what a modern web linter could do. See JoshuaKGoldberg/dot-com#296 🚀 Feature: Blog post on “If I Wrote a Linter”. That issue is blocked by a chain of other blog posts explaining nuances such as JoshuaKGoldberg/dot-com#297 🚀 Feature: Blog post on why I’d write a linter in TypeScript.

Other Packages

Objective: Maintain a small suite of well-managed open source repositories in my areas of interest.

This section is copied over from My Plans for 2024 > Other Packages).

I don’t exclusively work on my larger visibility projects: I also have a collection of smaller utilities. They’ve all been onboarded to create-typescript-app. I plan on further onboarding those packages to Bingo’s automated tooling updates.

I’m also a committer or maintainer on a few other packages that I didn’t make and generally enjoy helping out with, such as dedent and node-emoji. I don’t plan on leading any major changes for them: just keeping them well-maintained.

Community Engagement

It’s invaluable for open source maintainers to engage with other developers. We get previous user feedback and project exposure — especially when we’re a known name.

Conferences

Objective: Give all conference talks I’m happy with.

As noted in 2024 in Review > Conferences, I’m holding steady at giving a conference talk every 1-2 months. My goal is to be happy with the content and quality talks I’m giving.

As of writing this post I’m scheduled for 4 in-person conferences through June. I don’t plan on adding more than 1-2 additional in-person conference talks.

Blogging

Objective: Publish at least one blog post every three weeks

Objective: Publish at least one post in each blog every three months

I have a few blogs under my purview:

I missed my blog post goals in both 2023 In Review > Goal: Branding and Blogging and 2024 In Review > Blogging. For this year I’m reducing the target numbers by about a third.

Boston TS Club

Objective: Produce ten successful monthly meetups for Boston TS Club

Objective: Create and keep schedules for those meetups

Objective: Step down as “director” and eliminate the singular leadership role

Boston TS Club is Boston’s monthly meetup for TypeScript and other web development areas. I’m very happy with how it’s going: see 2024 in Review > Boston TS Club.

For the meetups, my main hope for 2025 is to keep doing more of the same, but more organized. We’d like to turn our gained knowledge into more predictable meetups: e.g. publishing the timing of talks and networking sessions ahead of time.

Running a meetup is an investment of both time and emotional energy. I also hope to move away a sole “director” role the way I run it now. Instead, we’re looking to:

My goal for 2025 is to make Boston TS Club able to run smoothly even if any organizer -including and especially myself- leaves.

SquiggleConf

Objective: Successfully run SquiggleConf 2025 without any major problems

Objective: Get 150 peak attendance

Objective: Break even 💸

Objective: Don’t burn out

SquiggleConf is Boston’s yearly conference for web development tooling. I’m very happy with how it’s going: see 2024 in Review > SquiggleConf.

My primary conference goal here is for nothing terrible to happen. Running a large event is scary. There are a lot of moving parts to contend with.

2024 saw about 125 attendees throughout the day. Now that we have more brand recognition and local ties, I’d like to grow to 150.

2024 came out to a deficit of several thousand dollars. I think we can at least break even in 2025, hopefully positioning ourselves to least make back our 2024 money within 2026.

Lastly, and perhaps most important for me personally, I don’t want to burn out again in 2025. 2024’s post-SquiggleConf burnout wrecked my productivity and impacted my personal health through October and much of November. I’m optimistic that with the awesome team, as well as starting conference work several months earlier in the year, I’ll avoid spending a month overeating ramen and re-watching Mad Men.

Personal

Personal happiness and health are key to sustainable development. These goals are largely copy & pasted from My Plans for 2024 > Personal.

Goal: Health

Objective: Eat healthy, balanced meals most days of the week

Objective: Reliably work out about three times a week

This section is partially copied over from My Plans for 2024 > Goal: Health.

I still aim for the roughly the same goals as last year:

My stress gets worse when I’m stressed by work and/or the awful nation-wide events happening around me. The former I can control. The latter I cannot control, and am trying to separate out from work as much as possible for my mental health.

Goal: Personal Accountability

Objective: Have confidence in the amount of work I’ve accomplished.

Objective: Feel good about the amount of work I’ve accomplished.

I have a tendency to be self-critical and drive myself to the point of burnout. I also tend to undervalue the magnitude of work I’ve accomplished.

I used to keep a tracking Notion database & board for tasks and promise myself I’d review my performance using them. That was a surface-level “band-aid” fix for deeper insecurities.

This year, I’m going to try to center myself and address the root cause. I have a new therapist who is helping me connect with my emotions. If I get done most of what I say I want to in this post, I want to also feel good about about that.

We’ll see.

Out of Scope

I’m not going to tackle any of the points from My Plans for 2024 > Out of Scope:

I just can’t justify the time expenditure.

Stretch Goals

Procrastination is one of my toxic traits. I’m very good at motivating myself to do something when it’s more shiny than what I’m supposed to be doing. Keeping a supply of “wouldn’t this be nice?” projects helps me stay productive.

The biggest top-of-mind projects for me are simplifications to the create-typescript-app template:

No guarantees these will happen anytime soon. But it’s nice to dream.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve got a lot of objectives for 2025. I think the big splashy ones are doable as long as I focus on one each month or two and hold overflow time at the end of the year:

  1. February and March: Bingo and create-typescript-app
  2. April: Glint
  3. May: Mint
  4. June: TypeStat (ts-lift)
  5. July: Mocha, Yeoman, and other packages
  6. August and September: SquiggleConf
  7. October-November: overflow

Even if I don’t make all of those goals, it’s going to be an exciting year! 🙌

If you read this far - thank you, and I have no idea why. Let me know!

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