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Software I use, gadgets I love, and other things I recommend.

I get asked a lot about the things I use to build software, stay productive, or buy to fool myself into thinking I’m being productive when I’m really just procrastinating. Here’s a big list of all of my favorite stuff.

Workstation

  • MacBook Air (M1, 2020), 8GB RAM

    I was using an M1-based MacBook Air prior to this and the difference is night and day. I’ve never heard the fans turn on a single time, even under the incredibly heavy loads I put it through with our various launch simulations.

  • Apple Magic Keyboard

    As my productivity at home, I use this device in my daily life to work efficiently

  • Fantech OC-A259 Office Chair

    If I’m going to slouch in the worst ergonomic position imaginable all day, I might as well do it in an expensive chair.

Development tools

  • Sublime Text 4

    I don’t care if it’s missing all of the fancy IDE features everyone else relies on, Sublime Text is still the best text editor ever made.

  • iTerm2

    I’m honestly not even sure what features I get with this that aren’t just part of the macOS Terminal but it’s what I use.

  • Navicat Premium

    Great software for working with databases. Has saved me from building about a thousand admin interfaces for my various projects over the years.

Design

  • Figma

    We started using Figma as just a design tool but now it’s become our virtual whiteboard for the entire company. Never would have expected the collaboration features to be the real hook.

Productivity

  • Alfred

    It’s not the newest kid on the block but it’s still the fastest. The Sublime Text of the application launcher world.

  • Reflect

    Using a daily notes system instead of trying to keep things organized by topics has been super powerful for me. And with Reflect, it’s still easy for me to keep all of that stuff discoverable by topic even though all of my writing happens in the daily note.

  • Focus

    Simple tool for blocking distracting websites when I need to just do the work and get some momentum going.