My Tools
In what I assume is tradition for most dev blogs, here’s a page talking about the tools I use every day. And I’ll start with the hardware side of things.
Hardware#
Keyboards#
Home: The Mode Sonnet is a 75% mechanical keyboard. Your typical, affordable keyboard uses rubber domes to register the keypresses. For a tool that I use constantly, I felt it was okay to splurge a bit.
Work: Keychron K2. It’s a 75% mechanical keyboard with wireless capabilities and Apple support baked in. I put silent switches in it so my coworkers wouldn’t hate me.
Mice#
Home: I did not think I would be as impressed as I was when I first picked up my Logitech G Pro X Superlight (whew!). I was lucky to have owned an OG Logitech MX 518 for well over a decade. It was just time to move on, and I could not have been more impressed with the Superlight mouse. It really is super light! And the tracking is so very good.
Work: I use a Logitech MX Master 2S. It’s a wireless Bluetooth mouse. For work, it’s fantastic because of the programmable gestures. I would not recommend it for gaming. At all.
Controller#
I know some PC gamers get super offended at the mere mention of a controller. Their worldview is narrow, and they are not to be taken seriously. I interact with my games using whatever helps me enjoy the game the most. My controller is just an Xbox One controller. It’s great.
Chair#
My chair does not have an easy name. The brand is Alera. The chair is in the Elusion Series. The model is ALEEL41ME10B. This chair is an incredible value. For something that I sat in 8 hours a day for about 2 years, it did its job very well. Most people use that justification to buy chairs that cost 4 times as much. I cannot stress enough how much of an upgrade rollerblade wheels are on office chairs. Please make sure you buy some. I bought mine from SunnieDog.
Laptop#
I use a 2018 MacBook Pro. I typed most of this post up on it! I use the same type of laptop at work as well. I have very few complaints, but the main one is about the butterfly keyboard. Apple missed the mark on that one. The crazy part is that I don’t mind the switches when it comes to the typing experience. I mind their failure rate.
Bag#
I don’t know the specific backpack I’m using. It’s no longer sold by the brand, PKG. The closest bag they currently sell is the Durham Outpost 30L. It’s big enough to carry my laptop, keyboard, mouse, cables, and dongle. My one issue with the bag is that the outer side pockets are worthless. Otherwise, I like the look and feel of it.
Dongle#
My laptop has four Thunderbolt ports which I don’t mind terribly because I don’t need anything else most of the time. But on the occasions where I do need USB Type-A ports, ethernet, or HDMI, I keep a Satechi Type-C multi-port adapter in my bag. It’s compact and gives me what I need only when I need it. And it’s color-matched to my laptop. That vanity is a recurring theme 😜.
Phone#
I use an iPhone 13. My previous phone was a Pixel 2XL. My reasons for switching to iOS had a lot to do with what Google was doing with their OS, apps, and services, and what they weren’t doing with their hardware at that time. I do like the tight integration of Apple’s apps and services across their hardware.
Software#
Shells#
Home: zsh.
Work: Powershell. It’s a learning curve coming from UNIX shells.
For both shells, I don’t have a ton of crazy things going on in my configs.
Mostly a couple of aliases for repetitive tasks, like ... going up two levels
in the directory tree, lll for ls -Alh, and etc. For the more complicated
tasks, I have python scripts wrapped by shell functions.
Terminal Emulator#
I use iTerm2. I was quite satisfied with the baked-in Terminal app that macOS provides until tmux didn’t work properly.
tmux#
tmux is amazing. On the one hand, yes I can have multiple terminal tabs, but tmux panes and windows are fabulous. And at work, it’s a godsend due to flaky ssh connections. I just reconnect and have tmux load my session again and my entire workflow is preserved.
Text Editors#
Home: Visual Studio Code and helix. At home, I flip-flop between a GUI and CLI editor and it’s usually nothing more than my mood. VS Code hooks into WSL seamlessly.
helix is an amazing text editor. My journey so far is vim -> neovim -> helix. And my reasons were mostly the same. neovim provided saner defaults than vim and its built-in LSP support was far easier than anything vim did out of the box. helix took it to the next level. Both vim and neovim required a plugin manager, multiple plugins, and constant updates (especially neovim). My helix config totals under 10 lines. I am missing a few things, but most everything else is baked in already and works fabulously.
Welp#
That seems like a good summary of the tools I use almost daily. Whether it’s at work or home, learning or blowing off steam, these are the tools I use to do it.