As I spend most of my week writing code, I may as well make it an awesome place to be.
This machine has been a trusty & reliable workhorse since I bought it in late 2019, I specced this puppy up:
I'm due an upgrade later this year, but I'm holding out to see what Apple has planned for an M-powered equivalent for the iconic larger 27" iMac.
Truly a creature of habit - I've been using these for years to the point anything else feels weird.
I've tried other keyboards over the years, some of which I actually liked the key feel more - but they still felt comparatively weird.
I use an iPad Pro for a clean & cable-free secondary display over AirPlay.
It's quite simply the most universal & fully-featured secondary display you can get. With added bonus of being perfect for media consumption when I'm not working.
It's a proven fact that devs write better code when listening to dope beats, (probably).
I have 2 OG HomePods set up as a stereo pair, placed either side of the iMac. Although they are on the pricey side, the soundstage is very impressive for their size and have more than enough output to fill the room I work in.
The only downside to these is Siri's woeful efforts as an AI assistant, Siri is laughably poor compared to it's competition.
Only here for aesthetic purposes, but I love them 😍
I have 3 Play Bars placed vertically behind my iMac, usually set to some form of subtle colour loop for the vibes.
You can do some cool automations with these too, for example when one of my GitHub actions successfully completes, pulse green 3 times.
It's amusing how useless I am to anyone, for anything, without a cup of coffee to start the day.
The gold standard of editors when it comes to DX.
I've used a whole bunch of different editors throughout my developer journey, notable mentions include Coda, Atom, Nova & Brackets, but nothing compares to the mighty VS Code in my humble opinion.
I've been using VS Code since it was first released in 2015. I love how extensible & flexible it is, even on a per project basis if need be.
Functionality wise, VS Code can be exactly what you need it be.
A bare-bones text editor through to a fully-fledged IDE, or anything in between via it's expansive extension catalogue.
You can customise the UI make it your own via themes & icon packs.
I'm currently rocking:
Hyper.js is an awesome terminal built by the fine folks at Vercel.
a beautiful and extensible experience for command-line interface users, built on open web standards
Similarly to VS Code, it offers a vast extension catalogue, allowing you to tweak it's UI and operation to suit your needs/preferences.
To quote the product description:
Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration.
It makes managing Zsh shell configuration a breeze.
A very pretty theme for Zsh, Powerlevel10k features an emphasis on speed & flexibility, with full support for NerdFonts and endless customisation options.
About 2 minutes after installing Fig, I knew there was no going back to life without it.
It brings intellisense-style autocomplete features to my terminal, let's me easily manage dotfiles and secrets and it will even harness the power of AI to generate commands based upon arbitrary text inputs - I love it!
Victor Mono is a beautiful, open-source monospaced font with optional semi-connected cursive italics and programming symbol ligatures.
The typeface is slender, crisp and narrow, with a large x-height and clear punctuation, making it legible and ideal for code.
I love this typeface, it's easy on the eye & the cursive italics are really nice for component props.
I use it almost everywhere I work, (Apple please let me install custom fonts on iPadOS).
IMHO, Insomnia is the most awesomest tool for designing, debugging & testing APIs.
I was partial to Postman back in the day, I just find myself preferring Insomnia overall.
As I'm not quite a "10x developer" (yet, I'm working on it), I still need a visual UI to compose SVGs and Illustrator fills this need quite nicely.
I've no warm feelings for Adobe though - I don't care for a lot of their business practices and pricing strategies.
Figma is a new jam for me, I'm still learning the ropes.
I admire its objective of empowering designers & developers to better collaborate, to 'deliver better products, faster' as their excellent onboarding page states.
Here's hoping the Adobe acquisition doesn't negatively affect what is a stellar design tool for screen experiences.