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

  • 16” MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 64GB RAM (2021)

    I was using an Intel-based 16” MacBook Pro 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 simulators.

  • Generic monitor

    The only display on the market if you want something HiDPI and bigger than 27”. When you’re working at planetary scale, every pixel you can get counts.

  • Generic Keyboard

    They don’t make keyboards the way they used to. I buy these any time I see them go up for sale and keep them in storage in case I need parts or need to retire my main.

  • Apple Magic Trackpad

    Something about all the gestures makes me feel like a wizard with special powers. I really like feeling like a wizard with special powers.

  • Ikea Chair

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

Development tools

  • VS Code

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

  • ChatGPT

    Is this a dev tool? maybe not. Have I used it to write 100's of lines of code instantly? Definitely

Design

  • TailwindUI

    Great UI kit. As I am not a designer, this is critical to creating visually usable interfaces. You may have figured out I rely heavily on this kit already. Hahaha

Productivity

  • Raycast

    It is the newest kid on the block but it’s still the fastest. The Sublime Text of the application launcher world.

  • Obsidian

    Using a daily notes system instead of trying to keep things organized by topics has been super powerful for me. This is one of those things that I waste hours configuring for fun. So maybe not always so productive. It does power the blog section of this website though, which is cool.

  • Calendar

    My mind is a steel trap, and I don't need calendars. If you are reading this consider yourself warned.

  • Focus

    Still trying to find some of this somewhere.