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” Lenovo ThinkPad L15, Ryzen 7 Pro, 16GB RAM (2021)

    I was using an Intel-based 16” Casper 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 my various virtual machines.

  • Philips Standard 27” Display

    For development and design tasks, I suggest you a display which is at least 27”. This is far more productive than having two 24” displays.

  • Logitech K360 Keyboard

    This keyboard has an ideal size so it has all the keys including media keys and you can move it inside your backpack. Another good point with this keyboard is that its batteries last very long.

  • Logitech M705 Mouse

    This is a very useful mouse with 9 buttons and you can customize them! It has infinite scroll feature which is very useful for long documents. Its batteries are also last very long.

  • An Ergonomic Chair and Big Desk

    The brand doesn’t matter too much but you need to a chair which has adjustable height, lumbar support and armrest to be able to stay healthy. And a big desk would probably make your life easier.

Development tools

  • Ubuntu

    It is free, stable and good-looking; what else could I ask for! While I am also a fan of Arch Linux; for work, Ubuntu is generally more convenient. I am also a big fan of GNOME desktop environment.

  • Visual Studio Code

    It is lightweight, fast and has all IDE features; it is a developer’s dream. While I also enjoy developing inside Emacs and Vim, Visual Studio Code is generally easier to use.

  • Firefox

    Firefox has come a long way lately, but you could still argue that Chrome is more convenient since it is more popular. Still I love open source and favor open source tools over propriatery ones.

  • GitHub

    GitHub is my actual social media. I host all my open source projects there, follow people I admire and collaborate with brilliant coders. It has also very good feature set.

  • Renovate

    For any project, keeping dependencies up-to-date is a real pain. Renovate solves this problem; it updates dependencies with latest ones and opens PRs so you can review them and merge if they are OK.

Development

  • Next.js

    Between current web development trends, there is one tool which solves most big problems elegantly: Next.js. With it, you can make an interactive SPA or SEO-friendly static pages or anything between them.

  • Tailwind UI

    It has a complete set of components to make anything from a personal website to an enterprise SAAS solution. It is not free but I think it would pay its price back in a short therm.

Productivity

  • uBlock Origin

    This is a browser extension to block annoying ads. While some ads might be useful, most of them are just distracting. This extension prevents this distraction. And it is fast!