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

  • Apple MacBook Pro (14-inch, M2 Max, 32 GB RAM, 2023)

    My daily driver is Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M2 Max. The 12‑core CPU and 38‑core GPU handle heavy parallel builds and container stacks without breaking a sweat, while the Liquid Retina XDR display lets me preview HDR graphics exactly as they’ll ship. With 32 GB of unified memory I can keep multiple IDEs, Docker, and half a dozen browser profiles open all day and still have headroom for a few VMs.

  • Apple Magic Trackpad

    After years of laptop trackpad muscle memory, I stick with Apple’s standalone version at the desk. The glass surface, haptic feedback, and precise gesture recognition make it effortless to swipe between virtual desktops, pinch‑zoom design mock‑ups, and scrub video timelines — all without lifting a mouse.

  • LG 27‑inch Monitor

    A 27‑inch 4K LG panel (single USB‑C cable) gives me the real estate to park a browser, terminal grid, and design canvas side by side. The IPS screen stays color‑accurate enough for UI work, and the thin bezels keep focus on content rather than hardware.

Development tools

  • WezTerm

    GPU‑accelerated and endlessly configurable, WezTerm is my go‑to terminal emulator. Split panes, SSH multiplexing, and built‑in font ligatures keep micro‑interactions snappy, while Lua‑based config files make advanced tweaks feel like coding instead of plumbing.

  • oh-my-zsh

    oh‑my‑zsh supercharges zsh with a plug‑and‑play framework of themes and plugins. It gives me Git‑aware prompts, autosuggestions, and alias bundles that shave minutes off every terminal session — all while remaining easy to extend with custom functions.

  • JetBrains

    From GoLand to PhpStorm to IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, JetBrains’ ecosystem is where most of my code lives. Deep language intelligence, powerful refactoring, and seamless Docker/Kubernetes integration let me bounce between Go, Java, and Python projects without context‑switch penalties.

  • Excalidraw

    When a whiteboard sketch would help but I’m remote, Excalidraw nails it. Its hand‑drawn aesthetic keeps diagrams approachable, and the real‑time collaboration mode turns architecture discussions into living documents you can paste straight into docs or issues.

Productivity

  • Claude

    Anthropic’s Claude is my brainstorming and rubber‑duck partner. I use it to draft technical docs, sanity‑check architecture ideas, and occasionally refactor tricky regexes — saving human reviewers for the deeper dives.

  • Paste

    Paste is the clipboard time machine I never knew I needed. It stores a searchable history of everything I copy — code snippets, colour hexes, SQL queries—and lets me tag favourites so the “good” snippets are always a ⌘⇧V away.

  • CleanShot X

    CleanShot X replaces half a dozen utilities: it grabs pixel‑perfect screenshots, recognizes the text, blurs sensitive data automatically, and even hosts the results for quick sharing. Perfect for bug reports, onboarding guides, and release‑note GIFs.