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

  • 13” MacBook Pro, M1, 16GB RAM (2020)

    I was using an Intel-based 16” MacBook Pro with 64GB RAM prior to this, but the performance of the M1 is just amazing. The smaller size makes working from the couch more comfortable as well.

  • WASD V3 104-Key Custom Mechanical Keyboard

    When we were looking into mechanical keyboards for all the developers at Coddin, I found WASD Keyboards from the USA. We designed some fully customized keyboards in our brand colors and they are amazing. To keep the office a bit quiet, we chose Cherry MX Silent Red switches.

  • IKEA Markus Chair

    These chairs are soooo comfortable. Everyone in the office uses them and loves them. Although not everyone keeps the armrests attached.

  • 4k monitor

    This was a gift from my lovely wife. Amazing piece of technology with such crisp details. More information will be added as soon as I can find out which one it is.

Development tools

  • JetBrains PhpStorm

    Started using PhpStorm as a replacement of Eclipse and oh my. Especially love the shift+shift quick open file shortcut and integrated git support.

  • iTerm2

    Like most people who use this. I’m not sure why this is better, but it works well in combination with OhMyZsh.

  • TablePlus

    I got introduced to this by a colleague and was mostly using the database intergation of PhpStorm before. It works very well. Setup is easy and it remembers your SQL snippets over multiple tabs.

Design

  • Adobe XD

    Coming from Photoshop, Adobe XD is just awesome. They keep adding new features. I’m bummed that it is no longer free tho.

Productivity

  • Offline Checklists

    I try to make a new checklist every day of what I need to do that day. If something remains on the checklist, it gets transferred to the new one. If I’ve been avoiding a task for multiple days, it probably isn’t important so I drop or delegate it.″There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.″- Peter Drucker