Software I use, gadgets I love, and other things I recommend.

I get asked a lot about what I use to build software, stay productive, or splurge. Here’s a short list of all of my favorite stuff.

Workstation

  • MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)

    Don't fix what's not broken. I'm honestly not sure how this 10+ year old laptop is still running so well. For simple coding, team meetings, and collaboration apps, this thing is still a champ.

  • Custom Machine Learning server, Ryzen 9, 256GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX-A5000 ADA (2023)

    This is the workhorse for large-scale analytics, training machine learning models, and running batch workflows with Apache Airflow. I previously used multiple RTX-3090 cards, but when I switched to a single high-performance card the difference was night and day.

  • OnlyKey

    The best solution I've found for a hardware password+key manager and general auth tool (FIDO2 / U2F, Yubikey OTP, TOTP). When working with sensitive data or on multiple simultaneous projects, simple and reliable security is critical.

Development tools

  • Sublime Text 4

    It lacks any AI coding assistance or other fancy features, but if you know how/what you're coding, it is super fast and also manages projects well.

  • @hookstate

    A robust library to manage states in React/Next apps. This made the list because of how significantly it has benefited my workflow when building webapps. It can work as simple as a 'useState(false)' or optimally manage deeply nested local and global states for highly complex applications.

Design

  • Figma

    We started using Figma just to get rough designs to external developers, but it has become our design source of truth and brainstorming whiteboard.

Productivity

  • AutoHotKey

    A pretty old (now) framework to create custom keyboard shortcuts and triggers in any program. It makes working on Windows much more efficient and enjoyable.

  • Notion

    Such a simple premise for an app, and yet I find myself using it constantly. Similar to other apps like Quip, it streamlines document creation and sharing, so I can quickly create planning and collaboration docs and know there won't be any issues with teammates accessing or opening them.

  • Calendly

    A reliable tool for scheduling meetings while protecting my calendar and making sure I still have lots of time for deep work during the week.

  • Boox Note Air 3

    Using daily handwritten notes that I can search through has been a personal secret for how I manage deadlines and important details. Boox makes E-Ink tablets that are the closest I've found to the feeling of writing on paper. It makes it really easy for me to keep all notes organized and discoverable by day/meeting/goal.