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What I use

A big chunk of being a developer is figuring out what tools to use. Yes, knowledge and being a team player are extremely important, but so is knowing what tools to use.

Of course I love Figma, GitHub, ChatGPT, G Calendar... but here I'll focus on the tools that are less known, but make my life easier.

I bet a coffee that if you give these tools an honest try, you'll fall in love just like I did. If they don't convince you, I'll owe you a coffee.

• Arc Browser: Every person I have shown this browser to absolutely loves it. It's fast, it's beautiful, it just works. Built on Chromium, but re-skinned with a focus on usefulness.
• Raycast: Replaces Spotlight on Mac. It's faster, more powerful and just works. Best part: install / create extensions. My favourites are Show My IP, AirPods Mode Switch, Clipboard History, Color Picker and Just Play... (to play music). The team behind Raycast is out of this world, some of the best developers and UX designers ever are working at Raycast, including Pedro Duarte ↗.
• Twitter: (Less well-known as 𝕏). If you train your feed to only show you the best content, it's a great tool. But you have to ensure that you're only seeing the best content. Don't be afraid of smashing the "Not interested" button whenever the feed gets weird.
• Apple Mac M$x$ Series: Yes, I know they're more expensive than Windows alternatives. But if you spend most of your day in front of a computer anyways, you might as well spend a bit more to get an improved experience. I am proud to have converted a growing list of people from PC to Mac: Khalid Belhadj ↗, Roberta Pošiūnaitė ↗, Dorna Hamed Barghi ↗ and Wietske ↗.
• ReadCV: Incredibly talented people share their work by adding it to their CV. The /explore page contains a curated list of the latest work from people you've never heard of. If you are looking for inspiration and meeting new people, this is the place to be. The creator Andy Chung ↗ is worth a follow.
• Cursor: VSCode fork that integrates AI to every part of your workflow. The context window for code generation is not only based on the current file, but also on the entire project. Super useful for quickly getting adding features to projects.
• Grepper: Adds snippets to Google search results. You can create your own snippets and upvote/downvote snippets. Almost like a pseudo-Reddit right on your search results. Extremely useful for repetitive queries that you don't want to open a website for. Eg: "undo last commit git", "alphabet"...
• Obsidian: A powerful note-taking app that I use to draft my blog posts. Files that you create are saved to your computer as .md files, so no more vendor lock-in. Supports all kinds of markdown (including $\LaTeX$) and has an amazing plugin ecosystem. I've used to to write Uni notes and make flashcards. Pro tip: if you are using >iOS 18 and iCloud sync for Obsidian, I highly recommend enabling the Keep Downloaded feature on the Obsidian folder.
• UptimeRobot: Monitor uptime of your endpoints. Free plan is extremely generous and checks endpoints every 5 minutes!
• Web Interface Guidelines by Rauno Freiberg ↗: Useful checklist when creating interfaces. Reminds you how to build smooth, accessible and elegant interfaces.
• Unavatar: Smoothly retrieve avatar pictures of people. Given a username on a platform, the service provides their avatar picture. If a picture is updated, so will the avatar served by Unavatar.
• Retro: Sharing your week's pictures with your friends. This the first social media network that actually makes me feel closer to my friends. The team is also looking to monetize in a way that doesn't involve ads, but things like printed cards. Very exciting.
• YouTube: It might seem like an obvious choice, but following the right channels makes all the difference.
  • Fireship ↗ is perfect for quick, witty overviews of tech topics and emerging trends.
  • If you prefer a more opinionated and deep-dive approach, Theo ↗ does no-nonsense takes on full-stack (with emphasis on frontend) development, discussing the pros and cons of tools like Next.js and tRPC based on real-world experience. Some of his takes are more controversial than others, but his opinions are usually valuable and on-point.
  • For a more backend-focused view, Hussein Nasser ↗ covers software architecture, databases, and system design. My personal favorites are when he opens the network tab and runs through every single request and response made on big websites like Netflix. Loads to learn!
• Lex Fridman ↗'s podcast has long-form conversations with a (very) diverse range of experts. Lex dives deep into complex topics like technology or the future of humanity and somehow manages to always ask the right questions and follow along regardless of the complexity of the topic. My personal favorites are the ones with tech CEOs and AI researchers.
• Bezel: Easiest way to get screenshots (and as of recent, videos) from Apple devices with their device frames. Beautifully simple and effective. This is what I'm using to take screenshots of my projects.

Lastly, friends and family.

See you in the future,
Tomas