When I dove(yet again)into software development, and even to this day, podcasting has been a crucial part of my education as a developer and system architect. Not having the traditional computer science background to rely upon, Shout out to my IT Major homies! learning from the best in the field who volunteer their time to speak, has been a blessing.
A common theme amongst podcast producers is to talk about what they use. Be it a favorite keyboard, IDE, beanie, etc., these type of sick picks and shout outs are common. Wes Bos easily has my favorite take on this with his formalization of these recommendations at his Uses.Tech - As a fan, and constant listener of Syntax, I felt obliged to join the croud.
Accordingly - here are all the things that I /uses
/uses/computing
16GB Ram - 1TB SSD
Though I've used many of the mac models from 2006 till now, I find the weight and size of the Air to be perfect. With Cross Compilation a strong feature of Docker, I rarely get caught up on the whole "arm vs amd64" debate.
ClackityClackityClackity! - A fantastic full-size keyboard with soft ABS caps, variable backlighting, and a Mac OS Screenshot key. Reminds me of the old IBM 101. Its a steal at under $100 US.
I have a few of these floating around. They are cheap, have switchable DPI settings, and are so-far indestructible. I prefer the (perhaps retired) M601 as it is a traditional USB-A wired variety
Paired with an ultra-wide monitor, these things are amazing! Somehow they manage to present audio as if it were coming from the middle of the screen. The imaging and bass response are better than most luxury car audio systems.
I've ran several of these at home and in office settings without issues. Sometimes the gradients aren't that great over display link and so forth... but for the money, its a great spend for real-estate.
/uses/development
When it comes to software development, I'm usually inclined to use the free stuff.
- Browser - Chrome. I build a lot with Google gloud and leverage Gsuite (or whatever they call it), so this makes sense.
- IDE - VS Code. It works. It has plugins. It has a terminal.
- SVN - Github. Again, it works.
- Building - Github Actions. I don't like it much, but I tend to script things anyway, so the lift is small.