Tools I Use in 2019

August 20, 2019

I have previously written about tools I use here and here. It’s fun to see how things have changed when looking back a few years.

It’s time for my 2019 version.

Coding

VS Code - I still love this code editor. I also wrote a PostgreSQL extension for it.
Git - I’m still using git along with the rest of the world.
GitHub - I use GitHub for work and personal projects. It really is the hub of all my development work these days.
Beyond Compare - Beyond Compare is still a must have diff tool for me.
RegExr - RegEx made easy. I use this site a handful of times each week.

TablePlus - I’ve switched over from Navicat to TablePlus and couldn’t be happier. This is a fantasic database management GUI tool.
psql - I use the PostgreSQL psql CLI tool quite a bit for quick queries.

Docker - I’ve been using Docker more recently. It’s becoming de-facto for development environments for good reason.
Digital Ocean - I have a Digital Ocean machine for my personal use and I use a few servers at work. I still enjoy this service: the price, offering and documentation.
AWS - These days, I use AWS primarily for S3.

macoS Mojave - I’m still using a MacBook. I bought a Surface Laptop about 6 months ago to “try it out” but took it back to the store after about a week. Maybe one day I’ll switch back to Windows but I’m still enjoying macOS. They really need to fix the keyboard problem though.
1Password - I used to use LastPass primarily because the 1Password Android client was unusable for me. But, they’ve improved it greatly and I’m a happy 1Password user now.
Spectacle - I use this to resize windows in macOS, particularly to snap windows to the left/right on my monitors. It’s very handy because I have 3 screens.
iTerm2 - I’m a happy iTerm2 user. It’s really a fantastic terminal emulator for macOS.
Zsh - I still prefer Zsh over Bash. It has a lot of convienent, productive features.
Oh My Zsh - Oh My Zsh manages Zsh config and makes adding in themes and plugins trival.
Dato - A newer tool, this is a system tray date / clock with all sorts of useful features including showing additional timezones and integration with the Calendar app.

Franz - I use Franz to organize all the services I use to commicate (Slack, Gmail, Basecamp, etc). I love how it shows me badge count notifications for each service so I know which ones I need to look at. I wrote a Basecamp plugin for it, since it wasn’t supported by default.
Zoom - Zoom really has nailed video conference quality.
Google Meet - This is a solid tool for a video conference and is really great when I need to share my screen.
Slack - I use Slack heavily for team communication and audio calls. I usually avoid using it when I want to share my screen or make video calls because it has some relability issues.
Basecamp - I use Basecamp for projects at work.
Trello - I don’t use Trello as much as I use to but still find it useful for organizing projects or collecting thoughts.

Gifox - This is a simple yet effective animated GIF recorder. The killer feature for me is the simple drag-drop capability which I use all the time to upload to GitHub and Slack.
Monosnap - I use this tool for screenshots and annotations. It’s fast, simple and free.
dotfiles/bin - I have a collection of scripts for handy things like abstracting Git commands and ws for starting a lightweight webserver from the current directory.
Pixelmator Pro - For the occasional image edits I do.
Audacity - For the occasional audio edits I do.