Like in any industry, programmers have tools. I always enjoy finding out what others use so here’s a collection of mine. I’ve limited my list to my most used ones. Drop me a line if you have any recommendations!

Hardware

Macbook Pro 13” – I have a late 2012. Other than the disk size, it does everything I need. I’m considering upgrading to a 15” for more screen space but I’m not in a rush. I think I may well have swapped to a linux-based laptop if it wasn’t for the iOS development.

27” Monitor – I’ve tried lots of things but the single big screen (next to my laptop retina screen) works best for me.

Notebook & Pencil – I find that I take better notes using pencil on paper due to its freedom. I also draw wireframes this way too.

Bose QC35 – Aaah, such silence! These are total magic. They’re my most recent purchase and I can’t believe how well they work. I’ve had noise cancelling headphone before but these are something else. I work from my home office and have noisy kids – not an ideal combination for focused work. These headphones are honestly making a big difference.

Software

Sublime Text – Not perfect but it does what I need and has enough good plugins to keep me satisfied.

XCode – Necessary evil. Saying that, it does have nice things and I’m sure it’s getting better.

iTerm2 – I spend a lot of time here. Along with Zsh, I’ve got it set up nicely using a combination of my own tweaks & aliases and ready made recipes.

Paw – This is a super handy tool for testing APIs while developing. I haven’t found anything it can’t do yet and I’ve had to do some pretty weird stuff.

Trello – I use the Calendar power-up for Trello for make a schedule. I think add those ical feeds to my calendar to see what I’ve got coming up over all my projects.

Slack – Chatting with friendly clients and co-workers. I haven’t got to the point where it’s spammy as I work in small teams but can imagine it would as groups get bigger.

Gmail – Pretty standard. I use it with Inbox Zero which really helps keep on top of things.

Pomodoro Time – I use Pomodoro a fair amount. This menu bar app is simple and pretty unobtrusive.

Chrome – Mainly for the developer console.

Alternote – For note taking.

Dictionary – I use this quite a bit actually for naming things.

Alfred – For starting things.

1Password – For forgetting passwords.

Spotify – All day.