tool chest
The right tooling is essential to work effectively and can make life much easier. Unfortunately, finding good tools can be a hustle. So many times I stumbled upon a new tool through a friend, a blog post online or a YouTube video and thought to myself: I wish I knew about this earlier...
Thus I'd like to introduce you to some of the tools I use daily. I'm trying to frequently update this list and keep it growing. If you have any tools you think I might be interested in write me a line.
Developing
Although there is in my opinion no more comfortable way of developing software than with a full-fledged IDE, there are use cases where a simple text editor is enough. Personally, I wouldn't wanna switch away from my JetBrains IDEA to develop Java, but IDEA can be cumbersome and slow just to open a file (e.g. a YAML Manifest or a short script) and make a few modifications. Looking for an inexpensive text editor I found Neovim and the NvChad configuration. Neovim is a lightweight and hyperextensible text editor based on the popular Vim editor. NvChad on the other hand a set of base configurations to make Vim more extensive, and add features and themes.
To get started I strongly suggest going through the Vimtutor and learning the basics of Vim and watching this video by Dreams of Code
MacOS
There are only a few downsides to working with a MacBook and MacOS. The missing package manager is one. Fortunately, Max Howell has come up with a solution. Homebrew with its great community and support has basically become the standard MacOS Package manager.
A tip from me if you're already using Homebrew:
The following command creates a so-called Brewfile (or overwrites an existing one). It contains all taps, brews, casks or even mas (if you have the MacOS App Store extension installed) in a simple text format.
brew bundle dump --force
Save and version the Brewfile in a remote Git Repository. In case you switch to another device and would like to install your basic set of software and tools without restoring a full data backup, just use the following command and Brew will install all the listed packages according to your Brewfile.
brew bundle install
Design
I'm not an artist, but from time to time I enjoy drawing on my iPad. Understanding the power of the tools available empowers the creativity of the possible, even with limited drawing skills. To do so, I use Procreate. Procreate might not be the cheapest drawing app, but a pretty complete one. Watching a few tutorials online should be enough to kickstart your creativity.
Procreate offers furthermore the option of exporting time-lapse videos of your drawing projects. See here how I came up with my relivnd logo or my bachelor-thesis cover:
Honourable Mention:
Rectangle
Rectangle adds window snapping to MacOS. If you use it once, life without it becomes unimaginable. What I like most about Rectangle is its adaptability to different screen forms and sizes.