Tools & Tech Stack

Below I share the tools and technologies that make life as a software engineer fun and a little easier.

This page is part of Wes Bos' uses.tech project, which is a collection of development setups, gear, software and configs.

Computer
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, M1, 2020 16GB - I switched from Windows to Mac in 2020 and have never looked back!
- MacBook Pro Docking Station - Handy for quickly attaching your peripherals and charger.
Monitors
- LG 27UN850-W 27 Inch Ultrafine UHD - A solid budget UHD monitor, times 2.
- Plugable 4K DisplayPort Dual Monitor Adapter - Required for Apple M1 silicon compatibility.
- EleTab Dual Arm Monitor Stand - These are great! I highly recommend a dual arm monitor stand, it frees up your whole desk.
Keyboard - Macally Ergonomic Keyboard - Once you get used to an ergonomic keyboard, you can code for hours in pure comfort. They're amazing.
Mouse - Logitech MX Master 3S - Hands down the best mouse I've ever used. Logitech knows what's up.

Dropbox - Cloud storage. Team uses this on occasion to share files.
Fira Code Font - Free monospaced font with programming ligatures. If you aren't using ligatures in your editor, you're missing out!
Gifski - Highest-quality GIF encoder. Convert clips into GIFs easily.
Homebrew - Package Manager for macOS.
iTerm2 - iTerm2 is a replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. I use the Fira Code font with ligatures enabled in preferences. Game changer.
Node.js - JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
nvm - Node Version Manager. Make switching node versions a breeze.
Oh My Zsh - A delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. I use the agnoster theme.
Shottr - Small, fast screenshot app with quick OCR and color picker support.
Spectacle - Move and resize windows with ease.
VLC - Free and open source cross-platform media player that supports literally everything.
VS Code - Code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. It's amazing.
Xcode Command Line Tools - For Git. Try running git in the terminal, it should prompt to install.
Zsh - Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting.

Better Comments - Improve your code commenting by annotating with alert, informational, TODOs, and more!
Code Spell Checker - Spelling checker for source code.
Even Better TOML - Fully-featured TOML support.
GitLens — Git supercharged - Supercharge the Git capabilities built into Visual Studio Code.
Gremlins tracker - Reveals some characters that can be harmful because they are invisible or looking like legitimate ones.
IntelliCode - AI-assisted development.
Markdown All in One - All you need to write Markdown (keyboard shortcuts, table of contents, auto preview and more).
Prettier - Code formatter using prettier.
YAML - YAML Language Support by Red Hat, with built-in Kubernetes syntax support.

Apollo GraphQL - Rich editor support for GraphQL client and server development that seamlessly integrates with the Apollo platform.
ESLint - Integrates ESLint JavaScript into VS Code.
Firebase - Firestore Security Rules syntax highlighting.
Import Cost - Display import/require package size in the editor.
IntelliSense for CSS class names in HTML - CSS class name completion for the HTML class attribute based on the definitions found in your workspace.
MDX - Language support for MDX.
npm Intellisense - Visual Studio Code plugin that autocompletes npm modules in import statements.
npm - npm support for VS Code.
Path Intellisense - Visual Studio Code plugin that autocompletes filenames.
React-Bootstrap Snippets - Code snippets for React-Bootstrap, authored by yours truly!
vscode-styled-components - Syntax highlighting for styled-components.

Bootstrap - World's most popular front-end component library.
Bootswatch - Free themes for Bootstrap.
ESLint - ESLint statically analyzes your code to quickly find problems.
Gatsby - React-based, GraphQL powered, static site generator.
Google Firebase - Backend-as-a-service.
Markdown - Simple markup language for formatting documents in plain text.
Netlify - All-in-one platform for modern web projects. Build, test, and deploy globally.
Prettier - An opinionated code formatter that supports many languages and formats code on save.
PWAs - Progressive web apps are cross-platform, can be installed on mobile devices, and share a single codebase.
React-Bootstrap - The most popular front-end framework rebuilt for React.
React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
Sentry.io - Full-stack error tracking system for web applications.
Storybook - Frontend workshop for building UI components in isolation. Great for documentation, too.
Styled Components - Write CSS in your JavaScript.
TypeScript - TypeScript extends JavaScript by adding types to the language.

Brave Browser - Privacy-first Chromium web browser with built-in ad blocking on desktop and mobile (yes, mobile!). Supports syncing and Chrome extensions, too.
Google Forms - Create, share, and integrate forms.
Notion - Productivity and note-taking app.
ProtonMail - End-to-end encrypted email service located in a secure facility 1 km under a mountain in Geneva, Switzerland.
Slack - Place for team to communicate.
TickTick - Task management app that helps you stay organized.

ChatGPT - Famous AI chatbot that can compose written content, code, and more.
Midjourney - Generate images from natural language text prompts. Mindblowingly cool and ahead of other AI image generators.
Poe - Platform for creating, testing, and using AI chatbots. See the bots I've created.

React Kindling - 🔥 A template to build, test, and share React components and hooks easily. I use this for all of my npm packages.

- 😎 Awesome lists about all kinds of interesting topics.
Skillshare - Online learning community with thousands of classes.
uses.tech - A list of /uses pages (like this one) detailing developer setups, gear, software and configs.

Want to see what I've built? Check out the projects I've proudly published.