I'm not a "professional" software engineer to be honest, much closer to
an enthusiast and a freelancer (when I need to be), I've never worked in a
professional environment and has pretty much been a solo developer for all my
life so my "stack" (look mah, I'm using the lingo LOL) might not look like what
others use - also, my tool belt will likely change depending on the project/whim
I'm currently focused at moment.
With that said, I feel like there's been a couple of staples that I've kept around
no matter what enviroment I'm working with.
Virtual Studio Code: I've pretty much started coding with this thing LOL,
currently writing this blog with VSCode. I tried a bunch of IDEs before just sticking with
VSCode like Atom, Netbeans, Geany & Jetbrains. Tried some proprietary ones for MQL4 and Python,
I even tried emacs and neovim (but I feel like I'll try to give them another shot as I just wasn't
learn-ed enough). I just felt like this was a more robust and user friendly platform to do the stuff
I wanted to do.... which were shenanigans. TBH, I'm still torn on learning emacs or vim as an alt, or
maybe a replacement if I see the light LOL.
GIT: In the beginning, I didn't really understand the why - maybe because I'm a solo
developer so I didn't really think version control was such a problem... and tbf, I still don't
but I started using it more when I started using github to start developing my portfolio. Personally,
I just use it as another server to backup my files and github pages, nothing more. I'll probably won't
deactivate git but setup an alternate, open source personal git server some day.
Windows Terminal: This was a new addition to the staples as I really do enjoy the CLI
enviroment even though I still enjoy the whole DE experiece. I have it open on my 2nd monitor for info
testing, git, etc. Also been trying to convert most of the stuff that I do in CLI lol.
Notepad++/nano: I think this is the only thing I share with most developers out there
, a note taking app. I like Notepad++ because it's more robust than Notepad and less annoying than
Wordpad and Word. nano when I'm in the CLI.
rando.exe: Small program I wrote using Python to randomize certain list items. I'm afflicted
with decision paralysis and one of the ways I combat that is living the dice life (lol), it's essentially
a custom dice roller.
Barrier: not really a programming tool. It's a digital KVM and I love it. I use to run an
analog KVM so I can access all my computers but with Barrier, I can link ALL OF THEM. I can be running
from my main PC and if I feel like jumping to my cybersec laptop, I just move my mouse to that direction
and voila, I'm still using my K&M going about some dark web spelunking.
ZIM: Zim is a desktop wiki which I adopted for personal use as a personal wiki. I couldve
went with notion but I wanted something light, offline, and in txt files as if I wanted to, it'll be
easier to upload or modify the files - I uploaded this to my github weekly.
Google Chrome: Don't hate me, I still use Google Chrome. I just feel like it's so much
easier to sync stuff since I'm a Google ecosystem enjoyer.
Microsoft Excel 2007: I've had this suite for years and I still install it in whatever
windows environment I'm on (also Word and Powerpoint). I'm just so used to it and I use spreadsheets
alot (current using Google Sheets as a life tracker nocap). It's just a simple way for me to store and
and keep certain type of datas.
Honorable Mentions: Playnite, RSS Guard, and Scoop. Playnite keeps track of all my video
games much easily, before I had to do it manually with a spreadsheet and was eventually going to write
a program to access the APIs of Steam, GOG, Epic & Amazon but with Playnite, they have a fancy sync function
with such a nice GUI. RSS Guard is the RSS feed reader I installed, I read my blogs and subreddits off there.
And Scoop is a windows package manager, need I say more.
this blog was inpired by this post
thank you for listening to my TED talk