My Tools of Trade – 2022 Edition

I am a software engineer supporting the design, development, rollout and maintenance of UgandaEMR, one of the national electronic medical records systems in Uganda by day. At night I dabble in PHP development with Laravel and I am in love with TailwindCSS. I am looking to get more into data analytics with R/PowerBI in 2022

Note – This was inspired by Wes Bos, who I am huge fan of! This list will be a living document that I will update whenever anything changes!

2020/21 forced us from the office into home, so while my initial setups mirrored the office this new home office is unique as its evolving to be my primary workspace

The previous editions are:

2022 Workspace Setup

Hardware

MacBookPro 15″ 2019 version with 2.4GHz, 8-core i9 processsor, 32GB RAM and 1TB HDD covered with the MOSISO MacBook Pro 15 inch Case for scratch protection. I am going to be trying out a 16″ 10 Core M1 Pro 2021 with 16GB RAM, 512GB HDD for a performance comparison

Due to the change to USB-C only I am also sharing the accessories making this transition less painful:

  1. Anker USB-C to HDMI Cable permanently plugged into my monitor so just use it when needed
  2. AUKEY USB C Adapter Aluminum to provide a USB port when needed

Logitech MX Master 3 mouse (black) had to replace a grey version that died unceremoniously, excellent curves, scrolling options with 70 days on a single full charge (and the claim is real, as I only charge when I feel guilty) used with a Gimars Large Smooth Superfine Fibre Memory Foam Ergonomic Mouse Pad Wrist Rest SupportLogitech MX Keys keyboard for clam-shell use using JARLINK Vertical Laptop Stand to help save space on my desk. I am experimenting with the MX Keys Mini as I do not need the full keyboard

Lenovo G34w-10 34-Inch WQHD Curved Gaming Monitor an ultra-wide which is now my primary monitori, gives me the equivalent of 2 full screens side-by-side

VIVO 32 inch Desk Converter, Height Adjustable Riser, Sit to Stand Dual Monitor and Laptop Workstation with Wide Keyboard Tray which provides me with a standing desk option, helps break the monotony of sitting all day

Software

Jetbrains suite of IDES, Intellij Ultimate for Java (mainstay), PhpStorm for PHP, PyCharm for Python and Data Grip for database management (MySQL and PostgreSQL). I am looking forward to Fleet for lightweight editing which does not require a fiull blown editor

iTerm2 as the expected replacement, despite upgrading to Catalina, I have maintained bash as my default shell

HomeBrew for package management, my primary installtion tool for both command line and gui tools

Alfred for opening apps (not yet grown to the worflow stage) so using the free version

PHP development tools:

Caffeine for keeping the laptop awake when I need to

Magnet for sizing different screens when in use

RDM for changing resolutions as I take screenshots for documentation

Parallels for running Windows virtual machines for PowerBI development

Firefox for all browsing needs and Firefox Developer Edition for web development

Cloud storage – Box.com for office work, Dropbox for personal use with Google Drive for backup (currently subscribing for 200GB plan)

And whatever office editing and communications tools my colleagues whom I am collaborating with are using, MS Office, Office 365, Google Docs, Zoom, Slack, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Telegram, Whatsapp, Skype (thankfully almost none), Skype for Business … the list just keeps on growing, but I try to work with the easiest tool that whoever I am working with finds

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