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My workstation, tools I use and some services I recommend.

I get asked a lot about the things I use to build software, stay productive, or buy to fool myself into thinking I’m being productive when I’m really just procrastinating. Here’s a big list of all of my favorite stuff.

Workstation

  • PC - Custom Build (Oct. 2022)

    Finally after 6 years of using my previous PC (and waiting 2 years for the crypto craze to subside the prices of gpu's), I was finally build a PC not just to code and design but also to play some crazy AAA games at min. 60fps in my free time.

    Specs: Ryzen 7 5800x, Aorus B550 Pro AX, Crucial Ballistix 32GB, Gigabyte GOC 6800 XT, KC3000 1TB, Aorus P850W Gold+.

  • Monitor - Gigabyte G24F

    After shelling our my savings on the crazy spec'd PC, this is the monitor I bought to go with it. It's a 24" 144hz 1080p monitor with a 1ms response time. It's not the best monitor out there but it's good enough for me, especially at this price point.

  • Mouse - Razer Basilisk V3

    Ergonimics matter. Especially when you spent a majority of your day working on a computer. Whether it be just browsing and playing intense fps games, this Razer mouse provides a good grip, feel and intensity for my palm.

Development tools

  • Visual Studio Code

    While I did start out with Notepad++ and Submlime Text and PhpStorm is indeed a powerfull tool, none of them provides the speed, efficiancy and extensibility of VS Code. I use it for everything from editing HTML, CSS and JS to writing PHP.

    Some of the VS Code extensions I use: Slime Theme, Tailwind CSS IntelliSense, Prettify JSON, PHP IntelliSense, Better Pest, Azure Repos, Laravel Blade Snippets, etc.

  • Laragon

    Laragon is a portable, isolated, fast & powerful universal development environment for PHP, Node.js, Python, Java, Go, Ruby. Since I develop primarily on a Windows machine, Laragon is a must have. It's a great alternative to XAMPP and WAMP.

Deployment services

  • Digital Ocean

    If you want to host your own site and have full control over every aspect of it, then Digital Ocean is the answer to your question. With industry leading quality of services and prices, it's a no brainer.

  • Ploi.io

    Ploi is an absolute Godsend for developers. It's a deployment service that allows you to deploy your site in seconds, and it's so easy to use that even a 5 year old could do it. Compared to the alternatives, it provides the best price-to-features ratio.

Design programs

  • Photoshop 2022

    I became familiar with Photoshop during the CS4 era (~2009) when I was playing around and testing different ways to create artwork for my school projects. I’ve been using it ever since and it’s still the best tool for creating and manipulating images.

  • After Effects 2022

    Another tool from Adobe that I absolutely love. While there maybe be cheaper alternatives out there, After Effects is imho the best tool for creating animations and motion graphics.