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// uses

What I actually use.

Opinionated list of hardware, software, and habits that survived contact with production. Nothing here is sponsored — if it shows up, I paid for it and still reach for it on a Tuesday.

Daily Drivers

  • HP Omen 16
    Runs heavy builds and Docker without breaking a sweat. More than enough for what I throw at it.
  • Moto Buds 2
    55dB dynamic ANC, LDAC and LHDC hi-res audio, spatial audio, and 53 hours of total playback. Exceptional value — hard to justify spending more.
  • Rooted Realme (Android)
    For tinkering — custom ROMs, ADB experiments, and testing mobile APIs against localhost.

Editor & Terminal

  • VS Code + Kiro
    Kiro sits inside VS Code and handles the long-horizon work — multi-file edits, spec-driven tasks, codebase investigation. The agentic layer that makes the IDE feel like a proper pair.
  • Codex CLI
    OpenAI's terminal-native coding agent. Run it inside the repo, describe what you need in plain English, and it reads the project, proposes diffs, and executes commands in a sandbox. Genuinely useful for refactors you don't want to drive line by line.
  • Zsh
    On Linux and WSL. Oh-my-zsh with autosuggestions makes the shell feel alive.
  • PowerShell
    Windows-native scripting when WSL isn't the answer. Plays well with system tools.

Frontend

  • React
    Still the default for any UI that needs real interactivity. The mental model holds up well even when the API surface keeps growing.
  • Next.js
    App Router, server components, and static export when the product doesn't need a server. Handles routing, metadata, and deployment config so I don't have to.
  • Tailwind CSS
    Utility-first CSS that stays out of the way. Combined with TypeScript and a design system, it's fast enough to not slow down the build loop.

Backend

  • Node.js + TypeScript
    Default for API work. Boring choice, fast feedback loop.
  • Fastify
    The framework I actually ship with. Schema-first, fast, and plugin-friendly.
  • Python
    CV pipelines, data scripts, automation glue. Reaches for things TS shouldn't.
  • Flask
    Python's minimal web framework. Routing and request handling without opinions. My go-to when I need a lightweight Python HTTP service or a quick internal API — nothing in its way.
  • Go
    Learning it for when concurrency and binary deploys matter more than expressiveness.
  • Zod
    Runtime types are real types. Validate at the boundary, trust within.

Databases

  • PostgreSQL
    Primary store for everything until it isn't. It's almost never not.
  • Redis
    Cache, queue, rate-limiter, ephemeral state. Keep the dataset small.
  • pgvector
    Lets me skip introducing a vector DB until 10M+ embeddings.
  • MongoDB
    For loosely structured data and rapid prototyping. Sometimes a document model just fits.
  • RabbitMQ
    When you need acks and TTLs more than partitioned logs, reach here.

AI / ML Tools

  • Claude
    Primary LLM for deep reasoning, code review, and long-context tasks.
  • Perplexity
    Search-augmented answers with citations. Replaced most of my Google searches.
  • Codex
    Used in the terminal via Codex CLI and in the IDE. Best for large, self-contained tasks — migrations, refactors, greenfield modules — where you want the agent to own a chunk of work end-to-end.
  • Pydantic
    Schema-first agent IO. The cure for stringly-typed pipelines.
  • Langfuse
    Open-source LLM observability — traces, costs, latency. Essential for Supergate.
  • OpenTelemetry
    Vendor-neutral tracing across services. Pairs with any backend for full observability.

Infrastructure

  • AWS (mostly)
    EC2 + RDS + S3 covers 95% of what I ship. Default to boring.
  • DigitalOcean
    Droplets and App Platform for side projects. Simple, predictable pricing.
  • Cloudflare
    DNS, CDN, DDoS protection, and Workers for edge logic. Pages for static deploys. Sub-50ms response times globally without touching a region config. Also the easiest way to add rate limiting and bot protection without changing your origin.
  • Docker
    Everything runs in containers. Dev parity with prod, no 'works on my machine'.
  • GitHub Actions
    Good enough CI. Don't migrate to anything fancier without a reason.

Social

  • X (Twitter)
    Where most of the backend and infra discourse still happens in real time. Useful for following people who think in public — engineers, founders, researchers. Signal-to-noise is low but the signal is worth it.
  • Reddit
    r/programming, r/node, r/golang, r/MachineLearning. Best for long-form community knowledge — the kind of answered question that stays useful two years later.
  • Bluesky
    The fastest-growing network in the technical community right now. Decentralised via the AT Protocol, chronological feed by default, and noticeably less algorithmic noise than X. Growing fast among open-source contributors, engineers, and founders — worth being on early.

Learning

  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications
    Re-read every two years. Different book each time.
  • Frontend Masters
    Deep-dive courses on Node.js, distributed systems, and databases. Worth the subscription.
  • Anthropic's research blog
    Most honest writing in the AI space right now.
  • Netflix Tech Blog
    World-class engineering at world-class scale. Every post teaches something.
  • Martin Kleppmann's blog
    The DDIA author's continued writing on distributed systems and CRDTs.
  • Will Larson's blog
    Staff-plus engineering, systems design, and engineering management. Clarifying reads.

// this page was last updated on 2026-09-10