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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.
  • boAt Airdopes 141 ANC
    Cheap, effective noise cancelling. Drowns out cafés and open offices alike.
  • Rooted Realme (Android)
    For tinkering — custom ROMs, ADB experiments, and testing mobile APIs against localhost.

Editor & Terminal

  • VS Code
    Extensions ecosystem is unmatched. Debugging, git, terminal — all in one window.
  • Antigravity
    AI pair-programmer that actually understands the codebase. Context-aware and fast.
  • 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.

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.
  • 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.
  • GitHub Copilot
    Inline completions in VS Code. Best for boilerplate and test scaffolding.
  • 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.
  • Heroku
    Quick deploys when I don't want to think about infrastructure at all.
  • 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.

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 2026-05-23