Software I use on my work machine
This is a list of software I use on my work machine(s) regularly and over the years.
This excludes any uninteresting software that’s part of the requirements of my work as a software engineer, such as Slack, my IDE, etc. instead, the focus is to highlight the optional software I use, as that has more thought behind it.
My work machines have historically been Macs, while my personal machines run Linux. Because of that, there’s some MacOS exclusive software I use for my work machines.
Linear Mouse
https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse
I switch back and forth between my home office and various coworking spaces, or the occasional kitchen table. Because of this, I end up using a specific mouse at home (Logitech G502), mice that I keep at coworking spaces (Lenovo WL300), and the trackpad.
The amount of annoyance I got from opening up the settings to swap “Natural Scroll” back and forth between connecting and disconnecting mice is unreasonable on my end, and after putting up with it for years, I finally found Linear Mouse.
It allows for per-mouse configuration that swaps over when active mouse changes. Simple concept that makes my life a little easier (even if it probably should just be in the MacOS settings).
Handy
https://github.com/cjpais/Handy
A friend of mine got me to try SuperWhisper and it was fantastic for typing up stream of consciousness style stuff, like Slack messages. When looking for an open source alternative, I found Handy.
It works very well on all my machines with different operating systems, with a few irks that have resolutions on the roadmap. As of the initial writing of this, there’s a feature pause so I don’t want to clog up an already busy PR and issues list.
Obsidian
All my general personal work notes go into Obsidian. I have a separate vault for my personal use that came first, and I figured I’d use it as well at work.
Unlike my personal vault, I heavily leverage daily notes. I used to handle my to-do lists for the day entirely on paper, but I find it much easier to expand upon them later if they’re digital.
Sublime Text
Good old Sublime! I first started using Sublime sometime around 2015 or 2016 as my graduation from Notepad++. It was my primary text editor until I was introduced to VS Code in college.
Nowadays, I use it essentially as a set of buffers. It becomes a clean, simple window for me to dump in temporary data. Maybe a regex I need to hold on to for 10 minutes, maybe an API key I need to put into Secrets Manager, or maybe I’m refining a prompt.
I still prefer Sublime over a standard note app or VS Code for this kind of thing. It helps that it’s lightweight and unobtrusive as well.
UTC time
https://sindresorhus.com/utc-time
Just adds UTC to the top bar. Simple and so incredibly useful for quickly doing date math when looking at logs or the database.
DataGrip
https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/
The best database client I’ve used. It has some quirks that bug me, but it blows everything else I’ve tried out of the water. I spend a lot of time dealing with relational databases, and having a good client has proven to be very worth the minimal cost (especially when your employer covers it).