Hi! It's me, Joris.

It looks like I've linked you here myself. Linking people to a blogpost I wrote is often a bit akward, especially at work.

I likely shared this blog in an attempt to further a conversation. Usually the post does a better job at succinctly sharing information than I could by talking.

In any case, I hope me sharing this post doesn't come across as humblebragging, that's really the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.

Thanks for reading!

Tools of the Trade
5 min read

Software I love ❤️

Productivity Tools 🎨

Notion : I’ve tried many different note-taking tools over the years, but since late 2018 I’m a Notion convert. I’ve written a blog post on how Notion has become my digital brain. Things I like the most: cross-platform support (incl. web and mobile) with cloud synching, block-based editing with support for a wide-variety of block-types, frequent releases with new features.
Simplemind : Cross-platform mind-mapping tool. While I don’t often use mind-mapping tools, I’ve tried out quite a few mindmapping tools over the years, and settled on Simplemind because its cloud-synching and cross platform support, its rich feature-set and the fact that it’s actively maintained.
Draw.io: My go-to diagramming tool. Intuitive and powerful. Has a desktop version as well.
RustDesk: Great open source remote desktop solution
Maccy mac-only: Clipboard manager for mac. Does the job, nothing fancy. I still think there is room for a more developer-oriented clipboard app (I’ve played with the idea of building one before).
BetterTouchTool mac-only: Powerful customization tool for your mac’s TouchBar - so you can make it actually useful 😎. Also allows for easy customization of keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures and much more.
Magnet mac-only: Utility app that allows you to snap windows into organized tiles - similar to how window snapping works on Windows. Useful to put screens next to each-other.
Bartender mac-only: Menu tray icon organizer - very useful to de-clutter your tray menu.
Dato mac-only: Better menu bar clock with calendar and time zones.
Amphetamine mac-only: Tiny program that helps you to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep or starting a screensaver.
CleanShot X mac-only: Screenshot capture and annotation tool - use it multiple times a day. Pricey, but worth it for me. I’ve used Skitch and Annotate in the past but moved to Cleanshot since both Annotate and Skitch are no longer actively maintained (for mac).
1Password: Cross-platform password manager with large feature-set. After more than a decade of using Lastpass, I recently switched to 1Password after reading some pretty bad things about the recent Lastpass security breach and their general security practices.
Authy: Cross-platform multi-factor authenticator app that is a drop-in replacement for Google Authenticator.

Web browsing 🌍

Firefox: After using Google Chrome since v1.0 (back in 2008!), I’ve switched back to Firefox a year ago. It feels faster, more private and better for power-users. It’s good to be back.
uBlock Origin: Free, open-source ad content blocker. Seldomly blocks content incorrectly. Indispensable.
Tab Wrangler: Automatically closes inactive tabs and makes it easy to get them back. Life-saver to keep your browser window somewhat clean (and computer fast!).
Cookie AutoDelete: When a tab closes, any cookies not being used are automatically deleted. Keep the ones you trust (forever/until restart) while deleting the rest.
Old Reddit Redirect: Automatically open websites in a dedicated container based on URL patterns.
Containerise firefox-only: Automatically open websites in a dedicated container based on URL patterns.
Foxy Proxy firefox-only: Send traffic to different web proxies based on URL patterns. I use this to seperate out my personal traffic (routed via an HTTP proxy) from work traffic.
Multi-Account Containers firefox-only: Keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded container tabs, with each container having cookies separated. Useful to create isolation between shopping, banking, producitvity, work websites.
Containerise firefox-only: Automatically open websites in a dedicated container based on URL patterns.

Enlarge
Firefox with the listed extensions

Software Development ⚙️

VSCode: Visual Studio Code is my go-to general purpose text editor, for both general text editing as well as coding. I find it (much) better than Sublime, BBEdit, TextWrangler or Atom. I exclusively use the Insiders Build which is generally very stable. Extension call-outs: Draw.io, Luna Paint, Remote Development Pack, vscode-icons
Datagrip: Database IDE that can connect to many different database backends.
Colima: container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup. I used Podman Desktop as a replacement for Docker for a while but have found colima just works while podman sometimes requires figuring out workarounds.
Github Co-Pilot: AI pair programmer. I’ve been blown away by it’s smart autocompletion suggestions - I use this every day.
rtx: Programming Language (and more) version manager. Allows you to have multiple versions of Java, Python, Ruby, etc installed and easily switch between them. Up until recently I used asdf but switched to rtx for its improved simplicity and installation speed.

Seeing is believing: @github co-pilot is absolutely mind blowing. I didn't write any of the code in the screenshot. I didn't even write half of the comments. It's as if it can read my mind. This will change the entire industry. pic.twitter.com/0cZXjctcXF
— Joris Roovers (@jorisroovers) July 14, 2021

Commandline 💻

My dotfiles: Source of all my commandline customizations for zsh and bash.
iTerm2: iTerm2 is a widely popular replacement for macOS Terminal with a large feature-set. Chances are you’re already using it if you’re reading this :-)
mosh: Drop-in replacement for SSH that deals with intermittent server connectivity. Gone are the annoying typing delays when SSHing to a server over WAN or a spotty internet connection.
Oh My Posh: A prompt theme engine for any shell. Allows you to
ripgrep : Super-fast replacement for grep with sane defaults. Must-have.
bat: Bat - A modern cat clone with line syntax highlighting, line numbering and more. Highly recommend to set alias cat=‘bat’.
lsd: rewrite of ls with lots of added features like colors, icons, tree-view, more formatting options etc. Highly recommend to set alias ls=‘lsd’
fd: fd is a simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find with sensible (opinionated) defaults for most use cases. Highly recommend to set alias find=‘fd’.
fzf: General purpose command-line fuzzy finder. I used it primarily as much better replacement for bash’s default history search feature (i.e. CTRL+R).
delta: Much improved diff tool. Especially useful in combination with git.
jq: From the jq website: “jq is like sed for JSON data - you can use it to slice and filter and map and transform structured data with the same ease that sed, awk, grep and friends let you play with text.”
desk: Lightweight workspace manager for the shell. I prefer it over tools like direnv and autoenv because it allows me to store workspaces centrally and (de)activate them explicitely.
usql: Universal command-line interface for SQL databases.
Others: The tools above are the those I use (almost) daily, but there’s a few more I only use occassionaly. Most are listed in the Julia Evans’ excellent blogpost A list of new(ish) command line tools.