One of the main priorities of having a blog or a website as a Software Engineer is to share valuable information with other people who might be just getting started in their career, and this could be helpful. In my personal case, I try to share in tech talks or meetups the kind of information that I would have wanted when I was at the beginning of my career.
For this reason, I see that many engineers or techfluencers share the list of items they use—mostly their physical products, sometimes with referral links. In my case, I really appreciate reading honest reviews with details, but not only about hardware; I would love to read what software they are using and—if possible—an explanation of why they chose it instead of other alternatives.
So, let’s start writing the post I would have loved to read if I were just starting as a software engineer:
Operating System: Mac
I can say that I have more years working with Mac than with any other OS. I started as a Graphic Designer, and my dream was to have a Mac—the UI looked clean, and I liked it. Another reason was that it was too expensive in my country, so I started using Windows when I was an ActionScript & Flash (with Macromedia) fan. Windows was what my family could afford at that time, but as soon as I could save some money, I bought my first Mac. It was the black PowerBook G3, the one with the logo upside down. From then on, it was a one-way street; I never wanted to go back to Windows. The system never forced me to update at startup, nor did I have to deal with antivirus software with mandatory updates.
During my years as a developer, I have always coded on Mac (except when I use my Raspberry Pi to play around)—not just for the UI, but for the performance and compatibility with software. Most developer tools are developed for Mac first, which helps you stay compatible with the newest tools around. Another great aspect is the lifespan that Mac computers have: you can use a Mac really well for 5 years, decently well for 3 more, and acceptably for 1–2 more. That’s almost 10 years in total. (I’m writing this from my 27” iMac, model 2020, so this is the last “really good” year for this baby.) I don’t really know how long Windows computers last, but they definitely won’t reach 10 years.
Code Editor: Windsurf
I’m not going to mention all the editors I have used during my almost 20 years coding, but let’s say that I moved from VS Code in January 2024 to start using Cursor, which had just been out for a few months. I was astonished by all the new AI features, especially the context awareness and the model selector (at that time, Copilot only allowed the use of their own AI/Microsoft/OpenAI models, but Cursor released the model selector).
I used Cursor until I was preparing the content for my talk at CaribeConf 2024 (you can read about it here) about the evolution of the code editor, when I installed Windsurf and fell in love with its features—especially the Cascade. With Cascade, the agent not only has context of the project, but whenever I prompt something, it starts working, and if the new feature or change it implemented generates an error or something odd, it doesn’t just display it—it acknowledges the error and starts fixing it. Windsurf Cascade tells me what files should be modified, what the approach is, and what changes it has made after every prompt.
So it’s my current editor, and I feel very comfortable with it so far. And: it’s cheaper than most other code editors—just $15 per month.
Terminal: Warp
This one is really good. It’s hard as a dev to choose tools because there will always be something new, and you might feel tempted to at least test it to see if the new thing is better than what you are currently using.
I started using the regular terminal on my Mac, but I was never too attached to it. Then in 2020, a colleague was using something shiny that I loved—it was iTerm with Powerlevel10k (zsh), and I used it until January 2023, when I discovered Warp. With Warp, I could keep the zsh styles I had in iTerm but with AI, which was the bomb at that time.
Warp has a minimal style, AI capabilities, and many more features that keep me from looking elsewhere.
API Testing: HTTPie
Again, the UI. Did I mention that I studied graphic design and that I love minimalism? Well, these guys made something functional, beautiful, and simple. Their app performs really fast and gets the job done.
Package Manager: Bun.js
I started using Bun in 2024, and I was astonished by how fast it was (...and still is). It’s like Node.js but faster.
Frontend: Next.js + Tailwind CSS + TypeScript
My journey with Next.js started in 2019/2020, when I began testing the framework to build a website quickly using React.
The simplicity of the routing, the ease of using the API Routes, and the deployment process made me fall in love with the framework.
All of my personal projects are built with Next.js, and I have used it for over 6 years now.
Backend: Supabase
I started using Supabase in 2024, and I was impressed by how easy it was to use. It’s like Firebase but open source and with many features that make the job easier.
You can just create an account and start using it for free, create a database, and start using it right away. It provides APIs to interact with the database, authentication, storage, and more.
Note: A couple of weeks ago, Supabase LW 15 was held in Santiago, Chile, and I had the honor of speaking at it. You can check my talk here.
Deployment: Vercel
As I just mentioned, I use Next.js for my frontend, and Vercel is the best place to deploy it. It’s free for open source projects and easy to use.
You can create an account, start using it for free, create a new project, and deploy your app as soon as you push your code to GitHub.
AI Helper: Proti.app
I realized that I was using a lot of AI tools, but the time I was spending on improving my prompts to get the right answers was too much, so I decided to create my own tool to help with that.
You can set up an account and start using it for free, for a limited time.
The first name was MejoraTuPrompt.com, but I decided to change it to Proti.app because it’s short and easy to remember.
You can check it out here.
Conclusion
I hope you found this post useful and that it helps you make your own decisions about the tools you use. Remember that the most important thing is to find the tools that work for you and that you enjoy using them.
Thank you for reading!