2000 Jan 6-
software, snippets

Technology

Software

Terminal or TUI (Terminal UI) tools

I’m a growing fan of the speed, universality, and simplicity of terminal-based tools and use them more and more exclusively in my software repertoire.

  • neovim: The ultimate terminal-based editor, once you take the time to learn its ins and outs. The only thing lacking is when genuinely useful new proprietary software (i.e. AI coding agents) comes out, there’s really no financial incentive for anyone to build on neovim vs the bought and paid for editors like Windsurf or Cursor which most devs will use, so we have to wait for charitable hobbyists to create suitable integrations, and I’ve run into plenty of frustration when trying to get coding agents to work within neovim.
  • nb: A beautifully simple note-taking system for the terminal. Uses git to manage versions, has built-in file encryption, and much more. I use this with neovim for everything I write.
  • yazi: An awesome file navigator that’s very powerful and flexible. Stop using cd <path> to navigate everywhere!
  • lazygit: This is the best way to use git I have ever discovered. It truly makes things easy and doesn’t require you to memorize all those weird commands. Also integrates with neovim

Languages

  • Elm: This is one of the few (if only?) language I’ve used where I actually love the language and not just what I’m building. Despite its sad lack of leadership and usage falling by the wayside, the idea of a language that makes websites never cause exceptions (in other words, if it compiles, it works) is a huge leap forward for web development. I don’t know if I can go back to Javascript after having this experience, and may pursue one of Elm’s actively maintained spiritual successors, such as Gleam. This website is built in Elm, by the way.

Package Management

  • Nix: Technically, Nix is a language, package manager, and operating system all at once, but it’s purely functional guarantees have incredible downstream consequences which I write about at nix.fun

Operating System

Bitcoin

Hardware

Fun