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AWS Amplify is a suite of tools and services that enables developers to build full stack serverless and cloud-based web and mobile apps using their framework or technology of choice on the front end.

Using Amplify you can quickly get up and running with things like hosting, authentication, managed GraphQL, serverless functions, APIs, machine learning, chat bots, and storage for files like images, videos, and pdfs.

Amplify is built especially in a way to enable traditionally front-end developers to be successful because they can use their existing skillset to build real-world full stack apps that in the past would require deep knowledge around back end, dev ops, and scalable infrastructure.

The Amplify Console then allows you to use a Github repository to deploy to a globally available CDN, with CI and CD built in.

To learn more, visit aws-amplify.github.io

Show notes

1:32 - Hardware

7:28 - Desk Setup

12:45 - Browser + Extensions

19:28 - Text Editor

22:04 - Code Editor

30:44 - CLI

34:10 - Presentations

36:39 - Desktop Software

40:13 - Productivity

44:03 - Miscellaneous

Resources

• Ducky Frozen Llama keyboard
• 12 south book arc
• mStand
• Dell Ultrasharp monitor
• Mac accessories
• Kinn Ergonomic chair
• Dracula at Night
• Pink Cat Boo
• Ali’s iTerm blog post
• Ali’s VSCode blog post
• Ali Desk
• Ali’s Monitor
• Loom
• BuiltWith
• SEO Meta
• Vue DevTools
• React DevTools
• LastPass
• Block Site
• Grammarly
• Keywords Everywhere
• Add Colors to Chrome DevTools
• Better Tweetdeck
• Mangools
• IA Writer
• Notion
• Evernote
• Google Docs
• Google Keep
• slides.com
• Canva
• Deckset
• Google Slides
• Impress.js
• Deepl
• Sketch
• Calibre
• Abstract
• Zeplin
• SelfControl
• Spectacle
• Zoom
• Spark
• Things
• Fantastical
• Lightshot
• Kiwi
• Todoist
• Window Tidy
• TickTick
• Done
• Hyper
• iTerm
• Oh My ZSH
• VS Code
• Dank Mono
• Fira Code
• Dracula at Night
• Dracula

• VS Code Packages

  • Material icon theme
  • React/Redux/React-Native/JS snippets
  • ESLint KV
  • Prettier
  • Git Lens
  • Live Server
  • Live Share
  • Lorem ipsum
  • Liquid
  • Peacock
  • Sublime Text Keymap and Settings Importer
  • Code spell checker
  • Import cost
  • HTML Hint
  • Git Lens
  • Code Runner
  • Snippets

Transcript

We provide transcripts for all of our episodes. You can find them here!

Emma 0:00
This week we’re giving you all the details about our computer setups, including our hardware preferences, browsers, desktop software, code editor and COI settings, as well as some productivity tools will also tell you some of our miscellaneous preferences like most used emoji and current desktop photo. Let’s get started.

Unknown Speaker 0:23
Welcome to the ladybug podcast.

Unknown Speaker 0:25
I’m Kelly.

Unknown Speaker 0:26
I’m Allie. And I’m Emma. And we’re debugging the tech industry. Hey, Kelly,

Unknown Speaker 0:33
have you heard about this cool tool called AWS amplify? Tell me about it. It’s a suite of tools and services that enables developers to build full stack serverless and cloud based web and mobile apps. You get to use whichever framework or technology you want on the front end does. Sounds cool. Well help me get up and running with things like hosting. Yeah, authentication. You betcha. Manage graph QL. Totally. How about serverless functions API is machine learning chatbots file storage. Yes to everything. amplifiers built especially in a way to enable traditionally front end developers like yourself, Kelly to be successful because you can use your existing skill set to build a real world full stack apps than in the past would require deep knowledge around back end DevOps and scalable infrastructure. The amplify console also allows you to use a GitHub repository to deploy to a globally available CDN with ci NCD built in. It’s super cool. Where can I learn more if you want to learn more about AWS

Unknown Speaker 1:26
amplify Mr. AWS? amplify.github.io

Unknown Speaker 1:32
Let’s kick things off by talking about hardware which I feel like I should know more about hardware is always one of those things that I wanted to learn and then never learned anything about. And so I’ll see all these fancy ass words and I’m like, What are they? So let me tell you mine and I’m gonna preface this with the fact that I have no idea what any of this means except for this size. So when I use a framework, I use a 2017 and 15 inch MacBook Pro 2.9 gigahertz Intel Core i seven processor, like That makes it sound super freakin cool and I’m over here like the only thing I took away from that was 15 inch I envy people who understand what all this means and to actually build their own computers but yeah that ain’t me. My personal computer is

Unknown Speaker 2:15
I bought my own computer in like high school but it’s been a very long

Unknown Speaker 2:18
time. My personal computers basically the same except it’s not um I purchased a MacBook at the end of last year for side project work like this podcast, which is great. It’s a so I think it was 2019 but I’m not sure it had the fixed butterfly keyboard so wasn’t as big of a pain in the ass as my work one but it’s a 13 inch it’s smaller so it’s easier to travel with and also was a lot cheaper which is why I picked it but the processor is much slower so I’ll notice it like sounds like it’s taking off like on an airplane. Like if I even open I don’t know how I would say PowerPoint but I hate pack. Yes, lack So that’s the only like a 1.4 gigahertz I five processor but I what the fun fact is I have a German keyboard, but I’ve mapped the US keyboard to it so like it doesn’t actually match up which is fun. Makes live coding so much fun. But then in terms of like acessories I work with us like the Mac wireless keyboard and the Magic Mouse. But I did actually purchase a Ducky frozen llama mechanical keyboard with the silent cherry red swishes, which I love but the problem with it is one there’s no number pad and two it is a Windows layout and

Unknown Speaker 3:37
using that with

Unknown Speaker 3:38
a German keyboard with an American mapping is very difficult so I don’t use it as much as I should but love the keyboard. I’m gonna link it in the show notes if you want to check it out. What about you Kelly? What is your hardware setup? So I use the same machine for work and personal I have a 20 1915 inch MacBook Pro 2.6 gigahertz Intel Core is Seven processor. I picked this one up. Oh, I guess it was last year because my last one broke and Apple couldn’t fix it so they swapped it out for this one was pretty good deal. Um, so all I had to do was pay for Apple care. For the new one, um, I use a Mac wireless keyboard and the Magic Trackpad. And at the office, I have a rain design m stand for the for the back so I can keep it open. At home, I just use the 12 self book arc, which keeps my iMac close. I’m just using the single monitor. My absolute favorite monitor is the Dell ultra sharp 27 inch USBC monitor. I have one at home. I have one at the office. I love it because it also charges my Mac so I keep my number of cables to a minimum and it looks a lot cleaner on my desk. Yeah, that’s everything that I did not know that it was the thing. I’m gonna look into that after this call. Oh yeah, I will Absolutely add us I’ll also add a link to this particular monitor in the show because it’s I honestly love googling your stance right now because I have a similar stand to your stand but mine is like it doesn’t have the the solid bottom where the computer system is open and just like has two prongs that it says on we’re gonna link all this in the show notes so if you guys want to go check it out. Are you girls women good? Are you people want to go check it out. You can check out our show notes. Amazing. I absolutely I love this stand. This was a gift from my husband for my birthday along with the keyboard and trackpad because you said your desk or your you know your computer setup at at your office is terrible for ergonomics, so I’m going to fix you. So it was a very practical gift and I absolutely That’s amazing. I need

Ali 5:51
to get a stand to I have an apartment for the first time in a year. And so I have a desk and I Yeah, exactly. So I’m gonna definitely like invest in some of these things and making my office more personalized, but I have a 2017 MacBook Pro 15 inches well 2.8 gigahertz Intel Core i seven again have no idea what that means, but I bought it from Dev when I stopped working there and so my personal computer is my old work computer so that’s kind of a fun thing that you can do and usually get like a discount there. Let’s try to buy your old work laptop as a personal computer. As for work computer, I am currently funemployed for a week and a half in between two jobs. Blair Waldorf stuff it gets a yell at my dog with the wrong last name. Um, yeah, so my work computer again, I’m funemployed for a week and a half in between roles at work, so I don’t currently have one but as of next week, I’ll have a brand new MacBook Pro I’m sorry. Um, I also have the MacBook wireless keyboard and the Magic Mouse. I love the wireless keyboard because I have one of the computers with the awful keyboard and like the keys are popping off. So I need the wireless keyboard. It’s super important. I have an Acer monitor that I got at Amazon for like Black Friday for super, super cheap, but I love it. It’s huge. I can link it in the show notes and try to find it, but this was years ago.

Unknown Speaker 7:28
Let’s talk about our

Ali 7:29
desk setups. I’ma tell you, it’s writing amazing things that are notes right now.

Unknown Speaker 7:36
I have a lot of feelings about this.

Unknown Speaker 7:39
Uh,

Unknown Speaker 7:40
I feel like out of sheer embarrassment we should definitely take like this is woke up like this like my desk looks horrible. I

Unknown Speaker 7:48
so

Unknown Speaker 7:50
I have way too much crap because apparently I’m a hoarder. And that means that I do my makeup sitting at my desk because I’m lazy and I don’t like to stand up well While I do things so I have like all my makeup, all of my makeup palettes all my hair products, my makeup mirror like all that stuff on my desk and as well as like 12,000 Coffee rings because I am a caffeine addict. So like basically my desk is just like a shelf for all that miscellaneous crap I don’t know what to do it and then in terms of chairs I am not as I don’t care about the quality of my chairs. I generally sit in like the fetal position whenever I’m in a chair or like all curled up

Unknown Speaker 8:35
so

Unknown Speaker 8:36
I don’t know it’s gonna be a problem but I just have like this weird like a nice What are they circle chair from IKEA that I’ve spilled yogurt on guys. I think what I’m realizing is that I’m a dirty person. Don’t do

Ali 8:50
this by nature.

Unknown Speaker 8:52
Like when you have pets by nature, your workspace is going to be covered in cat hair, and coffee stains and yogurt. So that’s it At the

Unknown Speaker 9:00
moment, I am so lucky.

Ali 9:02
Um, Blair is shed free so I like literally shed more than she does. And it’s like the nicest thing ever so no dog hair. For my setup. I have an Ikea sit stand desk so it has a little hand crank and I can make it a standing desk or sitting desk. I got this random chair in the target. Outside furniture section. It’s very cute. It’s like blue I can post a picture of it. Definitely not the most traditional desk chair but it’s really cute and my apartments tiny so it has to double as like guest seating as well. I also have an Alex five drawer from IKEA underneath for storage. And then I also have a Google Home because what is privacy, but I use it doesn’t matter. I’m being spied on. It’s okay. But I have it because it is is a really good alarm clock and I have it in not my bedrooms that I have to go up and like, I sleep with my phone in my living room instead of my bedroom too. So then all the alarms are going off in here and I have to get up in order to turn them all off. And so the Google Home is a really good alarm clock, but it’s also a really good speaker system, at least in my like, no idea about audio experience. So I use it for that too. Awesome.

Kelly 10:27
I have an autonomous AI Sit, sit stand desk. I love this thing because you can program up to four settings based on whether you’re sitting or standing or other people are using the desk. Nobody else uses my desk though. So I’m currently only using two of them. But yeah, it’s really great and I use it. The kitchen chair from autonomous, autonomous, very kindly gifted me this chair as well so I did not have to pay for a chair which is great because I have a second desk in my office. For an employee to use or whoever else, and that is an Ikea stand desk and I’m still using one of the chairs that belongs to the CO working space and I just haven’t given it back yet. But I’ll get around to that. Eventually. I have a mini fridge in my office, it has a freezer as well. It has the cutest little ice cube tray where like these miniature ice cubes. I don’t actually have ice cubes in there. It’s just just the tray. But that’s really helpful. I have Lacroix in my fridge and that’s it. And I have a box of oatmeal and everything else just just my my bookshelf in my office. But yeah, on my desk, I don’t really have too much stuff. It’s mainly my podcasting equipment. And obviously my work stuff and every like so so the setup for my office is like in my co working space. As soon as you walk past the big meeting rooms, My office is first going down the hallway. So everybody’s walking past and everybody’s looking into my office, and occasionally I’ll have the door open and for whatever reason Everyone immediately thinks that I’m not podcasting in here. I’m recording voiceovers in here. Like that’s a very specific thing, I would think. But I think you have a very lucrative ASMR business I’d

Ali 12:11
be amazing, but that’s like, the secret side of ASMR don’t tell people.

Unknown Speaker 12:17
That’s why like, I could just see you go into the store and bring in a certain amount of like dry pasta and

Unknown Speaker 12:23
I’m just like, recording myself like taking bites of food or like coding tutorials.

Ali 12:28
In ASMR

Unknown Speaker 12:31
What about mukbang? ASMR? Is that a thing? Probably. I bet there’s mukbang is where you just like eat a ton of food.

Unknown Speaker 12:39
Oh, I’m really good at that.

Unknown Speaker 12:42
We should have a ladybug McBain. No, we shouldn’t.

Unknown Speaker 12:45
I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think on that note, let’s talk about browse there.

Unknown Speaker 12:51
So

Unknown Speaker 12:53
I am very opinionated with my browser. Okay, well, not on purpose. Okay, because what happened was, I don’t About the way y’all do your your bookmarking. But mine is like a chaotic hot mess. And so what happened was I bookmarked way too much shit in Chrome. And then it was like, I don’t feel like cleaning this up. And so I was like, I’m going to download the newest version of Firefox and start fresh. And well guess what? Firefox is now also full of crappy bookmarks. And so I use Firefox for my day to day browsing purposes. But if I’m going to be developing anything, it’s going to be in Chrome because I find the dev tools to be much more affordable that’s

Unknown Speaker 13:29
accessible for Chrome dev tools are more affordable, I’m extent but I do have a couple from wondering who you’re paying.

Unknown Speaker 13:40
What yellow paper I get.

Ali 13:44
That’s what you get when you’re Google Developer expert is free chrome gold brothers Canary that’s like Chrome gold, right? Yeah, I was totally okay, where I was free.

Unknown Speaker 13:59
I didn’t realize Dammit.

Unknown Speaker 14:02
So I do have a couple of plugins and I know I’m stealing other people’s but it is what it is. I found this tool first so I claim it I think I found it first I could be making that up anyway loom is a really cool tool you did not find it. Whatever no I definitely did because I had it well before we did our like sanity IO demo that we recorded with loom I learned about it yeah, I’ve been using loom internally with the company for a while now.

Unknown Speaker 14:27
I built loom okay.

Ali 14:31
The idea before you built it,

Unknown Speaker 14:33
whatever. Um, I I it’s a really cool so you can use to both record your screen yourself. I don’t know what else records but it’s really good for making tutorials. They have a nice interface and a great plugin. I use LastPass. It is built by LogMeIn therefore I use LastPass. And that’s about it. So I use some of the dev tools for like react and I used to use the Redux ones, but no mo nomo, what about you, Kelly? Um, so my browser of choice is Chrome, whatever the current version is, I have no idea what the version is right now. And it doesn’t matter because I’ll eventually update when I decide to shut things down at some point. But I also occasionally use Safari and Firefox, but I think something is going wrong from or my battery’s about to die, and I’m like, I should use something that’s less resource intensive. I use loom almost on a daily basis. I absolutely love it. I use as far as other extensions go. I also use LastPass. I probably pay for the premium whereas Emma does not because she’s probably gets it as like a company or something. Built with lets you see what websites were built with. It’s pretty clearly named, super useful when you’re trying to figure out when you’re doing a migration for a client over to Shopify, and you want to know what things they currently have installed. Seo meta is like a one click button to see their meta title and description and see their their headings that they’re using. It could all be Open Graph data, super handy for testing all that information. And then I have uJs dev tools, React developer tools. And then my last one that I feel like I should mention is called block site because I love to out of habit open up Twitter, and open up LinkedIn and open up Facebook Like one right after another. So I have like a toggle on block site to automatically block those sites. And it’s like, when you try to access it, it shows like a picture of like, a grandma, not like wagging her finger at you and just as like, No way Jose. It’s really great. I love it. It’s super useful for keeping me on track a little bit.

Ali 16:49
That’s amazing. I also use Chrome. Unlike me, though, I’m like very obsessive with bookmark organization. Why am I don’t pay for it. So, my hot tip though, for this is that you can remove the names from whatever you have as your bookmark. And so my like bar at the top with my bookmarks has just the logos without any words and it looks very clean and polished and I like it. Um, but I also have like a complex folder system for my bookmarks. Listen to my favorites and you’ll ever meet. Um, what, what else? Okay, so as far as extensions go, I have Grammarly so that it makes sure that I’m like spelling things properly and using good grammar. I use keywords everywhere, which is an amazing extension that identifies keywords for SEO for blog posts and like it’s really good for brainstorming ideas for what to write about. That being said, I think that you have to pay for it a little bit now but it’s like super cheap compared to a draft or any other SEO tool. I also use many angles for SEO, which is my paid tool for, again, identifying things for blog posts. And then I also use the react and view dev tools like Kelly, so I don’t need to rehash those, but they’re amazing. Two other ones that I want to talk about first is better TweetDeck. I use TweetDeck for Twitter, just because it allows for like a more customized experience and WebSockets are amazing, better Tweet Deck has a bunch of extensions on top of that. So you can directly add gifts within Tweet Deck and has a couple other things that are really great tools for making TweetDeck. Better experience. My other one is that did you all know that you can add text editor themes to your dev tools in Chrome?

Unknown Speaker 18:47
I saw that on your list, and I’m like, what, what is that?

Ali 18:50
Yeah, more. So it’s like an experimental feature in Chrome that you can now add a text editor theme to your Chrome dev tools. So Dracula’s the theme that I use everywhere and so My Chrome dev tools have Dracula theme on them. And it looks really cool. I’ll send the Twitter thread that I made on how to do it. I’ll put that in the show notes, but you can set it up. looks really pretty.

Unknown Speaker 19:13
I lost my notes. Okay, cool. Let’s talk about Sorry, I was taking a screenshot of Emma and her cat just like rubbing against her face. And it’s the cutest thing ever. So that we’ll we’ll post that in the show notes as well.

Unknown Speaker 19:28
Let’s talk about text editors. Emma, what do you like to use?

Kelly 19:34
I feel like I get bored really easily and I feel like I’ve tried every text editor out there. So currently, I’m using i A writer for tech documentation and blogging. It’s really good because you can create folders and obviously works really well with markdown but I find it removes kind of the noise of a traditional word editor for anything not tech documentation necessarily like I was using notion previously for that using AI right or now I do use notions for like vacation planning, collaborating documents with people and all those kinds of things. Both notion and I write are paid. I think for I radar, I probably paid about 2025 euro 30 euro notion might have been a little bit more expensive. I’m on the pro account. They do have a free version as well. I’ve also used Evernote, which I did, like Evernote and bear are two that are good. I would say bear is better. The interface is a lot sleeker, it also uses markdown. And so I would say I gravitate towards markdown editors, I just find them to be the nicest. What about y’all, that’s cool. I use Evernote pretty regularly for notes on unworked stuff like my interview questions. And you know, the things we just discussed in the other episode we just recorded that you don’t know about. I use Google Docs a lot. We use Google Docs internally for the company for recording our call notes and just making sure everything’s in there and I also use the Mac built in no avataan because it’s super easy for me on a call to just like quickly pull that up and just take my notes that I need to take and then I can move them elsewhere or inevitably forget that I ever took those notes and one day, rediscover them.

Ali 21:12
Yeah, I have sensitively use Google Drive and Google Docs. Again, it’s like obsessively organized and I have different folders for everything. I also use the Mac Notes app, because then it syncs across your phone and your computer. And I really enjoy that and use it for free form things. But I also really like Google Keep as well, which is even more holy. Yeah. And I haven’t figured out a good workflow of what I should use Mac nodes and what I should use keep, and I should really stick to one of the two because they’re, they have very similar purposes, but I need to figure out that workflow a little bit better. Because right now I’m using them both kind of interchangeably, and so things are in different places. But I pretty much use VS code, which is my text editor for code for everything in markdown related and writing blog posts and all that. Emma, tell me about the code editor you use because mine is exactly the same and I don’t feel like talking right now. Yes, I do. I’m talking right okay,

Unknown Speaker 22:10
so I use notepad plus plus for doing all of my proprietary work. I’m

Unknown Speaker 22:18
interested in Notepad plus plus in Microsoft front page,

Unknown Speaker 22:21
but sometimes also Eclipse for my JavaScript development.

Unknown Speaker 22:26
Ridiculous. I used

Unknown Speaker 22:28
a pie chart was a pie chart. I know pot. But Jupiter notebooks I write all of my Jupiter notebooks. Okay, I’m sassy. So yeah, I I’ve done a lot different code editors I’ve worked with atom I work with sublime VS code is by far my favorite. I find it to be the prettiest, but it also has like it has enough integrations and capabilities without being an eclipse the level ID I don’t think it’s technically an ID, integrated development environment if I’m not mistaken like it. Eclipse is an example of an integrated development environment. I don’t think VS code is on that level, but it’s, I would call it an ID. Anyway, it’s like the framework library discussion. So I use VS code. My theme is Dracula like Ali although I have used my alibi Sarah dresner as well, you can easily make your own VS code theme. If you didn’t know that. It’s pretty easy to customize. And there are some blog posts on it as well. And then in terms of fonts, I use dank mono I paid for I think it was like 20 British pounds, or I was gonna say it’s like 40 bucks or 30 bucks. Yeah, something like that. Not terrible, but I love it. I love it for the italic fonts and for the ligatures, ligatures, or when you have two characters next to each other, like when you write an arrow, it’s an equal sign and then a greater than symbol. And a ligature is actually put them into like one symbol, which is nice. But if you’re looking for a free version for your code is always a good option. We’ll talk about plugins after or should we go like do you want to talk about ID plugins now or after we discuss our general

Ali 24:00
Yeah, I also have used so many different text editors over the years. But Adam especially I had so many performance issues so VS code is such an improvement there love it. As far as theme I also use Dracula for the most part, but I switch between Dracula and fairy floss very fast is like this amazing purple, pink and yellow one. For me. I do a lot of code on projectors. And so finding the right text editor theme to work on like different projector lighting is a big part of my strategy. So recently, I’ve been using Dracula, but in the past I’ve used mostly fairy floss. Those are the two I want to give a shout out for

Unknown Speaker 24:35
I just realized, I’m not using Dracula. I’m using Dracula at No. I wonder if that’s it is a fork from Dracula up so apparently it’s probably ever so slightly different. I’m also I’ve used a lot of different types of editors and IDs over my Dracula at night you wouldn’t have any Isn’t it pretty? Yeah. I’ve also I want to shout out pink cat boo. Sounds like I’m Making them I’m not it’s really cool. I used to use it all the time get cat boo. We’ll link it again in the show notes. But it’s basically like a dark blue purpley background with like a lot of pink and purple fonts. My cat is eating a really crappy IKEA gesture that’s covered in yogurt. So if you hear additional noises that’s what that is. Yeah, I like pink capital a lot. And I got a lot of questions about it when I was using it. So um, so yeah, let’s talk about the plugins or extensions or whatever they’re called extensions. Yes. So I first off use Sublime Text key mapping because I wouldn’t I move from sublime over to VS code and I did not want to relearn any kind of keymap so I just copy over what I knew how to do already on sublime which is made things made my life a lot easier. I so on our on our notes, Emma added hers and then I just like put my initials next to the same ones that I use. So I’m just going to steal her Thunder here. I use Yes, let’s And prettier and get lens in live server and live share. I use peacock to color code my open windows, which is super cool one. And I use liquid which is for Shopify liquid formatting. All right, Emma Ali is still adding her. Yeah, for sure. So one that I found from a coworker colio. He had material icons in his File Explorer, all those icons were really pretty I’m like, Oh, what is that? He goes, Oh, it’s material icon theme, so I use that. I also use bracket pair colorizer. So when you have a lot of nested brackets, which we shouldn’t because like don’t nest absurd layers of code, but when you do, bracket colorizer, airs nine.

Unknown Speaker 26:48
Yeah. And they got me in a performance. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 26:52
Well, whatever. What? I don’t know what just happened but bracket pair colorizer will like color code your brand So you kind of know what goes with what. I also use the React Redux React Native JavaScript snippets. I got this one from Scott from levelup tutorials. He was using this during his react spring course. And it, yeah, you can type in shorthand like, I think he was typing an RF AC for react functional arrow component, and you hit tab in it, it will actually take your file name, and it’ll propagate that into your, your, like your stateless functional component name, which is really cool. And actually creating these shorthands. It’s really easy to do once you know how to do, but they do have plugins for it. So that’s one Oh, the last one I have is lorem ipsum generator. So if you’re creating mock ups for things or just random HTML, this you can just type Lorem. And you can do like an asterisk, or like a star and say like five, and it’ll multiply it by five and it’ll just add like random text in there for you.

Unknown Speaker 27:59
Are there different versions Have that like, Is there like a hipster ipsum generator built out

Unknown Speaker 28:02
but I don’t know some VS code plugins though.

Unknown Speaker 28:06
Okay, well yeah, I know that like the actual generators exists, but I would love to have something built into VS code. So maybe my first extension will be a cat if some

Ali 28:14
amazing I just use the one that shows me that you can just do like if some and without a extension it fills it in for you

Unknown Speaker 28:23
also,

Ali 28:24
Emmet is amazing. I know it’s built into VS code, so it’s not really a plugin, but for me of it is like my rider die thing that I cannot write code without especially what in front of people. It’s so hard to get all your brackets right and all that so it’s my everything. Um, another thing that I want to put in a plug for is autosave. I use a lot of the same plugins that you all use, and I won’t reiterate on those but an autosave you can make it so that VS code instead of doing a Command S to save it just seems whenever you pause typing and for me typing Be in front of people. So often, it’s so helpful so I don’t need to remember to save. And especially like new programmers, they always forget to save things. So I always make them do autosave. I also have a code spell checker. I think that that’s really important. It helps pick out typos in your code, but also, I write my blog posts in VS code. And so it’s really helpful for that I like to piece them into at Grammarly afterwards to make sure that the grammar is good. I also do import costs, which is a JavaScript library that checks to see the size of different JavaScript libraries that you’re importing. And so the performance cost of adding them in. I also have HTML hint, which is a HTML validator get lens which allows you to do some like nice, get blame things and such just like extend the VS code functionality for get and then I have a code runner that allows you to press like a play button and run your code directly without opening up the fan line or anything like that. I don’t Don’t use that that often. But it’s helpful if I’m doing like really beginner level workshops. Because they don’t then I don’t need to teach at the command line necessarily. And then my last thing is then snippets as well. I have them for a couple of different languages that I use. But again, like am I like typing three letters to create a react component is much easier than typing it all from scratch. That’s what I use.

Unknown Speaker 30:26
Awesome. So love snippets. To be honest, though, I generally will handwrite mine just so I get into this like to make sure I don’t lose it, right. Like I don’t want to rely on shortcuts and forget how to actually type these things out, especially if I live code, which I do a lot at conferences, I want to be able to have that muscle memory. So let’s, let’s talk about CL eyes because they kind of tie in with code editors, and then we’ll switch back to something a little bit lighter. In terms of tools. Alan, do I’m gonna send it back to you. Let’s start with your sales because you wrote a great blog posts About how you set up your Seelye

Ali 31:02
Thank you. So I use I term I am a huge I term proponent, especially the multiple, like windows that you can have and the panes that that is my favorite feature of it. And then I also have the colors customized and all of that. I also on top of that use z shell z shell is my absolute favorite. I’ve been using it for

Unknown Speaker 31:30
ever.

Ali 31:32
And it is just such an amazing tool. Oh my z sh as well. I cannot recommend that enough for having pretty themes. Also, there’s a bunch of aliases built in. I’m super reliant on aliases. And so some of them I will write myself but having those built in is really really nice as well as an alias. Oh, yeah, and aliases where you can type in an alternate version of a command or like a shorter version of a Man, so that instead of having to type out like get commit, whatever you can do GC instead. And that will commit your code. I even have a bash function for doing add commit push all at once, which is like probably bad, but for personal projects, it makes it so fast, I can just do ECP and I’ll do like a get add all get commit, get push. So that’s my sheet, one for for rm rf to just be eat.

Unknown Speaker 32:30
Why et eat. Love that.

Ali 32:34
There’s also a way that you can do it to that rm rf actually just moves things to your trash bin, which I used to set up for students but

Unknown Speaker 32:43
I think Yeah,

Ali 32:46
I did not because it’s a good lesson to learn. I think that that’s the bulk of my setup. I use spaceship too. That’s my like, prompt. So

Unknown Speaker 32:55
to be honest, like either use like the built in Mac terminal because I’m boring. You don’t feel like taking the time to set up it Like I had setup, I turned my follow Alice tutorial and then I got a different computer and I was like too lazy to set it up. I also use hyper. I liked hyper a lot. But in general, like, I’ll just use the VS code built in Terminal for the built in CL I like that’s all I use. It’s nothing fancy. I’m not. I wish my, like Sarah dresner was saying that she has a terminal that literally sparkles when she types and I’m like, I wish I could do that. But honestly, I haven’t made the time yet. And I love that

Ali 33:30
that would drive me crazy.

Unknown Speaker 33:32
I use hyper and I use the VS code CLA. I love HyperX I think it’s pretty.

Unknown Speaker 33:39
I use it a lot to well, it just it doesn’t really matter what I use it for I use it for things.

Ali 33:46
I also as a note have VS code setup to point to I term so that my built in one and VS code is I term. So that’s something that you can do. Not super hard. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 33:58
Yeah, I do like code And then.to open up whatever folder I’m currently viewing in vs. Code. Awesome. Let’s talk about a couple more things before I switch into the fun questions. So what do you all use for presentations? I, I’m gonna ask you a question and I’m gonna answer it myself.

Unknown Speaker 34:19
I am again, I like to switch tools a lot.

Unknown Speaker 34:23
So I use slides

Unknown Speaker 34:24
comm I have a pro account with them. But to be honest, it is kind of a pain in the ass to customize. And sometimes I do wish that they had pre configured templates. Sometimes I just don’t want to make it on my own. I have used Google Slides but not super crazy about it. To be honest, I don’t find that they load my gifts or anything like that. Like I was doing a talk about animation. And I had gifts illustrating these micro interactions, and they just weren’t loading. So I’ve been in that. I used Canva a lot, but to be honest, while they do have a lot of beautiful content, it’s really unreliable. Not gonna lie. I’ve had a lot of issues with them. And when you’re presenting at large conferences, that’s terrifying. Like it wasn’t letting me download my slides. And I don’t want to just rely on internet connection. I also had many issues where my images weren’t showing up with them. So I use Canva. But I’m very weary of them. And then just the last thing is deck set decks that I believe is also paid. I could be mistaken. But basically, if you’re the kind of person that spends way too long designing your slides, and you just want to focus on the content, like deck sets for you, I should be using it more and I think it just uses a markdown file, which is also really nice. Kelly, what about you? So I guess it’s important to note that I don’t really do conference talks anymore. Mainly, if I’m going to do something, it’s going to be Shopify related. And I don’t need anything super, super fancy. I use Google Slides for everything. I use it for our pitch decks as well. So again, I’m not looking for any anything super high tech, I’m not putting you know gifts and stuff in there. So it works. It does exactly what I needed to do.

Ali 36:00
So for me, I used to have this custom framework that I’ve built on top of impress j. s with web components. It was really, really fancy and looked incredible. It used all my personal branding and all that. But chrome just changed their version of like web components, and so it completely broke. But that being said, this year, I started using Google Slides because it’s so much quicker to get a slide deck up and running. And honestly, it looks pretty good as well. So sometimes I will write the JavaScript and HTML and CSS myself sometimes I’ll just use Google Slides depends on how custom I want to get cool. How about desktop stuff? What’s y’all have on your desktops?

Unknown Speaker 36:43
way too much garbage.

Unknown Speaker 36:45
That’s my answer. Just like my dirty desk. I am a terrible human. One of the coolest apps I found is a translation software. Deep L is one that I’ve been using a very long time because it doesn’t literally translate things. It actually looks at the semantics of what you’re trying to say. And it will accurately translate it, which is very nice because sometimes Google Translate does not account for different translations. So like, an example would be in English would say, like, Can you take a photo? in French? And I believe in German, you would say, can you make a photo? So if you’re translating it, literally, it doesn’t make sense. So this software is really nice. And if you highlight text on like a web page, for example, and you hit Command C twice, it’ll auto translate it for you, which is very nice. sketch I use for designing caliber. This is an interesting one. It’s not the nicest UI, but it does the job. And I use that to keep track of all my PDFs and ebooks. So that’s a good one. And then lastly, I use abstract for, like source management for my sketch file. So it’s kind of like a GitHub for code, but it’s just for design. Kelly, what about you?

Unknown Speaker 37:52
I use sketch. I use zipline.

Unknown Speaker 37:58
Don’t think I use my cell phone. I use slack and I use zoom.

Unknown Speaker 38:04
That’s about it. No everything else is folders of things on my desktop that I forget to move. I actually have a folder on my desktop called desktop, where eventually everything gets too overwhelmed. And I just move everything into that desktop folder. I’ve no idea what’s in there anymore.

Ali 38:20
Amazing. I have sketch as well, super dependent on sketch. It’s amazing. I also am incredibly dependent on spectacle, which is for like window snapping and you can use hotkeys to move your windows around. It’s no longer maintained. So there are some alternatives that people keep recommending to me every time I say you spectacle, because that’s how the internet is. But spectacle still works perfectly fine for me. But I guess that you should use something that’s maintained if you’re downloading it now.

Unknown Speaker 38:53
No, I use it to it. And to be honest, it kind of bothered me that people like destroyed me when I was like, Danny Brown Sweet. It was like, What do you all use for like Windows now feels like spectacle. And they were like, Well, actually, it’s not maintained and like it still works every time. So yeah, it’s free. It’s simple. I’m like, it doesn’t matter Exactly. But there

Ali 39:10
are different alternatives to it that are still maintained. But the idea of it, the idea of moving around windows with your keys is like, everything. It works really poorly. With zoom though, there’s like a bug. So if you use zoom as well, I have it disabled for zoom. Okay, um, zoom, I use every day, pretty much all day because I teach via zoom, or it did in my last job I’m teaching in person now. So there’s that. And then I Slack, super dependent on slack for communication. And then another one is self control, which allows you to block different websites. Sometimes I do this for places that just breed negativity, like Reddit, like I don’t want to go on to Reddit sometimes. And so I’ll just completely block that domain on my computer and I can’t access it. But you can also set it for a certain time. So if I don’t want to check Twitter or my email or something like that for a while, then I’ll use self control with a timer and like maybe pomodoro ish it

Kelly 40:11
awesome. Those are kind of some productivity tools which we also have lists of I. So yeah, I use spectacle app, just like Ollie. Another tool that I use all the time is light shot screenshot. It’s for creating annotated screenshots. It’s really really great. I, despite my hatred of this company’s business models still use fantastical to because their migration to the second version was an absolute shit show. I vehemently disagree with how they’ve done that, but I haven’t migrated to a different app yet. The long story of that is like I had paid for the app because it was an expensive ass application. It was like $50 and I paid for on two separate computers on my phone, it was probably over $100 and then they went and did fantastical to where they basically were giving all that functionality for free but then would make their current pro the people who would paid for it have to pay for a subscription model monthly to get like the quote unquote, like pro features. It was really poorly done. So I wouldn’t recommend it anymore, but I still use it because I’m lazy. Things I use all the time. Things I use is like a note taking application. Not note taking, I’m sorry, but like to keep track of I use it in lieu of like the reminders app. I really like them. It’s also paid and then I use spark for email. I have like 12 emails Don’t even ask me why but they all aggregate into Spark. Really like Spark. I think it’s also paid but it is excellent. And it is not that expensive. So those are mind cared about you. So the first one that I use most, probably more than anything else is called Kiwi for Gmail. It’s my email clients. I have four different Gmail accounts connected to it. It’s basically like Gmail in the browser but in its own app, that’s that’s literally all it is. But it’s super convenient to kind of have everything in under that one roof with the four different emails. And I use Boomerang within that as well for checking to see if people haven’t responded to my emails or scheduling them or whatever. I used to do it for tests. I use it for both work related stuff. I use it for shopping lists. I use it for packing lists, super, super handy. For Windows snapping I use window tidy, it’s free. I think. I think it’s been free for a long time. I hope it’s free and hope I’m lying. And lastly, the built in Do Not Disturb on Mac OS I use a lot I use it right now actually. Because we are recording this podcast.

Ali 42:46
I definitely use that as well. Super important especially when teaching so my like texts don’t pop up. And I use tick tick for to do lists. I really like it. It has like all the features you could have ever want it also has some like gamification, where it’ll show you charts of how productive you are and stuff like that. I use done for habit tracking. So throwback to our atomic habits. Book Club, definitely go check out that episode. But it really inspired me to start using done to track new habits. I use keep as a to do list or as a, like shopping lists and all that I use Google Keep for that. And then I just use out of the box Gmail and G Cal I was a huge Google inbox user for years and years and years. But rip. Really sad still about that even though it’s been like years at this point, right, since that’s working but there’s a big fan of it and it’s really sad. But I should try to go back to finding some system that works really well for me, but for now, I’ve tried a bunch of different ones and just haven’t liked them. So back to just out of the box Gmail and G caliper Calendar and mail.

Unknown Speaker 44:03
Awesome. Let’s do lightning round. Let’s do some fun questions to kind of wrap things up. So I’m just going to do rapid fire. We’re gonna go beverage of choice coffee. That’s not alcoholic coffee as well.

Ali 44:16
I also do coffee I switched between cold brew with oat milk, and Dunkin iced coffee with skim milk and caramel swirl, which

Unknown Speaker 44:24
was my treat. I drink black coffee. I’m really boring.

Ali 44:28
I don’t like hot drinks. I don’t know why it’s just like a weird thing. So I only do iced coffee like no matter that I don’t like

Unknown Speaker 44:34
cold foods. So I’m I’m with you like the temperature? Yeah, is weird.

Unknown Speaker 44:41
Anyway, go to like playlist or type of music that you go to if you’re coding. I have a playlist on Spotify called beats to think too, which is really good because there are no words so I can’t get too stuck. Yeah, I listened to a lot of instrumental music on Google Play Music or if I’m not really having to concentrate too much I have like, my most recently played albums at the top and I just keep on flipping through those. So I never actually listened to anything else.

Ali 45:07
Yeah, I don’t know if I necessarily listen to a lot of music when I could but my go to playlist is 10th hip hop. I use Google Play Music which is untraditional, I think everybody else uses Spotify, but I really like it because you get free youtube prime or

Unknown Speaker 45:24
YouTube bread with

Ali 45:26
it. So you get it’s like the same price as Spotify and you get both Google Play and that so I don’t know. A little plug there. But yeah, 10s hip hop. So it’s all hip hop from 2010s.

Unknown Speaker 45:39
Big fan. Awesome. What are your desktops currently?

Unknown Speaker 45:42
Mine’s the like the default Catalina background, the wallpaper.

Unknown Speaker 45:46
I don’t change my desktop.

Ali 45:48
Mine is this really cute piece of artwork that says let’s get going. And it’s got some like, flowers and stuff. It’s pink. Very cute. That’s cute.

Unknown Speaker 45:58
I just typically choose Like nature something with like, either water or like plants and brake, brightly colored, preferred number of monitors I use, I have two external monitors that work but to be honest, I just like working off my MacBook sometimes like most of the time, I’ll just like not even use them. So I use one I used to use two at home there’s 221 inch monitors and I switch to the single 27 inch monitor and I love it.

Ali 46:26
Yeah, I use both the built in Mac one and then also my Acer and that’s the perfect number for me. But user one is really big so I can get a lot on there but too much in it’s just overwhelming.

Unknown Speaker 46:39
Most used emoji.

Ali 46:40
I just popped up in the red heart, the lady leg and then the woman technologist like girl with a

Unknown Speaker 46:48
computer. I use this a lot too, obviously.

Unknown Speaker 46:52
But and in regards to non tweets, I love the squatting monkey and I love the upside down yeah I use upset

Unknown Speaker 47:00
on smiley face a lot. I use the grimacing face a lot. And the dancing like the the dancing woman I use a lot as well.

Ali 47:08
Okay, now I’m looking at my context though, because that’s gonna be different, like texting my friends versus tweeting, which I do on my desktop, usually. And I have like the sobbing I’m really positive. And I use the skull emoji all the time for like, dying laughing that’s something that I do a lot. So the

Unknown Speaker 47:30
skull Yeah, I have that.

Unknown Speaker 47:32
I also use the submissive girl one where she’s like,

Unknown Speaker 47:36
the lines coming out of her head, okay.

Ali 47:38
is now it’s like shame. She’s like, ashamed.

Unknown Speaker 47:42
No, I don’t know because it was a

Unknown Speaker 47:44
girl. So

Ali 47:46
yeah. I don’t know how I feel about that. Like if

Unknown Speaker 47:49
the one of the girl like crouching down looking like Oh God, I just really fucked up and like,

Unknown Speaker 47:54
you know what I mean? No, I don’t. I have no idea but it’s okay.

Unknown Speaker 47:59
Wait. I have Hold on. Wait, no, I need to look up on slack what it’s called so that you don’t think that I’m an absolute idiot. Um pause for effect please.

Unknown Speaker 48:12
Doo doo doo doo

Unknown Speaker 48:14
like the okay. It’s called woman balance

Unknown Speaker 48:18
the same day that’s different but the same Okay, we’ll go with it. Most use meme. I love the woman yelling at cat meme but if I had to say my most you use it’s definitely the Everything is fine that’s mine. Yeah,

Ali 48:31
yeah yeah I agree.

Unknown Speaker 48:33
Really goes to show the state of work when we’re all

Unknown Speaker 48:36
this is fine me most um oh here’s one that’s not actually unlisted. Do you have a favorite GIF? floating dumpster fire? That’s mine. I’ve not even seen that but it sounds like it’d be up my alley. Now there’s this one of this little girl and she’s like faced away from the camera and she whips her head around. She’s a microphone just like looks to the camera all weird.

Unknown Speaker 48:56
I also love the bear waving Hello, that’s the one I always is also also the whale. Hello there. Um, I love the birthday one with a girl that’s super, super excited and she’s like, yeah, and just like goes crazy. Um, that’s a really good one. I also love the dog licking the lime and then hopping around.

Unknown Speaker 49:18
Super cute. I’m sending you guys the link to this GIF. Maybe we should put it in the show notes too, because, like me explaining it totally then do it justice. That’s what I’m talking about. Oh, the disco girl without my hair flipping

Unknown Speaker 49:34
not what I expected.

Unknown Speaker 49:36
Anyway, um, what else? What about most visited websites?

Unknown Speaker 49:42
Witter? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. So for documentation,

Unknown Speaker 49:49
turn it even think of where else I read Tales from retail and Tales from tech support almost every single day.

Ali 49:55
I don’t do Reddit, but I do be Twitter accounts. repost the Reddit stuff like Reddit ships and the Am I the asshole? Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. They kill me they’re so funny, but I don’t like Reddit. Um, and then what else do I visit YouTube? I like to have YouTube videos on in the back. Yeah, so that’s a big one. That’s like a total productivity suck though it should get better about that

Unknown Speaker 50:24
Shopify partners I visit a lot because I have to access stores surprise, fresh books because I use that for invoicing and time tracking for my clients. gussto because I have to pay my employees. Those are my most visited ones

Ali 50:38
GitHub, GitHub enterprise, especially for me.

Unknown Speaker 50:41
Oh, GitHub. Yep,

Ali 50:42
yes, GitHub. I actually had a stress stream last night like I’m not kidding this hundred percent not joking. I had a stress stream last night that I could not log into GitHub, and I could not access anything on it was horrifying. I kept waking up like terrified about it.

Unknown Speaker 50:58
Not good. I think that’s it for our lightning round. Any final closing thoughts about adjust setups and the things that we discussed in this episode? Because it’s

Unknown Speaker 51:08
turned into a long episode. I just think it’s interesting that we all use the same kinds of tools, but different tools.

Unknown Speaker 51:13
similar but different.

Unknown Speaker 51:15
Yeah, like we all use like to do apps, but we all use different Yeah,

Ali 51:19
especially for productivity. I feel like our developer tools are like relatively similar to some extent, but then the productivity is really where we diverge. Mm hmm.

Unknown Speaker 51:31
Well, we hope you enjoy this and let us know what your setup looks like or how dirty your desk is. post photos, tweet them at us.

Unknown Speaker 51:41
If you liked this episode,

Unknown Speaker 51:42
just let us know. You know, we like to hear from you. And we choose one tweeter every week to give away a Smashing Magazine book, which is awesome. We’ve got one on design systems, one that just encompasses a bunch of miscellaneous short novellas web development, one about ethics and privacy. So tweet about it. And we are going to pick one each week to give away a book too and leave us a review as well because those really help us out there. Let us know that we’re making the content that you like to hear. And with that, we’ll see you next week.

Unknown Speaker 52:15
Adios