Cryptographer; created Signal and the Signal Protocol, and writes occasionally about cryptography, web3 and sailing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Encryption people have to switch on protects almost nobody; what protects people is what a service turns on for everyone.

  Their words

  By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a single software update.

  Reflections: The ecosystem is movingsignal.org

Ruby and Rails core committer known online as "tenderlove"; maintains Nokogiri and works on Ruby performance.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Vim

  Their words

  I use Vim as my editor. I've been using Vim for about 16 years, my entire programming career. I've been using Vim for so long that I basically can't switch.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Safari

  Their words

  I mainly use Safari as my browser since it has the best Keychain integration.

  usesthis.com

Programmer; builds Mac and iOS apps, wrote WatermelonDB, and writes about tools, focus and software craft.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Deep Work

  Their words

  Podcast. Yes, yes, yes! We live very distracted lives and most of our working days are filled with shallow tasks and interruptions. Although programmers get the importance of flow, it’s so hard to achieve. Our environments don’t support it, and shallow work is just easier. The book makes a compelling case for why we should double down on deep work, and offers some practical strategies for achie…

  radex.io

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Normalization of deviance is well studied in healthcare and aviation and almost never discussed in software, although software organisations do it constantly.

  Their words

  It's well studied in a number of other contexts including healthcare, aviation, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and civil engineering, but we don't see it discussed in the context of software.

  Normalization of deviancedanluu.com

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

From one piece Files are hard 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Writing to files safely is too hard to do with raw syscalls; application code should go through a library or a database.

  Their words

  as an application developer, writing to files safely is hard enough that it should be done via some kind of library and/or database, not by directly making syscalls

  Files are harddanluu.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Almost every software project has cheap testing wins left on the table: basic random testing, static analysis and fault injection pay for themselves the first time they are run.

  Their words

  Almost every software project I've seen has a lot of low hanging testing fruit.

  Files are harddanluu.com

Game developer, formerly at Looking Glass Studios, and author of the stb single-file public-domain C libraries used across the games industry.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Metapad

  Their words

  For editing text in Windows outside of VC6, I use Metapad; when I'm on a Mac or Linux, I use vim.

  usesthis.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  REAPER

  Their words

  I use REAPER, the only DAW software I've found which embraces the capabilities of digital, avoiding imitating analog production where it's unnecessary.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Microsoft Visual C++ 6

  Their words

  For programming, I spend most of my time in vintage Microsoft Visual C++ 6, released in 1998, because the workflow is superior to newer Visual Studios for me.

  usesthis.com

Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Meta-programming is usually unnecessary complexity that obscures what code is meant to do.

  Their words

  But there are a lot more cases in which meta-programming is unnecessary and additional baggage on top of the solution, which gets in the way of understanding what the code is supposed to do.

  Write Stupid Codethorstenball.com

Interpretability researcher at Anthropic, which he co-founded; before that at OpenAI and Google Brain, where he wrote the explanations of neural networks most people learned them from.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The connection between representations and types may be fundamentally significant, akin to links among geometry, logic, topology and functional programming.

  Their words

  The known connection between geometry, logic, topology, and functional programming suggests that the connections between representations and types may be of fundamental significance.

  colah.github.io

CEO of Vercel; creator of Next.js and Socket.IO. Writes at rauchg.com.

From one piece Pure UI 2 beliefs · rauchg.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The designer and programmer roles are converging, and the path from sketch to design to implementation is opening up to everyone with an idea.

  Their words

  And if I’m allowed to extrapolate, a clear path is now laid out towards a future where the steps to go from sketch to design to implementation are greatly more accessible to everyone with an idea.

  Pure UIrauchg.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software estimates are poor because it is easy to underestimate the size of the state space: the complete list of questions a UI must answer is hard to come up with.

  Their words

  The main issue, however, is that underestimating the size of the state space is actually very easy. In other words, it’s difficult to come up with the complete list of questions that your UI needs to answer.

  Pure UIrauchg.com

Mathemusician and video maker known for the Doodling in Math Class series; directed the eleVR virtual reality research group at the Communications Design Group.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Audacity

  Their words

  For sound production, I love Audacity. I think Audacity is the only piece of software I actually like, rather than merely tolerate.

  usesthis.com

Security technologist and author of books including Applied Cryptography and Data and Goliath; writes the Schneier on Security blog and the monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Outlook

  Their words

  I use Outlook to maintain my calendar and address book. I hate that program, too, but I can't find anything else that lets me sync locally to my iPhone without going through the cloud.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  HTTPS Everywhere

  Their words

  Firefox is my browser, with a whole bunch of security plug-ins like AdBlock Plus, BetterPrivacy, and HTTPS Everywhere.

  usesthis.com

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Windows 8.1

  Their words

  I don't like software gadgets any more than I like hardware gadgets. I use Windows 8.1 – hate it – and Microsoft Word.

  usesthis.com

Maintainer of Git, the distributed version control system, since Linus Torvalds handed him the project in 2005.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  AsciiDoc

  Their words

  Since the project I work on is a command-line tool that is primarily implemented in C, I use the usual CLI development tools, e.g. make, gcc, gdb, etc. The documentation is in AsciiDoc.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  crouton

  Their words

  I however recently started to experiment with crouton, which allows me install a chrooted Ubuntu (or other variants of Linux) on a Chromebook and I can use GnuCash there. So far, this set-up seems to be working well enough for me, so I may be able to lose the Vizio someday.

  usesthis.com

Programmer on the Dart language at Google and author of Game Programming Patterns and Crafting Interpreters; previously a game developer at EA.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Splitting functions into synchronous and asynchronous kinds forces that distinction into every piece of code a programmer afterwards writes.

  Their words

  No matter what, you'll have to think about color constantly.

  What Color is Your Function?journal.stuffwithstuff.com

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A working programmer routinely works around hundreds of bugs a week in ordinary software, and the industry has normalised it.

  Their words

  If I had to guess, I'd say I probably work around hundreds of bugs in an average week, and thousands in a bad week.

  Everything is brokendanluu.com

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The answer to weak studies of programming practice is to fund better ones, not to conclude that the question cannot be measured.

  Their words

  It's true that controlled studies only tell you something about a very limited set of circumstances, but the fix to that isn't to dismiss them, but to fund more studies.

  danluu.com

CEO of Vercel; creator of Next.js and Socket.IO. Writes at rauchg.com.

From one piece 7 principles of rich web applications 2 beliefs · rauchg.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The distinction between websites and web apps will disappear: a blog and a CRM are reigned by the same UX principles.

  Their words

  A flexible enough system that can share rendering code between browser and server and provides tools for progressively loading scripts and styles will probably eliminate the colloquial distinction between websites and webapps. Both are reigned by the same UX principles. A blog and a CRM are fundamentally not that different.

  7 principles of rich web applicationsrauchg.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  JavaScript should act immediately on user input to mask network latency, which should remove most spinners and loading messages.

  JavaScript

  Their words

  JavaScript allows us to mask network latency altogether. Applying this as a design principle should even remove most spinners or “loading” messages from your applications.

  7 principles of rich web applicationsrauchg.com

Norwegian web pioneer who proposed Cascading Style Sheets in 1994 while at CERN, and was CTO of Opera Software. Also runs a small organic farm.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Linux Mint

  Their words

  I currently run Linux Mint on the Thinkpad.

  usesthis.com

• Likedtheir ownrcmnd.app

  Prince

  Their words

  Then comes Prince, which converts HTML and CSS to beautiful PDF files. (Disclosure: I'm the chairman of the board of YesLogic, the company behind Prince.)

  usesthis.com

• Usestheir ownrcmnd.app

  Opera

  Their words

  Thereafter, I install the Opera browser.

  usesthis.com

Author of The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent and The Culture Code, writing on how skills and group cultures are built.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave

  Their words

  The idea that our brains unconsciously react to tiny signals is not new. But Alter gives us a blueprint for the way it works.

  danielcoyle.com

Programmer; makes Handmade Hero and teaches Performance-Aware Programming, and argues loudly about how software got slow.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The material that teaches people how to program is overwhelmingly bad, because the programmers who know how to do it well rarely think it is worth writing down.

  Their words

  the landscape of educational materials out there still overwhelmingly falls into the "objectively bad" category

  Semantic Compressioncaseymuratori.com

Game designer; lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, founder of Sirlin Games (Yomi, Puzzle Strike) and author of Playing to Win.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Photoshop CC

  Their words

  My main software is Photoshop CC, I do way more in it than I should, and use it for crazy things it was not intended for.

  usesthis.com

Creator of the Zig programming language; president and lead developer of the Zig Software Foundation.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Amarok 1.4

  Their words

  Back in 2009, my music player of choice was Amarok 1.4. This was by far the best music player I had ever used on Windows, Mac, or Linux, especially when combined with the wonderful ReplayGain plugin.

  andrewkelley.me

Web developer and writer; an early GitHub employee, author of speaking.io and of widely read essays on startups and product.

• Usestheir ownrcmnd.app

  Atom

  Their words

  I write code in Atom, the text editor we've been working on for six years at GitHub. It's based on Chromium, so to customize it you can inspect it just like any other web element.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Boxen

  Their words

  My development environment is managed by Boxen, Homebrew, and my dotfiles. I'm feeling good about all of that, which wasn't always the case if you were a Ruby developer five years ago.

  usesthis.com

Software engineer who led Google's webspam team for over a decade and later served as administrator of the United States Digital Service.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  GIMP

  Their words

  For photo editing I use GIMP, and if I need something deeper, my wife has a Mac with Photoshop, Illustrator, and software to make movies and burn DVDs.

  usesthis.com

Programmer and writer known for detailed source code reviews of classic game engines, and author of the Game Engine Black Book series on Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Programming Interviews Exposed

  Their words

  Programming Interviews Exposed is a slim book that can be read within a few hours.

  fabiensanglard.net

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Art of Computer Programming

  Their words

  The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth.

  fabiensanglard.net

Computer science professor who works on fast data processing; co-author of the simdjson parser and a weekly blogger about software performance since 2004.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Smultron

  Their words

  On my Macs, I use Smultron as a text editor when I am not in a bash shell, despite the fact that it is buggy.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Ubuntu

  Their words

  I use an Ubuntu distro for Linux, mostly because it is the most popular option.

  usesthis.com

Journalist, editor and typesetter covering technology and printing history; wrote for TidBITS and the Economist and published The Magazine.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  MySQL Workbench

  Their words

  On the higher-level, I relied on Oracle's MySQL Workbench for MySQL database interaction and GitHub for Mac for version control.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Stripe

  Their words

  On the low-level side, I was using PHP with jQuery for JavaScript and Stripe for credit-card processing.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  CSSEdit 2.5

  Their words

  I admit a bit guiltily that for previewing and designing CSS, I turn to MacRabbit's CSSEdit 2.5, a version that's no longer shipping, as its functionality was absorbed into the company's Espresso Web site development software.

  usesthis.com

Mac and iOS developer; founder of Red Sweater Software (MarsEdit, FastScripts) and co-host of the Core Intuition podcast.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  BBEdit

  Their words

  For text editing that is not specifically related to programming the Mac and iOS, I rely heavily upon BBEdit, where I do most of my Python, HTML, JavaScript and PHP editing.

  usesthis.com

Mathematical physicist at UC Riverside. Wrote This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics and now the Azimuth blog on mathematics, physics and environmental science.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Instiki

  Their words

  This uses some software called Instiki, but another guy takes care of that, a whiz named Andrew Stacey - not me.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  WolframTones

  Their words

  I've been recording electronic music using strange software like WolframTones, which lets you 'evolve' pieces using cellular automata, or QuasiMusic which generates sounds mathematically from quasicrystals - patterns that almost repeat but never quite do.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  IrfanView

  Their words

  I spend a lot of time writing papers and preparing talks with free software: emacs for text editing, LaTeX for typesetting, and IrfanView for editing images.

  usesthis.com

Co-founder of Superlogical, started in 2026 to build server-side terminal infrastructure; creator of Ghostty. Co-founded HashiCorp and created Vagrant and Terraform before that.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Seagate 1 TB external hard drive

  Their words

  I carry around a 1 TB SeaGate external hard drive that has saved virtual machines of almost every version of every major operating system imaginable

  usesthis.com

Programmer, musician and author of The Passionate Programmer; organised RubyConf and RailsConf and has worked as a CTO.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Counter-Strike

  Their words

  The last important piece of software I use is Counter-Strike. I've been playing Counter-Strike for well over 25% of my life now. These days I specifically play a modification of the game called Gun Game. It's ridiculous and mindless. The reason I play it, and the reason I say I "use" Counter-Strike is that you can get in 5 minutes of stress relief with Gun Game without having to commit to playing for 30 minutes or an hour. Each round lasts only around 5 minutes, you have fun, then you get back to being productive.

  usesthis.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Logic

  Their words

  It's hard to learn, but Logic is a beautiful piece of software. It's also hard to learn how to record using real studio equipment, so it should be no surprise that learning how to record with professional quality music software is difficult.

  usesthis.com

Mathematician and Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics department at Columbia University. Author of the book Not Even Wrong and of the long-running physics blog of the same name.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Conceptual Framework of Quantum Field Theory

  Their words

  I've recently gotten a copy of a wonderful new quantum field theory textbook, Anthony Duncan's The Conceptual Framework of Quantum Field Theory

  math.columbia.edu

Co-founder of AngelList. Writes and podcasts at nav.al in short, aphoristic pieces on startups, wealth and judgement rather than long essays.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Lifecycle of Software Objects

  Their words

  Another masterpiece of SciFi by Ted Chiang: "The Lifecycle of Software Objects"

  x.com

Swedish designer and programmer. Designed early Spotify, worked at Facebook and Figma, and created the Inter typeface.

From one piece The 1950s called and wanted their toolbox back 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Programming today still relies on one-dimensional, sequential plain text, largely unchanged from decades ago.

  Their words

  professional and hobbyist programmers alike all use the same tools as we did 60 years ago - one-dimensional, sequential plain text.

  The 1950s called and wanted their toolbox backrsms.me

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Programming needs a fundamental reinvention beyond text-based coding, comparable to the 1950s shift from physical controls to textual commands.

  Their words

  The field of programming need to see a renaissance in fundamental reinvention, just as it did in the 1950s when programming machines using levers and buttons was replaced by programming machines using textual sequences of computer commands.

  The 1950s called and wanted their toolbox backrsms.me

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most programming languages in use today derive from Fortran or Lisp, both created in the 1950s.

  Their words

  Pretty much any programming language used today is a derivative of Fortran or Lisp, both born in the 1950s.

  The 1950s called and wanted their toolbox backrsms.me

Statistician and software engineer who writes R packages for reproducible research and publishing, including knitr, bookdown and blogdown.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  R

  Their words

  For programming and data analysis, I primarily use R since I'm a statistician.

  usesthis.com

• Usestheir ownrcmnd.app

  knitr

  Their words

  I use my knitr package to generate reports directly from code (literate programming); the "reports" may include homework, blog posts, websites, papers and books.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Jekyll

  Their words

  Finally I came to Jekyll, a blog engine for hackers. I'm pretty happy with it since I will never worry about databases; I just write simple Markdown posts and push them to Github via Git.

  usesthis.com

Linux kernel maintainer; runs the stable kernel releases and maintains the USB and driver core subsystems.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  quilt

  Their words

  I use quilt on top of git for handling the Linux kernel stable patch set as the workflow there does not lend itself to a pure git environment.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Arch Linux

  Their words

  I am trying out Arch Linux on my MacBook as I wanted to see how that distro was due to hearing good things about it. So far I'm impressed with it, and given that openSUSE doesn't work on the MacBook Pro yet, I'm sticking with it for now.

  usesthis.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  git

  Their words

  Combined with git, the best source code control tool I've ever used (and I've used them all), I can set up a bare machine in a matter of minutes and have full access to all of my kernel trees, emails, and development tools.

  usesthis.com

Free software developer and longtime Debian developer; author of git-annex, etckeeper, ikiwiki and debhelper. Lives and works off-grid.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Music Player Daemon

  Their words

  Other notable software includes the Music Player Daemon, which runs on my netbook and also my home server.

  usesthis.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Haskell

  Their words

  I've gradually became a big fan of Haskell; I feel it makes me write much more solid code that is much easier to maintain and refactor. But the best part is there are seemingly no end of things to learn in the Haskell space.

  usesthis.com

Swedish open source developer; creator and lead maintainer of curl and libcurl, and a co-founder of the Rockbox project.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Debian

  Their words

  I'm a Linux guy. I run Linux on as many machines as possible and out of all distros I really prefer Debian.

  usesthis.com

Co-founder and CEO of Linear; previously principal designer at Airbnb, where he led the Design Language System, and founding designer at Coinbase.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Founders, designers and developers need to develop their taste the way a sushi chef develops a palate, and appreciating culture is how.

  startups

  Their words

  Like sushi chefs, we as founders, designers or developers, need to develop our tastes, in order to build things people can be impressed about.

  Jiro’s Dreamkarrisaarinen.com

Author of the open source projects MessagePack, Fluentd and Embulk, and co-founder and chief architect of Treasure Data.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  MacBook Air

  Their words

  Computer: My only machine is a 13" MacBook Air. I switched my daily partner from Linux boxes to Mac laptops 5 years ago. I love Macs since they work well with both UNIX tools and Adobe software.

  usesthis.com

Game developer and moral philosopher; made QWOP, GIRP and Getting Over It, and teaches at the NYU Game Center.

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Blender

  Their words

  I would like to use 3D software in my toolchain, but I've tried just about everything and every piece of software is either too sadistic (Blender), too expensive (Maya) or too powerless (SketchUp).

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Chrome

  Their words

  After years of Firefox loyalism, I ditched it to find a browser that would actually remember passwords when I want it to, and eventually settled on the excellent Chrome over Safari.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Flixel

  Their words

  I use Flixel and NAPE to make web games, and I use Cocos2D and Box2D to make iPhone games, and in both cases I can just implement my ideas without worrying about the boring, arcane aspects of programming.

  usesthis.com

Philosophy professor at UC Berkeley and creator of pandoc, the universal document converter, and of the CommonMark markdown specification.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Arq

  Their words

  At home on the Mac, I use a nice program called Arq, which also backs up to S3. It is not open-source, but all of the data is stored on your own S3 buckets, and there is an open-source program for retrieving it, so you aren't locked in.

  usesthis.com

Designer and developer; created the Solarized colour scheme and the Kinkless task system that became OmniFocus.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Lenovo x220

  Their words

  I also have a dedicated Arch Linux laptop, currently a Lenovo x220 Tablet PC with capacitive & pen touch screen. I run a lot of customizations to take advantage of the hardware.

  usesthis.com

Programmer and author of Modern C++ Design and The D Programming Language; a lead contributor to the D language.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Meld

  Their words

  I use git for source control, phabricator and meld for looking at diffs, and all of my open-source work takes place on github.

  usesthis.com

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Concrete5

  Their words

  My personal website uses Concrete5, but I'm unhappy with it, it's too damn slow

  usesthis.com

Canadian cartoonist and writer: Dinosaur Comics, Marvel's The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and the choose-your-own-path books To Be or Not To Be and Romeo and/or Juliet.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  AutoHotKey

  Their words

  AutoHotkey - I used to use a program called Winkey, but that got discontinued, so now I use this. It's free software that lets you map all sorts of actions to the keyboard.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Textpad

  Their words

  Textpad - text editing software that I do most of my writing and development in. It gets out of the way when you need it but has great features like regular expression search/replace (so handy!) and search-in-files, which I use quite a bit too.

  usesthis.com

Software engineer and PostgreSQL contributor who ran the Postgres Open conference; later a senior engineering leader at Mozilla and CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  LastPass

  Their words

  I use Arq for backups, LastPass for passwords, Chrome for my browser and have four users set up inside Chrome to handle business and personal account separation.

  usesthis.com

Writer, editor and executive coach; co-founder and editor of A Book Apart and a former contributing editor at A List Apart.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Things

  Their words

  Things remains my to-do app, especially now that the cloud sync is in public beta. I like the way it lets me organize to-dos into different projects; when you have a lot of projects, that bit of separation is key.

  usesthis.com

Irish independent game developer, maker of VVVVVV, Super Hexagon and Dicey Dungeons.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Dark Room

  Their words

  I really like the fullscreen text editor Dark Room for taking notes, and I've found I find it a lot easier to get to sleep since I started using F.lux.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  FlashDevelop

  Their words

  For coding: I mostly use FlashDevelop, with the Adobe Flex compiler.

  usesthis.com

Mac and iOS developer; created NetNewsWire and MarsEdit, co-created the JSON Feed format, and blogs at inessential.com.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  ack

  Their words

  I use the wonderful and better-than-grep ack on the command line.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Mercurial

  Their words

  For SCM I mostly use Mercurial (on the command line usually, though sometimes I use SourceTree).

  usesthis.com

Technologist and entrepreneur; former CTO of Threadless and chief technology officer of the 2012 Obama re-election campaign.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  partychat

  Their words

  One of my favorite killer apps is partychat. It is an open source Jabber-based persistent chat room. It works with Google Talk and is VERY simple.

  usesthis.com

Programmer known online as technomancy; author of Leiningen, the Clojure build tool, and a maintainer of the Fennel programming language.

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Skype

  Their words

  I would like a fully-functional web browser inside Emacs, but the biggest pain point in the software I use now is definitely Skype.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Conkeror

  Their words

  There are still a few things that aren't feasible to be implemented in Emacs Lisp yet, but Conkeror lets me maintain the runtime-modifiable paradigm in the browser.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  pair.io

  Their words

  I don't pair as much as I used to, but I've started using pair.io, a service for spinning up ephemeral collaborative programming nodes.

  usesthis.com

Web developer and musician; co-creator of the Django web framework, founder of EveryBlock and of the music-notation site Soundslice.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  1Password

  Their words

  Other software I use almost daily: Dropbox for commonly accessed files. Git for my work and personal projects. Audacity for quick clean up of audio files. 1password for password management.

  usesthis.com

Computer scientist and professor; author of The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. and of a long-running blog on programming languages, research and academia.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  OmniFocus

  Their words

  For task management, I use OmniFocus on my MacBook Air, my iPhone and my iPad. The shared database lives on my linode and syncs over WebDAV.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  ShiftIt

  Their words

  My only regret in switching from Linux to OS X is giving up the raw efficiency of tiling window managers like ion. ShiftIt makes up some of the difference.

  usesthis.com

Programmer known for LiveJournal, memcached, OpenID and gearman; worked on the Go programming language at Google and later joined Tailscale.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  WireShark

  Their words

  Linux (Ubuntu and Debian), Chrome, emacs, screen, Go, Perl, gcc, Gimp, tcpdump, wireshark, Xen, KVM, libvirt.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  screen

  Their words

  Linux (Ubuntu and Debian), Chrome, emacs, screen, Go, Perl, gcc, Gimp, tcpdump, wireshark, Xen, KVM, libvirt.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Intel SSD

  Their words

  My main desktop at home is 2005 Mac Mini running Linux. I upgraded the RAM and added an Intel SSD to it. It's very old and slow but it's pretty quiet and I'm too lazy to replace it.

  usesthis.com

Mac developer and writer at brettterpstra.com; makes the apps Marked and nvALT and writes extensively about Markdown and automation.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Espresso 2

  Their words

  Espresso 2 is rapidly becoming a favorite for me when it comes to HTML/CSS editing.

  usesthis.com

Cyborg anthropologist and UX designer; author of Calm Technology and co-founder of the geolocation startup Geoloqi.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Omnigraffle

  Their words

  When I was at Vertigo Software I was quite tied to Visio, but at Geoloqi I'm predominately on a Mac, so I've switched over to Omnigraffle for wireframing.

  usesthis.com

Writer on the intersection of technology and finance. Author of the Bits about Money newsletter and host of the Complex Systems podcast; previously at Stripe.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Calling yourself a programmer marks you as a cost to be eliminated; describe yourself instead by the revenue you raised or the costs you cut.

  Their words

  If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired.

  kalzumeus.com

Programmer, writer and musician; author of the Learn Code the Hard Way books and of Mongrel, the Ruby web server.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  MacVim

  Their words

  For programming I use mostly vim with MacVim on the mac.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  awesome

  Their words

  I use awesome for my window manager on Linux since it's mostly keyboard based.

  usesthis.com

Data scientist and machine-learning researcher; chief scientist at bitly, founder of Fast Forward Labs and Hidden Door.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Python

  Their words

  Programming languages aren't strictly software, but I'm a huge fan of Python along with the numeric computing libraries.

  usesthis.com

Analyst of the business of technology; writes Asymco on Apple, disruption and, latterly, micromobility.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Air Display

  Their words

  I sometimes use Air Display software to also include an old 20" iMac as a third display.

  usesthis.com

Writer and technology executive; blogs at anildash.com, was CEO of Glitch, and helped build Movable Type and ThinkUp.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Google Chrome

  Their words

  Well, I spend all day in Google Chrome, and that's where I do a ton of work, never really touching other browsers unless I'm testing something.

  usesthis.com

Programmer and entrepreneur; co-founded GitHub and created Jekyll, Gravatar and the Semantic Versioning spec.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Propane

  Their words

  Still, we have several remote workers, so to stay in sync with everyone else, I use Propane as a native frontend for 37signals' Campfire web app.

  usesthis.com

Swedish designer and programmer. Designed early Spotify, worked at Facebook and Figma, and created the Inter typeface.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  GitHub

  Their words

  GitHub is an amazing place, product and breeding ground for ideas revolving around software development, created by the ever so humble Chris Wanstrath (and Tom Preston-Werner).

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  TextMate

  Their words

  TextMate has been my companion in all weathers during many years, but when I quit Spotify to join Facebook and had a long vacation in between, I decided to put some effort into writing a "better" programmer's text editor which I call Kod, released in December 2010.

  usesthis.com

Web standards author and speaker; wrote the CSS: The Definitive Guide series and co-founded the An Event Apart conference.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Photoshop

  Their words

  Adobe Photoshop gets some use, mostly when my business partner sends me designs and buttons and such to turn into markup and CSS, but also when I want to goof around a bit with images or process screenshots for my writing.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Camino 2

  Their words

  Camino 2 is my personal-surfing browser, whereas Firefox plus Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar is my development environment.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Firebug

  Their words

  Firefox plus Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar is my development environment.

  usesthis.com

Interactive fiction author and hacker; wrote Spider and Web and Hadean Lands, and designed the Glulx virtual machine.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Lynx

  Their words

  I use Lynx for moment-to-moment browsing. It's all-text, fixed font, black-on-white, no JavaScript or Flash or blinking or borders… it's just more comfortable to read blogs and news articles this way.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Inform 7

  Their words

  Programming? Xcode for the iPhone work; Inform 7 for text adventures; everything else is Emacs and a command line.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  iCab

  Their words

  But when I do want to see a full web site, design and all, I fire up iCab or Safari. Both are perfectly nice web browsers.

  usesthis.com

Programmer; co-founded GitHub and was its CEO, and created the Mustache templating language and Resque.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Dropbox

  Their words

  Right now I'm obsessed with software that transparently syncs between my devices. Kindle, Dropbox, and Simplenote bring me great joy.

  usesthis.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Magit

  Their words

  For version control I use git on the command line and through magit, which is perhaps the greatest of all Emacs modes.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  LaunchBar

  Their words

  The very first piece of non-Apple software I bought for OS X was LaunchBar back in 2005 and I haven't stopped using it since.

  usesthis.com

British programmer and video maker whose YouTube channel ran weekly educational videos on technology, language and geography from 2014 to 2023.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Notepad++

  Their words

  I also spend a lot of time in Notepad++, which I use both as a code editor and my note-taking application; my file of ideas is literally just a text file that remains permanently open in a background tab.

  usesthis.com

Software engineer best known as the originator of the Java programming language.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  NetBeans

  Their words

  I do most of my programming in NetBeans, although I use vi a fair amount.

  usesthis.com

Sociologist at Duke University writing on markets, exchange and moral order, and on plain-text and data-visualisation tools for social science.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Keynote

  Their words

  I use Keynote for lectures and presentations. It's one of the best pieces of software Apple makes.

  usesthis.com

Developer and podcaster; created Instapaper and Overcast, co-founded Tumblr, and co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

  Their words

  My home and work setups are identical: early-2008 octocore Mac Pros, each with two 24" Dell monitors, 6 GB of RAM, two-disk software RAID-0 with a third disk as an internal Time Machine, the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, and the Magic Mouse.

  usesthis.com

FreeBSD developer and former FreeBSD Security Officer; founder of the Tarsnap online backup service and author of the scrypt key derivation function.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Konqueror

  Their words

  I use Konqueror as a web browser whenever possible, but have Firefox 3.6 installed for websites where Konqueror doesn't work.

  usesthis.com

Programmer and essayist who has worked at Amazon, Google, Grab and Sourcegraph. Best known for the long-form essays collected as Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants and Stevey's Blog Rants.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

  Their words

  and there aren't many books like it. None, maybe. They don't typically teach you how to write good code in school, and you may never learn on the job.

  sites.google.com

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  The C Programming Language

  Their words

  This is an odd little book. It's frequently mistaken for an introductory programming book, which inevitably leads to frustration.

  sites.google.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

  Their words

  This is one of my favorite books on programming, although I burned through it in about 3 or 4 hours, and didn't learn a huge amount from it.

  sites.google.com

Software developer and writer; co-founder of Fog Creek Software and Stack Overflow, and author of the Joel on Software blog since 2000.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Rocket Surgery Made Easy

  Their words

  The sequel, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, is a terrific, short, concise, fun guide to running simple "hallway" usability tests to improve the usability of your software and websites. Highly recommended.

  joelonsoftware.com

Founder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU Project, original author of GNU Emacs and the GNU General Public License, and long-time president of the Free Software Foundation.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  PMON

  Their words

  To initialize the machine and boot, it uses PMON. Above that, it uses gNewSense, one of the totally free GNU/Linux distros.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Lemote Yeelong

  Their words

  I am using a Lemote Yeelong, a netbook with a Loongson chip and a 9-inch display. This is my only computer, and I use it all the time. I chose it because I can run it with 100% free software even at the BIOS level.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  gNewSense

  Their words

  To initialize the machine and boot, it uses PMON. Above that, it uses gNewSense, one of the totally free GNU/Linux distros.

  usesthis.com

Web developer; former head of engineering at Flickr, author of Building Scalable Web Sites, and co-founder and CTO of Slack.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  phpMyAdmin

  Their words

  One of the best pieces of software in a web developer's toolbox is phpMyAdmin, which no LAMP developer should be without.

  usesthis.com

Web designer and writer; founded A List Apart and Happy Cog, co-founded the An Event Apart conference, and wrote Designing With Web Standards.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  PageSpinner

  Their words

  PageSpinner is from 1996 (although it's continually updated), and it has convenient features no other HTML or text editor offers.

  usesthis.com

Programmer and technology writer known for his long Mac OS X reviews at Ars Technica; co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast and Hypercritical.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Quicksilver

  Their words

  I've tried LaunchBar and a few others, but I always come back to Quicksilver. I want my launcher to appear, react to my input, and disappear instantly. Quicksilver has always felt the snappiest to me.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  NetNewsWire

  Their words

  Despite having all those web browsers, I do most of my web browsing indirectly via RSS/Atom feeds inside NetNewsWire.

  usesthis.com

Software developer; created Firebug, helped create Firefox on the Netscape browser team, and built the original Facebook iPhone app.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Photoshop CS3

  Their words

  I design and mock up all of my software in Photoshop CS3.

  usesthis.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Cinema Display

  Their words

  I use a 3.2ghz 8-core Mac Pro with two 30" cinema displays. I can't say enough good things about having two 30" cinema displays. I use every pixel of each when I am programming and designing.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Safari 4

  Their words

  Safari 4 is my web browser. I used to use Firefox, but I got tired of its Mac OS X weirdness, and I don't use any extensions other than Firebug.

  usesthis.com

Writer and web developer; founding editor of Lifehacker, co-creator of ThinkUp and of the todo.txt format.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  SnagIt

  Their words

  I use SnagIt and Camtasia Studio to take screenshots and produce screencasts; I use SyncBack Free to back up my files to an external drive, and I use Cygwin to do command line work.

  usesthis.com

Co-founder of Panic, the Portland software company behind Transmit, Coda, Nova and the Playdate handheld console.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Xcode

  Their words

  Most of my actual work is done in Xcode (maintaining our software) and Coda or Transmit (maintaining aspects of our web site and intranet).

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Subversion

  Their words

  All of our source code is managed with Subversion, so that's available wherever I go.

  usesthis.com

• Usestheir ownrcmnd.app

  Coda

  Their words

  Most of my actual work is done in Xcode (maintaining our software) and Coda or Transmit (maintaining aspects of our web site and intranet).

  usesthis.com

Co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer Company. Created DTrace at Sun Microsystems and was CTO of Joyent; blogs about systems software, open source and engineering culture.

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Dreaming in Code

  Their words

  And amazingly enough, if you insist on looking at the world through a bucket of shit, the world starts to look an awful lot like a bucket of shit: by the end of the book, Rosenberg has left the lay reader with the sense that we are careering towards some sort of software heat-death, after which meetings-about-meetings and stickies-on-whiteboards will prevent all future progress.

  bcantrill.dtrace.org

Interface designer and researcher, known for the talks Inventing on Principle and Media for Thinking the Unthinkable and for essays on dynamic representations of ideas. Founder of Dynamicland, where he is building a communal computer.

From one piece Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface 2 beliefs · worrydream.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  For most software, interactivity is a curse for users and a crutch for designers.

  Their words

  For a majority subset of software, called “information software,” I argue that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users’ goals can be better satisfied through other means.

  worrydream.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Information software design is graphic design: a software designer who decides what the user will see is doing graphic design whether she realizes it or not.

  Their words

  When the software designer defines the visual representation of her program, when she describes the pictures that the user will interpret, she is doing graphic design, whether she realizes this or not.

  worrydream.com

Programmer and writer; co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse, and author of the Coding Horror blog, which he has written since 2004.

From one piece Recommended Reading for Developers 2 beliefs · blog.codinghorror.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Computers change but people do not, so understanding people is how you make better software

  Their words

  Why are updates to my reading list so rare? Because computers change a lot in 10 years, but people don't. To make better software, you need to understand how people work, and that is what the books I recommend tend to focus on.

  Recommended Reading for Developersblog.codinghorror.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The vast majority of software development projects fail

  Their words

  The vast majority of software development projects will fail: they will overrun their schedules, produce substandard results, or sometimes not even finish at all. This isn't an argument; it's a statistical fact.

  Recommended Reading for Developersblog.codinghorror.com

Programmer and writer; co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse, and author of the Coding Horror blog, which he has written since 2004.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Mythical Man-Month

  Their words

  I challenge any developer to pick up a copy of The Mythical Man Month and not find this tale of a long-defunct OS, and the long-defunct team that developed it, startlingly relevant.

  blog.codinghorror.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Design of Everyday Things

  Their words

  Designing software is difficult, to be sure, but designing a door is difficult too. The nuances of design extend into every object you touch, whether it's some hot new SQL engine, or a humble shoe.

  blog.codinghorror.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Code Complete 2

  Their words

  Steve McConnell's Code Complete 2 is the Joy of Cooking for software developers. Reading it means that you enjoy your work, you're serious about what you do, and you want to keep improving.

  blog.codinghorror.com

Software design writer and chief scientist at Thoughtworks; wrote Refactoring and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

From one piece CannotMeasureProductivity 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software productivity cannot be measured, because there is no way to measure a development team's output.

  Their words

  the reason we can't measure productivity is because we can't measure output

  CannotMeasureProductivitymartinfowler.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Lines of code cannot measure productivity, because better-designed code is shorter.

  Their words

  Any good developer knows that they can code the same stuff with huge variations in lines of code, furthermore code that's well designed and factored will be shorter because it eliminates the duplication.

  CannotMeasureProductivitymartinfowler.com