🛠️ Tools I Use to Be More Productive

Hey there, developrrrs! 👋 Today, I'm sharing my battle-tested arsenal of productivity tools that actually deliver on their promises. If you're tired of context-switching chaos and workflow friction, it's time to upgrade your digital exoskeleton with tools that make you feel like you've got developer superpowers.

— John Ciprian

Got ideas? Feedback? DevEx war stories? Hit reply - I read every response! 📬

🗞️ IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ARTISAN

Hire an AI BDR to Automate Your LinkedIn Outreach

Sales reps are wasting time on manual LinkedIn outreach. Our AI BDR Ava fully automates personalized LinkedIn outreach using your team’s profiles—getting you leads on autopilot.

She operates within the Artisan platform, which consolidates every tool you need for outbound:

• 300M+ High-Quality B2B Prospects

• Automated Lead Enrichment With 10+ Data Sources Included

• Full Email Deliverability Management

• Personalization Waterfall using LinkedIn, Twitter, Web Scraping & More

Book a demo to see what Ava can do.

🤿 DEEP DIVE

🛠️ Tools I Use to Be More Productive

Your tech stack isn't just a collection of tools—it's the exoskeleton that either powers you through your day or weighs you down like medieval armor. After years of trial and error (and, let's be honest, impulse purchases during late-night coding sessions), I've curated a productivity ecosystem that actually delivers on its promises.

According to the State of Developer Experience 2024 report, developers spend up to 28% of their time on non-coding tasks. The right tools can reclaim those lost hours, and I'm about to share my battle-tested arsenal.

 MacOS Magic-Makers

Command Center: Raycast has replaced Spotlight, Alfred, and half a dozen other utilities on my machine. It's like having a personal assistant who never sleeps and responds in milliseconds—from launching apps to executing scripts to managing snippets.

Focus Enablers: The unholy trinity of Bear (for markdown notes), Things (for task management), and Arc Browser has transformed my digital workspace from a chaotic dumpster fire to something resembling actual organization. Bear's clean interface makes documentation feel less like punishment, while Things helps me pretend I have my life together.

Window Wranglers: The combination of Magnet, AltTab, and Hidden Bar has ended the daily struggle of “Where did that window go?" Magnet snaps windows into place like they're magnetized (shocking, I know), AltTab brings Windows-style app switching to macOS, and Hidden Bar declutters my menu bar, which was starting to look like a digital hoarder's paradise.

Clipboard Sorcery: Paste remembers everything I copy so my brain doesn't have to. It's like having a photographic memory, but only for things you've highlighted and hit ⌘+C on.

Meeting Minimizers: Meeter automatically launches Zoom calls from calendar invites, saving me from the classic “Which link was it again?" panic that precedes every meeting.

👨🏼‍💻 Dev Tools That Don't Suck

Terminal Transformation: iTerm2 with zsh and oh-my-posh is the command line setup that finally made me stop fearing the terminal. It's like upgrading from a flip phone to a smartphone for your shell experience.

Git Without Tears: Tower has saved me from countless Git disasters. Remember that time you tried to merge a branch and somehow deleted three weeks of work? Tower doesn't let that happen.

IDE Innovation: Cursor is like VS Code if it went to grad school and came back with a PhD in "actually understanding what you're trying to do." Its AI capabilities feel like pair programming with someone smarter than you who never gets tired.

Container Comfort: Rancher Desktop offers Docker functionality without the Docker Desktop baggage. It's like getting the same car but with better gas mileage and no weird rattling sound.

🤖 AI Companions

The trifecta of ChatGPT, Claude, and Ollama has fundamentally changed how I approach problem-solving. Instead of immediately Googling errors, I now have contextual conversations about them. It's the difference between asking a librarian for help versus trying to piece together answers from random book pages.

🔗 The DevEx Connection

These tools aren't just shiny objects—they directly impact developer experience by eliminating friction points. Every time you don't have to context-switch between ten applications or remember where you saved that snippet, your cognitive load decreases, and your focus improves. According to research from the DevOps Research and Assessment team, reducing cognitive load is one of the strongest predictors of high-performing tech teams.

💡 The Bottom Line

Tool selection is deeply personal, but the best productivity stack shares common traits: it reduces context switching, automates repetitive tasks, and feels invisible when working properly. Start by identifying your biggest daily friction points, then find tools specifically designed to solve those problems—not just the ones with the coolest features or prettiest UI.

My best advice: add tools incrementally. Master one before adding another, or you'll end up with productivity debt that's worse than the problem you were trying to solve.

Stay tooled up! 🔧

Powered by coffee ☕️ and keyboard shortcuts I still accidentally discover after years of use

📊 STAT

62% of Executive Buyers Prefer a Unified Platform Over Siloed Dev Tools

More than half of executive buyers (62%) say they would rather adopt a unified developer platform than continue using fragmented tools, according to the State of Developer Experience 2024 report. This shift is fueled by developers juggling an average of 14 tools, leading to slower onboarding (averaging 100 days) and constant context switching (97% report it daily). The report also highlights that consolidating tools can unlock massive productivity gains — up to $7.9M per 1,000 developers. Executives now see platform unification as a business accelerator, not just a tooling upgrade.

💡 Key Insight: Platform consolidation is becoming a strategic DevEx priority, not just a tooling preference.

📌 ESSENTIAL READS

📈 GitHub Expands Project Limits and Enhances Issues UI. GitHub has significantly increased the item limit for projects from 1,200 to 50,000, allowing for more extensive project management. Additionally, the GitHub Issues interface has been updated with a new filter bar featuring autocomplete and syntax highlighting, a 'create more' option for faster issue creation, and improved ordering of issue forms and templates.These enhancements aim to streamline project planning and issue tracking for developers.​

🛠️ JetBrains Introduces New Terminal Architecture in IDEs. JetBrains has unveiled a reworked terminal architecture for its IDEs, now available in beta starting with version 2025.1.The new terminal runs on a stable, standards-compliant core and utilizes the IDE's editor for UI rendering. This overhaul is designed to enhance stability and provide a foundation for introducing new features in the future.

🤖 Atlassian's Rovo AI Now Available to All Customers.  Atlassian is making its enterprise AI solution, Rovo, accessible to all customers. Rovo offers AI-powered search, chat, and agents, aiming to enhance teamwork by unlocking organizational knowledge and accelerating decision-making. This integration reflects Atlassian's commitment to advancing human-AI collaboration within teams.​

🛠️ TOOLS

• Eclipse Theia is a flexible and extensible open-source framework for building IDEs and tools based on web technologies, supporting both desktop and cloud environments.

• Taiga is a free and open-source project management system designed for agile developers, offering features like Kanban and Scrum templates to track project progress efficiently.

• Budibase is an open-source low-code platform that enables developers to build internal tools and business apps quickly, streamlining workflows and reducing development time. ​

📣 Want to advertise in Developrrr? If you want to connect with tech execs, decision-makers, and engineers, advertising with us could be your perfect match.