Tools I liked using in 2023

A short list of some of my favourite software and tools I used in my day-to-day throughout 2023.

General

Arc Browser

“The browser reimagined”, it took me some time to get used to the thick borders but once I was used to it I can safely say I am a big fan of Arc and now using it as my default web browser on MacOS. Controlling your browser and tabs via a command palette feels so natural.

Raycast

Raycast has been a great productivity tool for me this year and the floating notes feature has completely replaced Todoist for me.

ChatGPT

Who didn’t use ChatGPT this year, I particularly enjoyed using it via the Raycast ChatGPT plugin.

Linear

Sensible subset of Jira, we used Linear for the entire year in my day job, everyone is happy and it serves us very well.

Obsidian

This year I completely migrated all my personal notes off of Notion and onto Obsidian and I am very happy with the switch. Keeping all my notes in markdown, stored in a git repo feels very good.

Excalidraw

Nowadays if I need to whiteboard something I go straight to Excalidraw, it’s intuitive, quick and I really enjoy being able to export as SVG to easily include in my Obsidian notes.

Development

VSCode

Definitely my most used software for this year, previous years, and I am sure it will be for many years to come. If I had to pick a single extension that was my favourite this year it would be the GitHub Pull Request extension, being able to easily review and comment on PRs without leaving VSCode keeps me in the flow.

GitHub Copilot

Another year of using Github Copilot, I am still impressed by it and looking forward to seeing how it evolves in the future.

Astro

Astro would have to be my favourite “new to me” tool of 2023, and this site is built with it.

Vue 3

After working in Vue 2 for the past 5 years it was starting to feel very stale to me. At work we finally completed migrating our main codebase to Vue 3 and my love for Vue has been reinvigorated.

React

While I don’t use React in my day job, this year was a big React year for me, picking it up in a large side project was enjoyable, and the ecosystem is just unmatched when it comes to frontend libraries.

Typescript

Typescript has definitely won the type system battle for now. All of my new projects are written in Typescript and I am very happy with it.

Tailwindcss

I am a bit slow to the party with Tailwindcss, but better late than never. We now use tailwindcss at work for all new components and I am also using it for a few side projects (including this site).

PNPM

My now go-to package manager for JavaScript projects. Workspace support for monorepos is great and I also enjoy the ability to easily monkey patch dependencies when required.

Vite

Using Vite has been very refreshing compared to wrestling with Webpack. I am a very happy user and reach for it for all my new projects.