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Topic

Developer Tools & Productivity

Tools, workflows, and techniques to work more effectively as a developer. From CLI tools to productivity systems.

#dev#tools#productivity
53 articles in this topic

The next great engineering skill is not coding

You have likely ignored it your entire career. That stops now - it's time to hone your writing skills.

AI Prompt Secrets - what the leaks tell us

Popular AI tools like Claude, v0, and Cursor can be coaxed into revealing their prompts. Here's what I learned from a deep dive into some of the most successful prompts in the world.

Tools I Love - Resend and React Email

The best developer tools make you faster and make you look good. Resend does both - for email, of all things.

The 3 Mistakes New Creators Make

Most new creators stall before they start. Avoid these 3 common mistakes - and learn where to focus instead. Create. Publish. Share.

AI is your intern (not your boss)

Learn how to steer AI tools like Copilot and Cursor, avoid mistakes, and write better tests to ship reliable code.

How I (Think I) Talk to AI

How to talk to AI (the right way). Learn how to give better prompts, refine outputs, and use LLMs effectively-without losing your own voice.

My 2025 Developer Tech Stack

A list of the tools and tech I use as a professional product engineer in 2025.

Focus Mode for the Defiant

How free will fuels creativity, and how to stay on task with purpose.

Superfounder Superpowers: Sending Introductions

A guide to help you send introductions to your network.

The Great Inbox Reset

A guide to help you reset your inbox, get a free productivity boost, and do better work.

Get lost in your work: the magic of flow state

Flow state is a mental space where deep focus and creativity come together, allowing you to work more effectively and productively.

First Principles: Your Framework for Clarity

How the most productive people use fundamental truths to navigate complexity and stay focused

Inter and the Power of Fonts: Why Typefaces Matter More Than You Think

Open up the potential of your designs with a deeper understanding of what variable fonts like Inter can do.

How to source and use expert knowledge for your work

One of the most effective ways to grow as a developer is by tapping into the vast pool of knowledge available in the developer community.

Debug tips from a lifetime newbie

Debugging problems with code (especially production code) is something that is rarely taught in university classes or code schools. Here are some tips that I've come across from watching smarter people than me debug problems.

Struggling with TypeScript: why not?

One of your biggest skills as a person-on-the-internet is your ability to research and learn new things.

Keep your tools sharp

The tools we use to get our work done are incredibly important, and taking the time to tune them to work just right can make a huge difference in our productivity and happiness.

Why new frameworks make better developers

A look at the cognitive science behind the Hierarchy of Competence, and how dabbling with new frameworks and tools can make you a better developer.

Take my money! Some of my favorite tools... and why I pay for them

I'm a huge fan of products that use their a free tier to prove their value, and then convert me to a paying customer. Here are a few tools I pay for, and why I think they're worth it.

I hate Tailwind CSS. Here's why I use it.

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that I've come to love. Here's why I use it and why I think you should too.

There's no right way to do it

Building products comes with a sisyphean paradox: The blessing is that there are so many ways to do it. The curse is that there are so many ways to do it.

The productivity tool I use every day to multiply my output

I've been using networked note taking to organize my thoughts and ideas for years. Here's how it's helped me become more productive and efficient.

Tools for building a new company

I spent the last week spinning up a new company for the first time since 2017. Here are the tools I used.

The case for continued learning, and getting side projects out the door

The end of 2022 brought about a ton of change for me, and a major shift in my career. I'm excited to talk a little about what's next, and to show off a side project I'm readying for release soon.

Remember these apps?

This Dispatch of Tiny Improvements dives into some of โ€ he apps we've forgotten, no code tools, and time off.

Embrace no-code tools to save time, boost efficiency, and complement your coding skills. No-code is the future - don't be left behind!

Devs: It's okay to use no-code tools

Embrace no-code tools to save time, boost efficiency, and complement your coding skills. No-code is the future - don't be left behind!

Since its release, teams around the world have been using dependabot to automate the process of keeping your project's dependencies up to date. In this article, I'll show you how you can run dependabot on the command line using dependabot-core.

How to run dependabot locally on your projects

Since its release, teams around the world have been using dependabot to automate the process of keeping your project's dependencies up to date. In this article, I'll show you how you can run dependabot on the command line using dependabot-core.

For years I did a weekly coding livestream of my React and Python work on Twitch every week, and I'm getting back into it again. This is what sticks out to me as the most valuable learnings from those experiences.

Some things I learned from live coding on Twitch

For years I did a weekly coding livestream of my React and Python work on Twitch every week, and I'm getting back into it again. This is what sticks out to me as the most valuable learnings from those experiences.

If you come across array.filter(Boolean) in JavaScript code, never fear! It's a handy bit of functional programming that cleans up arrays with null and undefined values in them.

JavaScript Tips: Using Array.filter(Boolean)

If you come across array.filter(Boolean) in JavaScript code, never fear! It's a handy bit of functional programming that cleans up arrays with null and undefined values in them.

Stop using centered text. It's bad for usability, accessibility, and eye scanning -- and nobody anywhere wants to read like that.

Don't center align paragraph text

Stop using centered text. It's bad for usability, accessibility, and eye scanning -- and nobody anywhere wants to read like that.

Put simply, gitignore.io is a tool that is so profoundly helpful that I've forgotten what life was like without it.

gitignore.io is great

Put simply, gitignore.io is a tool that is so profoundly helpful that I've forgotten what life was like without it.

Destructuring syntax in es6 (or es2015, etc) JavaScript is a wonderfully useful bit of the language. It allows you to extract values from an Object and assign them to a new variable in one statement -- but it can be confusing to read.

Understanding JavaScript Destructuring Syntax

Destructuring syntax in es6 (or es2015, etc) JavaScript is a wonderfully useful bit of the language. It allows you to extract values from an Object and assign them to a new variable in one statement -- but it can be confusing to read.

An efficient workday is helped tremendously by having a handful of productivity boosters in your quiver. I use these extensions for Chrome to make my day a little nicer.

5 Chrome extensions I use for productivity

An efficient workday is helped tremendously by having a handful of productivity boosters in your quiver. I use these extensions for Chrome to make my day a little nicer.

Prettier.js is a fantastic way to systemize and automate your project's code style.

Embracing Prettier

Prettier.js is a fantastic way to systemize and automate your project's code style.

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