2025-12-14

List of good tools

Note:

There are so many things in tech that I use with hesitancy like:

  • AWS (thanks for making my egress / ingress fees >>'> my compute rlly awesome)
  • Databases (think of the wasted CPU cycles)
  • NixOS (I really hate that it's the best option for maintaining a clean setup)
  • much more…

That I want to list out the things I actually enjoy using.

List:

Helix.

Not having to spend 8 hours configuring Helix is the best part about it. I don't care that it doesn't support terminals because I don't have to sit in front of my coworkers like a freak explaining 'oh i just need 8 hours to install my Nvim plugins'. Genuinely such a great thing to exist.

Victoria Logs / Metrics.

If you use Loki or Prometheus you should just switch. It's so easy to setup and performs so much better.

Devenv.sh on NixOS.

I know there's like a huge fanbase for NixOS, but the docs suck so so so much. All I want is to be able to isolate every projects toolchains from each other so I don't deal with problems later. Surely NixOS is not the best iteration of this concept, but it's what we have. Devenv.sh makes Nix be actually useable and I really appreciate the devs for making it.

Sqlite.

Databases are so incredibly unnecessary until you start doing distributed computing. If you're doing something that's computationally easy and/or at low scale save yourself any headache and just use Sqlite.

Opus 4.5.

Is the smartest AI as of Dec 2025. It's actually rlly good and has made my job so much easier.

ChatGPT Atlas.

For the exclusive purpose of bullying it into being my overcaffeinated TA. I open my laptop on Fridays, paste instructions for how to navigate Canvas and the online textbooks, and it keeps me on rails while I actually do the work.

Rust Soychest!

You should only use Rust if you've written in C++. Without that pre-requisite using Rust is like turning 21 and enjoying a 100 yr bottle of wine. It's hard to motivate why it's so much better unless you've tried an alternative. Although I still do think templates are superior to macros.

Chisel / SpinalHDL.

Have you tried writing in SystemVerilog / VHDL?

K8S.

In the big 2025, I still think K8S is the singlehandedly best technology for deploying anything at scale. I refuse to use Railway or Railway-esque services simply because K8S is just already user friendly, straight-forward, and feature-rich.

K9S.

The only issue with K8S is the repetitive commands. K9S solves this and also saves me like min 5 hours / week whenever i'm doing infra shit. If i'm ever a billionaire i'm retiring the guy who made it.

Kalshi.

Have you looked at Polymarket docs?

Svelte.

So simple and so good.

Pixotine.

I don't use nicotine consistently but sometimes it's nice to have on a sunny day when working. I think Nicotine toothpicks are the penultimate iteration of nicotine administration and I think Pixotine is the best brand.