Technology Tools I Recommend & Use
Front end
JavaScript
I still find it incredible that the worlds most popular programming languages was written in just 10 days. Writing JS has been the bread & butter of my own career & my appreciation for it has grown as I've contended with both it's good, & bad parts. I believe that JS is at its best when written in composable, declarative way. My favorite resources on JS are 'You Dont Know JS' & Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequete Guide to Functional Programming.
Typescript
I'm a firm-believer that a carefully crafted strong type system improves code quality, refactorability, readability, & your overall understanding of modules developed by other teams & developers. I'm a strong advocate for types & compilers, as well as static code analysis. My favorite resource for learning more about typescript is Type Level Typescript by Gabriel Vergnaud.
React
What can I say, React is still G.O.A.T IMO. This whole website was built using React, and honestly working in React has defined the bulk of my career thus far. Ill be singing the praises of composability, JSX, and the expressiveness that React offers for years to come.
Full Stack / Back end
Next.js
Full-stack React, SSR, and RSC, give an effective replacement to both tRPC & gRPC are what make Next.js the most compelling full-stack technology framework for indie developers who want to get off the ground running with everything they need, but with the frontend cloud at the top of their mind. Progressive enhancement, full compatibility with edge functions, fast load times, & intelligent asset caching are all apart of my decision for choosing Next.js as my go to starter stack. It should come as no surprise that this portfolio site is written using Next.js. It keeps me productive. I cant say enough great things about it.
Node.js / Express
What can I say I just really like writing Javascript! No but seriously. Node.js + Express are an amazing combo for folks who don't want the overhead of context switching between frontend & backend work & want a lightweight batteries included mechanism to begin writing a network layer. During my time at Pluralsight, much of years 2-4 were spent scaling 2 Node.js services to be able to service high profile customers like JPMC, Chevron, AMEX, & more. Node.js never got in my way, especially when paired with a sensible database abstraction behind it.
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails was the first technology stack I ever used professionally, & in hindsight I feel particularly lucky that I got to use such an expressive, concise, productive, opinionated stack as a new engineer. While I look back on my time with Ruby romantically, thinking about how quickly my entire team could spin up MVPs for CRUD applications with ease, I have to confess that I do not miss ActiveRecord at all, nor the "Model" in in MVC much at all.
Databases
PostgreSQL
Whether your storing your data as traditional SQL or JSON style NoSQL, normalized, de-normalized, with key constraints, without key constraints, Postgres always has you covered. Postgres' world-class flexibility make it the first querying language that I reach for on professional teams.
Turso
Turso is proving that yes, SQLite can scale, and that you don't need to pay hefty amounts of money to get there. Turso does a lot in terms of providing feature parody with DB services like PlanetScale (below), but with a fraction of the complexity. Turso is ready for edge computing, has support for rapid prototyping via its "db push" functionality and works anywhere that libsql database driver works, making it a great choice to pair with popular SQL libraries across the web stack. My favorite part of using turso is that it actually takes less than 10 seconds to get started. It's brilliant.
PlanetScale DB
While Postgres has my heart, MySQL was the first database technology I ever used. MySQL powered my early web development career. And it hasn't slowed down either, as companies like PlanetScale continue to innovate in the space. PlanetScale's highly competitive pricing, disruptive approach to git style database branching, & generous free tier make it my go-to hosted db platform for all my indie dev side project ideas. Migrations in PlanetScale are so easy to work with that it feels like the logical choice for teams that want to iterate quickly, & don't know the exact data shape they're working with at the start of a new project. First class support for popular Node.js libraries like Prisma, Drizzle, & sequalize are all icing on top. MySQL remains one of my top database choices, & continues to power many of the APIs I use both in my side projects & professionally. MySQL has earned its place as the obvious top contendor to PostgreSQL in OSS db popularity.
Data Events
RabbitMQ
The 1st time I ever worked in a micro-services architecture much of my day was spent writing subscribers & publishers to power the eventual consistency that would allow totally separate domains to talk to one another with grace. Rabbit is a no brainer, & a perfect fit with Node.js which was fundamentally built on top of an 'event loop' architecture. My only complaint with rabbit is that h&ling dead-lettering can be cumbersome & hard, which leads us to kafka.
Apache Kafka
Where RabbitMQ struggles, Kafka holds strong, but can take significantly more effort to setup & get right. Kafka consumers can do what RabbitMQ consumers cannot in that they re-read history from the beginning of time, getting you every event that was ever fired. The real time analytics abilities from tools that are built on top of kafka are second to none, & powered analytics dashboards I helped create in Scala during the 2020 global p&emic.
AWS Simple Queue Service
SQS is my favorite eventing platform for simple pub/sub architectures. While it feels less grown up compared to its rabbit & kafka counterparts, its also more lightweight & by far the easiest to get started with since its a 1st party hosted solution.
Dev Tools
VSCode
If you're still not using VS Code yet, schedule some time with me. As a long time JetBrains enthusiast, VS Code has everything I need with a fraction of the CPU & RAM cost & a better UX. Neither full fledge IDE, nor simple text-editor, VS Code lets you be whatever you configure it to be. There is real elegance in that. The cherry on top is that there is no better remote pairing experience than the LiveShare offering from Microsoft. I highly recommend it for distributed teams who want to occasionally pair & mob program.
Oh My ZSH
Whether or not I'm on Mac, WSL, or Linux you can bet that I'm taking ZSH, along with all my custom ZSH configurations, aliases, & plugins with me. ZSH is bash supercharged, & makes working out of the terminal feel premium.
iTerm 2
A great modern terminal that doesn't get in your way, doesnt track you with data analytics, & doesn't require you to login. Its tried, true, & stable. Keep being you, iTerm.
TablePlus
Compatible with all major OSS querying languages, I love TablePlus for all the same reasons I love VS Code. While its not a full fledge IDE like Data Grip, it helps me do what I need to do while managing a minimal, simple user interface that really puts your SQL data front & center & gets everything else out of your way.
Insomnia
Insomnia does its job really well, without layering on lots of extra pricey abstractions, bells, & whistles like some of its competitors. A good network protocol tool gets you back into your browser or editor as fast as possible, & that is insomnia at its core.
Practices & Principles
Kanban with Linear
Ive been an outspoken critic of the way that most implement agile. The agile manifesto (which was written about 30 minutes up the road from my childhood home) is only 4 short simple sentences. Yet its meaning largely appears to be lost as teams spend copious amounts of time managing sAFE, SCRUM, & spending signficant energy figuring out how long something is going to take, rather than spending time delivering customer value. Linear reduces waste, cuts through the cruft, and is hands down the most powerful, simple, and fun project management tool I've ever used.
Atomic Design Principles
Brad Frost is responsible for getting me interested in Design Systems. Atomic Design lays out principles by which I believe all great design systems can be built upon for scale, cleanliness, & a stellar developer experience. Both on the design systems that I have had a h& in building, & design systems I choose to use, I look for atomic layers of UI that can easily be structured into eventual full pages & layouts. Thank you Brad!
Test-Driven Development
TDD is a discipline I strive to practice with relative consistency in my own career as its led to better overall code quality, helps me go faster, & most importantly helps me think through features at the smallest level possible. I view the benefits of TDD to be largely at design & development time, in helping me think through the structure of my thoughts to deliver value. Those returns diminish when the test is written second. TDD helps me figure out what code I'm trying to write. When you've already written the code. the tests are only there to make sure code that comes after it meets a specification. TDD is double entry book keeping. Its measuring twice to cut once. Its a discipline that for me has been non-negotiable.