Hello everyone and welcome to Developer Tea, Episode 9. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, I'm your host, and today we're going to be talking about some of the stuff that I've been using recently. I know that's kind of an informal title for this podcast, but I just wanted to share some of the resources that I've been using with you in a way that's just kind of candid. Now the show is brand new and I don't have any sponsors, so everything that you hear on this particular episode is just kind of coming out from my personal experience and things that I've picked up recently that I think are actually just interesting tools or things that are useful to me that I think you'll find useful too. So let's jump right in. I know this is a really common format, by the way, for podcasts. For podcasts, because we're always looking for new tools. And I guess it makes sense to talk about this for just a second. Tools are incredibly important. But, now this may sound a little bit hypocritical since this episode is about tools, but you shouldn't get caught up in your tools. If a tool prevents you from doing a job. Or if picking between. Two tools. Preoccupies you. To the point where you can't actually make any progress because you're just trying to pick between the tools instead of actually doing work. Then you need to stop looking at your tools. And just use what you might have already used anyway, as if those new tools didn't come in to existence. In other words, if picking tools is the thing that's taking your time. If learning about new tools constantly is taking up more time than you actually. Building awesome stuff than you actually sitting down at your computer and coding. Then stop looking at new tools. Just stop. It's not worth it. Actually writing code is the best tool that you have in your tool belt. And really, you don't have a lot of space on your tool belt. So, that's part of what this episode is going to be about. It's hopefully to give you some ideas for tools that I've used recently that I've thought. Were pretty cool. And that you might be able to use. But it shouldn't take you very long to determine whether or not it's time to pick up a new tool. And, I mean, ultimately when you're picking tools, it comes down to what's going to do the job best. On the flip side though. Picking good tools can make or break what you do. I use Ruby. I'm going to go ahead and tell you early on. That I'll probably talk about Ruby. Not just Rails. I use Ruby via Sinatra. I do a lot of scripting for my local machine using Ruby. I use Grape and a few other things. And so, I've found that the tool Ruby has been incredibly important to me. And had I not found Ruby, I think I wouldn't be as good of a developer as I am today. So, it's important to keep your eyes. On the horizon for tools that might significantly shift your job as a developer. So, I guess the piece of advice to take away from both of those sides of the coin. Is that tools are important. But they aren't more important than actually getting something done. Okay. So, let's move on from that discussion. And actually talk about a few of the things that I've been using recently. Now, I'm not going to always talk about. Explicitly software tools. Sometimes I'm just going to talk about cool services that I'm using. And that's actually the very first thing I'm going to talk about today. I'm using this service. It has a free 30-day trial. It's called Focus at Will. And basically what it does is it gives you music in the background of. Like background noise in your headphones. And there's like 10 or 15 different channels for music. And it's actually not all music. Some of it is like cafe noise. If you've been paying attention to Product Hunt or Designer News or Hacker News. Some of these things have been coming out. They're like noise generators. And so, the cool thing about Focus at Will. Is that it actually has like a scientifically backed. Like they actually have a paper. The science behind this thing. That has quite a few references to the science. That backs what they do. So, it's scientifically studied in some way. And it has like this slider at the bottom of the player. That lets you determine what your energy level is. So that the music or the sounds can match your energy level. It's really interesting. I've been using it. And it may be just the effect of me. Knowing that I'm using something that's intentionally built to help me focus. But I really do think that these kinds of tools. Are really. Kind of subconsciously very important. Because I know that when I don't use a tool like Focus at Will. And when it's just Top 40 Radio or something like that. On the Sonos in the office. The Sonos speaker in the office. I've noticed that it seems like I'm easily distracted. So, try Focus at Will. 30 days. It's free. And again, they aren't sponsoring me. It's just. It's a really cool little tool. That I think would be worthwhile for trying. Especially if you have issues focusing. If you need to block out sound that's around you. Try out Focus at Will. The next tool that I've been using. Is explicitly related to programming. And it's one that probably everyone listening to the show already has. I'm going to go ahead and say it. I have been using Vim. I have not even tried Emacs. And I probably won't. Now that I've started down the Vim road. So, if you're going to try to talk me into it. Then we probably shouldn't even try to have that discussion. I just came over from the Sublime Text World. Which I know probably a lot of listeners to this show are still using. And I've just really been enjoying Vim. And learning Vim. You know, there's been quite a few arguments about this. Obviously. But I don't want to get into that. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. I just want to. At Vim. At Vim. At Vim. At Vim. At Vim. At Vim. powerful text editors like Vim or Emacs. Maybe try Emacs. If you don't like Vim, for some reason, take a look at Emacs. But try these new text editors. And the reason why I say it's worth trying new text editors is because we are literally using text editors to create the things that we're building, like one character at a time. So if we can have something that gives us a continuous return, in other words, we're constantly using the new tool, the things that we are constantly using should be the things that are the most refined parts of our workflow. And text editors, we are constantly using as developers. So if you want to learn about Vim, the good folks over at ThoughtBot have put together some resources for learning about Vim. And if you want to learn about Vim, you can go to And I've also been using their Upcase learning platform. Upcase is like a monthly fee, and you basically get to learn from some of the developers at ThoughtBot. They put out quite a bit of great content. And they've been creating these courses that allow you to interact with them. So you actually get like a Git repository, you pull it down, you make some edits, and then you push it out. And then you can actually get to the next level. So if you want to learn about Vim, you can click on theensionijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij basis. Now I've been using SimpleNote. It's free and it's really fantastic. Really great, simple features. It allows you to collaborate, does all those things that you might would want in a note application. I know that there's another note application that came out semi-recently called Drafts. And I'm sure that SimpleNote and Drafts have some similar functionality, but I've been using SimpleNote and I love it. So I recommend checking it out at least. There's another really cool application that I actually bought and I haven't been using it because I just haven't found the perfect reason to use it just yet. It's called Quiver and it's really cool. It seems like it probably has a lot of good use cases, especially for teams that are sharing, you know, maybe they're making documentation together. Or they have a lot of shared code snippets because basically what Quiver is, it's like Evernote sort of, but it allows you to write code and it'll, it'll highlight the code and it will actually allow you to write like markdown and export these things to HTML. It seems like a super cool application and I tried it out for like a day. And then I just, I guess I just kept on writing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't code in my, in my text editor. If I was writing a lot of code related blog posts, I think Quiver would be my go-to tool. So check Quiver out. I'll put that in the show notes. Um, and that, and that actually wraps up this, this month's episode of the things that I've been using, stuff I'm using these days. Um, if you have any questions for me, if you have any thoughts about the show, please get at me on Twitter at, at developer T or you can email me at developer T at gmail.com and make sure you jump onto developer T.com and leave a comment on this episode. If you have any other ideas about the things that I've talked about here, as always, I appreciate your time. I'm so thankful for all the people who listen to this show and until next time, enjoy your tea. Bye.