Ahmed Jazzar's profile picture

Software I use, gadgets I love, and other things I recommend.

I get asked a lot about the things I use to build software, stay productive, or buy to fool myself into thinking I'm being productive when I'm really just procrastinating. Here's a big list of all of my favorite stuff.

Workstation

  • 16” MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 64GB RAM (2021)

    I was using an Intel-based 16” MacBook Pro prior to this and the difference is night and day. I've never heard the fans turn on a single time, even under the incredibly heavy loads I put it through with our various launch simulations.

  • LG UltraFine 4K Display

    With a stunning 3840-by-2160 resolution, the 23.7-inch LG UltraFine 4K Display brings your favorite photos and videos to life. So whether you're watching a movie or editing an image, this high-performance monitor delivers immaculate 4K resolution for even the most pixel-packed visuals.

  • Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad

    Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad delivers a remarkably comfortable and precise typing experience. It features an extended layout, with document navigation controls for quick scrolling and full-size arrow keys, which are great for gaming.

  • Herman Miller Aeron Chair

    If I'm going to slouch in the worst ergonomic position imaginable all day, I might as well do it in an expensive chair.

Development tools

  • PyCharm

    This IDE saves my time while it takes care of the routine. Focus on the bigger things and embrace the keyboard-centric approach to get the most of PyCharm's many productivity features.

  • iTerm2

    I'm honestly not even sure what features I get with this that aren't just part of the macOS Terminal but it's what I use.

  • Visual Studio Code

    My favorite text editor for light tasks and whenever I don't have access to the charming PyCharm. I love the community extensions and the adoption it received by almost all developers.

Design

  • Figma

    We started using Figma as just a design tool but now it's become our virtual whiteboard for the entire company. Never would have expected the collaboration features to be the real hook.

Frameworks

  • Django

    Django is a high-level Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Built by experienced developers, it takes care of much of the hassle of web development, so you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel. It's free and open source.

  • Terraform

    Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as code software tool that enables you to safely and predictably create, change, and improve infrastructure.

  • NextJS

    Used by some of the world's largest companies, Next.js enables you to create full-stack web applications by extending the latest React features, and integrating powerful Rust-based JavaScript tooling for the fastest builds.

  • TailwindCSS

    An open source CSS framework. The main feature of this library is that, unlike other CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, it does not provide a series of predefined classes for elements such as buttons or tables.

Languages

  • Python

    A high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation.

  • Bash

    Bash is the GNU Project's shell—the Bourne Again SHell. This is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and the C shell (csh).

  • TypeScript

    TypeScript is a free and open source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language.

  • Java

    Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible.

DevOps Skills

  • Docker

    Docker is a set of platform as a service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. The service has both free and premium tiers. The software that hosts the containers is called Docker Engine.

  • Kubernetes

    Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Google, the project is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

  • Tekton

    Tekton is a powerful and flexible open-source framework for creating CI/CD systems, allowing developers to build, test, and deploy across cloud providers and on-premise systems. Get started with Tekton.

  • Ansible

    Ansible is a suite of software tools that enables infrastructure as code. It is open-source and the suite includes software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment functionality.

  • Github Actions

    GitHub Actions is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform that allows you to automate your build, test, and deployment pipeline.

  • Git

    Git is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development.

  • Stress Testing

    Stress testing is a software testing activity that determines the robustness of software by testing beyond the limits of normal operation. Stress testing is particularly important for "mission critical" software, but is used for all types of software.

Templating Languages

  • Helm

    Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.

  • Django

    A Django template is a text document or a Python string marked-up using the Django template language. Some constructs are recognized and interpreted by the template engine. The main ones are variables and tags. A template is rendered with a context.

  • Jinja 2

    Jinja is a web template engine for the Python programming language. It was created by Armin Ronacher and is licensed under a BSD License. Jinja is similar to the Django template engine but provides Python-like expressions while ensuring that the templates are evaluated in a sandbox.

  • Mako

    Mako is a template library written in Python. Mako is an embedded Python language, which refines the familiar ideas of componentized layout and inheritance. The Mako template is used by Reddit. It is the default template language included with the Pylons and Pyramid web frameworks.

Cloud Providers

  • Amazon Web Services

    Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis. Often times, clients will use this in combination with autoscaling.

  • Google Cloud Platform

    Google Cloud Platform, offered by Google, is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube.

  • IBM Cloud Computing

    IBM cloud computing is a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM.