The oldest software I use. All of that time was spent on creating the most customizable and extensible text editor possible. Any cook worth their kosher salt has a good knife. No mere implement, it is their interface to the kitchen. And like all good interfaces it becomes invisible, melding and molding and bonding to its wielder. Emacs is my knife.
The default shell and terminal on macOS. I shove most of the complexity of manipulating text, programs, and processes into emacs and thus don't have much need for fancy shells like fish or terminal emulators like iTerm2.
A next level laptop. Having suffered through the trough of Jony Ive'd touchbar macbooks, I relish every chance I get to work on this machine. The great battery untethers me from coffee shop walls and the snappy performance closes the windows of distraction opened by long build times.
The second biggest threat to my career is RSI (right behind spending too much time on Hacker News). This ergonomic keyboard takes a bit to get used to, but it's the only one I've found to be reasonably priced, reasonably sized, and reasonably un-hideous.
Where my pandemic stimulus check went. The best thing I can say about this chair is that I don't think about it at all. Paired with a standing desk, it ensures the limiting reactant for my work is my brain and not the bag of meat it sits atop.
A fundamental way I interact with my machine. Clipboard history, text expansion, and file searching are what I use Alfred for the most, but it's also a friendly interface into top to check on and kill processes. One of these days I'll hook it into DALLE or GPT-3 and my productive output will approach ∞
I'm somewhat shocked that Apple has yet to add a more sophisticated window management system to macOS. Until then I use the free and open source Rectangle app to bring a semblance of organization to my desktop.
A beautiful little calendar that lives in your menubar! Essentialy to get a quick look at my upcoming meetings and to jump into video calls.
The Missing Package Manager for macOS. If I can't brew install it, odds are good I won't use it.