Here are some of my favourite tools I make use of in my tech work:
Text Editor
Visual Studio Code: an editor that manages to be extremely powerful with a lot of features and extension support even while being relatively lightweight. See blog posts tagged as Visual Studio Code.
Terminals
Windows Terminal: a pleasant terminal in Windows that incorporates all your shells in one app. This is now default on Windows 11 but requires downloading it separately on Windows 10.
PuTTy: a great option to save multiple SSH connections to servers, with a lot of configuration settings to navigate different requirements.
Code Repositories
Git with GitLab or GitHub: for the most part I use GitLab professionally and GitHub personally. GitLab gives a bit more project management tools out of the box, but they’re both great.
Accessibility Testing
WAVE: testing tools including a browser extension that can help highlight accessibility issues while you browse the site.
Pa11y: testing tools that are especially great from a command line, including being able to incorporate them into CI/CD pipeline tests.
Brandwood: a tool that is specifically helpful for finding contrast errors of text against an image background. See my blog post about Brandwood.
Database Management
MySQL Workbench: a heavy-duty database tool that lets you see the database in convenient table views, edit inline, and run other commands. See my blog post about MySQL Workbench.
MySQL Extension in Visual Studio Code: extension to access MySQL servers, including viewing in an easy-to-read table format and running queries.
Tech Podcasts
Most of these podcasts are not directly related to any of my work, but they are all smart people tackling interesting topics:
- Rocket: “accelerated geek conversation” that explores news in technology along with some “dessert” around other geeky topics. Possibly my favourite podcast in terms of how well the hosts complement each other’s skills and knowledge areas.
- Your Undivided Attention: exploring the human consequences of decisions we make with technologies, especially the social media engagement model, from the Center for Human Technology.
- Windows Weekly: news and analysis all about Microsoft.
- This Week in Tech: a panel show covering all kinds of tech news of the past week and discussing its implications.
- The Intrazone by Microsoft: this is an official corporate one, which does tend to be more promotional and definitely less critical, but it is a valuable way to keep up with news in the world of SharePoint and related technologies.