#robmartinson.me

After 30+ years in the software development industry with 20 of those working primarily on a Mac workstation, here are my top must-have tools for every software developer or technologist working on the MacOS platform. Although I constantly try out new tools and experiment with different workflows, it takes something pretty solid to remain in consistent use.

• TablePlus: Lightweight, fast database tool that supports all the necessary drivers, stores queries and connections in iCloud and ships for iOS too.
• VSCode: Nothing to say here. Add CoPilot and whatever language extensions you want (for me it's Python, Go, HTML, CSS, makefiles and a few others.)
• Wezterm: Fantastic and extremely configurable terminal written in Rust and scriptable with Lua.
• Hammerspoon: Lua scripting to automate your Mac desktop.
• RapidAPI for Mac: Excellent API client that supports all of the necessary functionality and has cloud storage of projects.
• Wireguard: Secure connectivity to the office (or home, or clients' or...). We deploy a WireGuard endpoint on a Raspberry Pi for the ultimate client -> server style VPN.
• BearApp: I write notes and outlines constantly and have for years. This serves as my dumping ground and storage facility for all of it. Plus, you can write exports and do things like push to a blog. How do you think I write this content? 
• Fantastical: A powerful and intuitive calendar app that integrates seamlessly with various calendar services and offers natural language input for quick event creation. This is found a home instead of the default Mac calendar and task list for me. 
• MimeStream: Native Gmail-based email in a real app. Multiple accounts, great searching, all of the normal Gmail must-haves.
• IstatMenus: A comprehensive system monitoring tool that displays CPU, memory, network, and other vital system information right in your menu bar.
• Git Tower: A user-friendly and powerful Git client for Mac, offering features like interactive rebase, submodules support, and conflict resolution helpers. If you’re every day, workflow is just the standard commit push, you can stick with tools in VS code, etc. But if you are doing a significant amount of branching and merging work, this is a great tool to see all history. 
• Kaleidoscope: An advanced diff and merge tool for developers, supporting various file types and integrating well with version control systems.
• Panic Transmit: sets the standard for simplicity, reliability, and user interface as a file transfer tool. Supports all the needed things such as FTP, STP, Web, S3 buckets, etc.
• ngrok: A tool for exposing local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels, great for testing and sharing your work.
• Sublime Text: Not much to say here, if you need a rocksolid text editor this is the one.
• jj: A command-line JSON processor that allows for quick and easy manipulation of JSON data.

These tools have proven invaluable in my day-to-day work writing software working with API’s and all other manner of problem-solving. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just a geek, these are all worth a look and can make a noticeable difference in your effectiveness.