Here’s what I’m currently using day-to-day. I’ll try to keep this up to date as things change.
languages & frameworks
- Laravel — my primary backend framework. I use it daily at Lumion and for personal projects. It’s the foundation of almost everything I build.
- Livewire + Filament — for building admin panels and interactive UIs within Laravel without reaching for a full SPA.
- Go — I reach for this when I need performance or when the problem is math-heavy. I’ve written some neat pieces in it.
- TailwindCSS — I style everything with Tailwind at this point. Can’t imagine going back.
- Alpine.js — lightweight interactivity without the overhead of a full JS framework.
- Hugo — powers this site. Fast, simple, gets out of the way.
Previously: Codeigniter, jQuery, Bootstrap, Sass, vanilla PHP
editor & terminal
- PhpStorm — my IDE for all real coding work.
- Fira Code iScript — my go-to font across editors. Ligatures make code easier to scan.
- Warp — my current terminal. Fast and stays out of the way.
- TablePlus — database client. Clean interface, handles multiple connections well.
AI tools
- Claude / Codex — daily coding companions. These pulled me back into hands-on coding after spending a lot of time in architecture and management mode.
- Conductor.build — I use this heavily for running multiple AI coding agents in parallel. It’s changed how I approach larger tasks.
design & planning
- Lucid (Lucidchart / Lucidspark) — I use this heavily. Flowcharts, data-lifecycle diagrams, system design — I almost always start here before writing code.
- Obsidian — where I journal obsessively using a blend of the PARA method and the Bullet Journal system.
data
- MySQL / PostgreSQL — my primary relational databases. I started my career as a DBA, so I’m particular about schemas and query performance.
- DynamoDB / MongoDB — when document-oriented storage fits the problem better.
Previously: MSSQL, Firestore
infrastructure & hosting
- Digital Ocean + Laravel Forge — my go-to for provisioning and managing servers.
- AWS — Lambdas and S3, mostly.
- Netlify — static hosting. This site runs on it.
- Cloudflare — DNS and edge caching.
Previously: Azure, Google Cloud, Aptum/Peer1, GitHub Pages
hardware & OS
- Mac — primary machine these days.
- Brave — my browser of choice.
integrations
- Stripe — payments and subscriptions.
- Sendgrid / Mailgun — transactional email.
- Twilio — SMS.
- Slack — mostly for notifications and integrations.
Previously: Mapbox, Mapquest, Google Maps, Intercom, Helpscout, Zendesk
testing & CI/CD
Previously: PHPUnit, ChipperCI, CircleCI