[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Rubber Duck Dev Show. I'm Chris.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: And I'm kristen.
[00:00:04] Speaker C: And I'm drew.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we're excited to be talking with Drew today about our dev setups. We're going to talk hardware, software, all the fun stuff that we do, the things that we like, the equipment we like to use, and, you know, things that are outside the IDE that we enjoy because we've had a good discussion, know the different Ides. We've actually had a couple of shows centered around Ides, but there's a lot of stuff that devs use that aren't Ides, so I think it's interesting to talk about that.
But before we do that week in Review Creston, how was your week again?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: It's all continuing the super busy, doing a variety of consulting work for postgres databases as well as some Rails consulting, working on my product. I'm actually in the process of also developing a course or two related to postgres, so in the coming months, I'll be sharing more information about that. So that's something that's in process right now.
Apart from that, what about you? How was your week?
[00:01:22] Speaker A: It's been busy, but not bad. I've actually got vacation coming up. Well, an extended weekend. I'm off Friday, Monday and Tuesday, so I was like, yeah, I just need a brain reboot there for a few days.
I'm kind of having to push a little extra this week to get ahead of things, but it hasn't been too bad. I've gotten a lot of things it's been a lot of again, admin type stuff rather than hands on keyboard programming, but I've gotten a lot of things squared away and organized and ready to go so that people can take care of crap while I'm out of the office. And it doesn't have to be me getting pinged for four days, which is really nice. I'm looking forward to that.
So, pretty good week all in all. Drew, how was your week?
[00:02:18] Speaker C: Oh, it's been an I foolishly foolishly upgraded to Sonoma, even though it came out yesterday because other devs on the team didn't have a problem with their upgrade. Of course, mine just messed everything up. Spent about 2 hours getting Git working again, sort of. And don't ask me how my IDE is because it ain't there.
So that's been fun, but it's been a good week. I'm on a project at work, and since the last time I was here, I've changed jobs. I'm no longer at within three. I actually joined the team at Podia, and it's an awesome team, and I'm just trying to keep pace with everybody and been a good week other than messing my entire development environment up.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Well, there is that, but the good news is go ahead.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: No, I'm saying we should also talk about do we have backup environments as we're talking about hardware and software for eventuality git is the backup.
Well, I mean, other systems you could pull out of a closet to be able to I'm just saying, like, hey.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: My MacBook caught on fire. Now what do I do?
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Punch cards?
Right? That's how before computers.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: That's the way it goes, man.
You can still read those, right?
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Speaking of reading, I just learned this, and maybe everybody knew this but me, but it wasn't until, like, the mid 80s that there was syntax and highlighting and semantic highlighting. So code used to just be text, just regular. Like, I opened it in notepad text and I'm like my brain just melted trying to think about that. Syntax highlighting makes such an improvement in my life.
It's amazing to think about that. Luckily, that's way before my time, but I learned that this week and was kind of blown away by the thought of it unluckily.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: It's not way before mine.
I used to go into the little bookstore, like Walden Books and stuff, in the mall. Mall's kids are like, inside stores, all put together, in case you don't know. We used to have those. But you go into the bookstore in the mall. Bookstore is where you buy these things that you can read.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: And not Amazon.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Well, I mean, no, but you get these books that were, like, Learn to program. And it was like the big nine by eleven size paperback books, and they just have page after page, like 100 pages of pre written code in Basic, right? And you'd take those home to your Apple Two and sit there and code and code and spend two days going copying all this code from this book. And you couldn't read a damn thing on the screen because, like you said, there was no syntax highlighting in those days. It was basically coding it in a Dos window.
And after two days of coding, you'd have this square ball that would bounce from one side of the screen to the other and back. And that was hot shit if it worked. Yeah, assuming you didn't typo something. And if you did, next page. We'll just forget about that one. I'm not going back there.
But anyway, things have come a long way, and I think devs are a little bit happier nowadays than they used to be.
Not only because of the Ides and the programming environments, the development environments we get to use, but I think the things outside the development environments are just physical environments have improved for development.
So let's talk about, like, one of the things that I think is overlooked a lot. And I actually saw a decent discussion about this maybe five or six months ago on Twitter. There's a big thread on chairs. What chair do you use?
And I think a lot of people don't think about that. And I can tell you, as I'm getting older, I'm starting to wish I thought more about that when I was younger.
Know, back problems and knee problems and all that kind of stuff.
So I'm kind of interested, Drew, what kind of chairs do you use for your daily sit downs?
[00:07:01] Speaker C: I have some. I think it's called autonomous chair. It's not bad. It was pretty cheap, which was, at the time, the big drawer. But I'm with you on I sit a lot. Even with the standing desk, I sit a lot, and I definitely need to upgrade. That the first programming job I had. I was in an office, and I got spoiled. They had those what are the Herman Millers?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:07:28] Speaker C: The really, like, I think it was, like, a one $200 chair or something insane like that. And I was like, this is amazing. I want one $200. Never mind. But I'm with those were, like, starting.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: To get to that mesh type chair.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
You didn't feel like you were sitting. And I already have some back problems. I hurt my back in the army and doesn't feel good to sit for long periods of time, especially as I'm getting older. So I'm like, $1,200 doesn't seem like that much anymore, and I'm with you. I kind of wish I had been a little bit more willing to drop the money on the chair as much as I was willing to drop money on the computer.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, Creston, what do you use? Just a steel folding chair. Right.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: It has cushions. You can't adjust the height.
It has a back.
That's all you need in 1995 for less than $50.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: There you go.
If it works, however.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: I only sit in it while recording.
[00:08:44] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: 100%. Other time, I stand up all the time because I injured my back, as well doing stupid things while moving when I was in my 20s.
Because of that, I stand all the time. The only time I sit is when I'm recording, so it's basically 4 hours a week. I sit. All the rest of the time I'm standing.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: So what about you, Chris?
[00:09:15] Speaker A: I've had, like, not a Herman Miller, but I've sat in Herman Miller's, and they're nice. And I've had other models of those kind of mesh type chairs, the ergonomic mesh chairs. Those never really gelled with me. What I ended up getting that I just fell in love with were these secret lab titan XL chairs.
This thing is so comfortable. First of all, it's leather, and they're kind of expensive, but, like $475 expensive. Not one $200 expensive, but they're leather. They're nice and soft. They got the lumbar supports. They're also extra wide, so you've got a lot of room in this chair so you don't feel closed in, so you can really spread out and you can lean back. It's got recline.
You can actually get some with foot rests on them. So when you recline, it's like being in a recliner at your seat, but fully 4D adjustable arms and stuff. And I love this chair. It is so good. And $450 sounds like a lot, but compared to the other ergonomic chairs, it's not really.
[00:10:32] Speaker C: And I would argue that $450 isn't that much to be comfortable.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: No.
[00:10:39] Speaker C: Most of us spend other than Creston, obviously most of us spend a lot of time in a chair. And it pays dividends in the long run to take care of your whole skeletal system, but especially your back. Once it starts hurting, it doesn't stop. You just kind of get used to it.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And before this chair, because I also have back problems because I have a congenital defect in one of the discs in my lower spine. It doesn't have any fluid, so it's like two vertebra just always rubbing together. Yeah, it's fun.
Before this chair, I couldn't sit for more than five or 10 minutes without being in a lot of pain. So this chair allows me to sit down for 45 minutes to an hour before I feel like I need to stand up. So it's a huge difference. And I did not get that kind of relief with the mesh back chairs.
To each their own and but this chair was a lifesaver for me.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: That's the hard part about chairs is they're pretty expensive. I mean, anything decent is not $50 in 1995. It's a couple of way up to over 1000 and there's not a lot of places to try them. And it's a lot of personal preference. It's a lot of like, hey, this doesn't work for me because I'm wide or I'm very skinny and so more bony, or the mesh is great or the mesh is horrible. Or There needs to be a better way to try these chairs out because they're a little too expensive to just be like, that one looks cool. Buy.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Or a liberal return policy.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
Even if you have a good return policy, it ain't a piece of cake to put these chairs together when they ship them to you. So if you're going to spend 3 hours putting a chair together, you want to be kind of sure it's going to work when you're done. Because then if it doesn't, you have to take it all back apart, repack it. Good luck with that.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: The box.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: I have purchased other chairs, but I actually go to an office store because I actually want to sit in them to gauge. Yeah.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: But I would say for you younger.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: Folks, their choice is just so limited.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: True.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Right. That are just starting a program.
If you're going to put money into anything and time, invest time into researching it. Start with your chair. I promise you, putting $450 or one $200 into a chair sounds like a lot, but 20 years from now, you'll be thanking yourself that you did that.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: With the amount of time we all sit, it's so worth it.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: I will also add to this.
I have essentially repetitive stress injury from excessive keyboard mouse use.
Probably a little related to the Get video games I played particularly really early on. But a thing that contributed to it was actually the arm rests on chairs. So now whenever I get a chair, I take those suckers off, I throw them off.
It may not impact everyone, but what I've found I've had to do is to remove them because then I force myself to have to move my arms more if I'm typing or mousing or whatnot, as opposed to just only doing small micro movements. So I found it beneficial for me or helpful to not have that and take those arms off. Yeah, but just throw that out there.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: So now let's move on from chairs to desks. So what about desks? I know standing desks are like the big thing now, which I agree with, but they're pretty expensive.
Most full motorized standing desks are in the 500, $600 area last time I looked.
They may be a little more now because this was probably a year ago I was looking at them, but I can't imagine they're 600, 650, something like that.
So they're expensive. But what do you think about standing desks, Drew?
[00:15:17] Speaker C: I have one. I am standing as we record right now, and that's actually a little bit of the reverse of Crest. And I will stand almost exclusively when I'm recording or like in a meeting or something where I'm not active with the keyboard or too active with my brain. Otherwise I'm sitting down.
I wish I stood more, honestly, because I feel better standing more.
But standing desks are a little bit like sort of every other tool. They only work if you use them. So standing desks, you don't necessarily need to drop a ton of money on those right off the bat. See, if you're actually going to use it, you can get like a hand crank one from Ikea for like, $200. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but it'll get you comfortable with like, am I actually going to stand? Can I develop the habit to stand more during my workday than just sit at it?
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And Kristen, I know you've got a standing desk, too. Is yours a full standing desk?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: It's a full standing desk, yeah. It's the smallest one, giving the size of the room that I am in. In terms of width, it's the smallest width. But yeah, I play paid around the $600 mark maybe in like five years ago or so. And it's the uplift desk brand.
Sorry, let me just add real quickly to endorse what Drew was saying is that definitely you may think, hey, I'm going to use this. It'll be great. And then you find out you don't use it a lot, so definitely buy a cheaper one. So, like my son, who is still under 20 for his next desk, I went ahead and got him one of these hand crank ones. Of course, now he's giving me yeah, my dad gave me this real crap desk that has the hand crank on.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: It.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: But he never uses it so it's like to your point, it's like you got to try them out and see if they use it. But I would endorse standing up more will help you in the long term if you're going to be doing a lot of sitting with your programming job. So balancing it early will prevent damage, injury over time, not to mention the.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Fact that transitioning the up and down and up and down will help your leg muscles. It gets your blood flowing better. It helps your brain work better because you've got better blood flow and oxygen flow just because you're moving more rather than just being sedentary.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: What about your setup?
[00:18:07] Speaker A: By nature, I'm a pretty cheap bastard, so I wasn't going to drop $600 on a full table. So the solution I found, which is a good alternative for, hey, try it before you spend $600 on it. And I'm not against the $600. Nice motorized big tables. But what I found were these desk converters, desktop converters. So this is what I have. I actually bought this one here is the one I'm using currently because I wanted a lot of desk space.
But it's a manual lift. You pull out these two little things on the side and you just lift it up with muscle power. But you can get converters that are motorized. They're a little more expensive than this, but even the motorized ones I think, are like $250. Like this one's motorized, $240. But the one I got is $140. I've had it since January. It's worked like a champ. I had another one a little bit smaller, one like this. Before that, it wasn't this one, it was less. But for $150, you can try this out. And I don't have a need personally for a motorized one. Now as I get older and I start getting a little less strong, I may change my mind on that, but right now I'm healthy enough to pull it up myself.
But even the motorized ones, I was reading reviews on this one here, that's $240. The Flexa Spot, it's motorized and $240, that's not bad for assistance with that. So another thing I would highly suggest investing in besides a really good chair is some way to do a standing desk situation.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: Agreed. I actually started in a very similar way. I think they're called Vera desks. The manual lift. That's how I started. I got one used, I forget even where I got it, but I got it used for like $50 and was like, well, if I use it enough, I'll upgrade. And I was using it quite a bit. So I upgraded and now I somehow use it less that I have a whole desk that lifts rather than just a thing. But yeah, I recommend if money is part of the problem, you can get a used one of those lifts pretty easily. And that'll make a big difference, I think.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: To me, yeah, every developer I've talked to even younger ones have said they are much happier with a standing desk than they were before they had one.
I can't recommend those enough, really. So that's kind of taking care of.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Let me just throw in one more thing here. So I know I did a lot of research. I even looked at some of the different models and I got, again, this, like five years ago, sir, some of these ones that you can put on an existing desk now, like you were showing Chris. I think they've evolved over time and maybe there's some better options now. But I know one thing I struggled with, looking at all the different options available was having the keyboard at the right height. So that, again, me being someone with some repetitive stress injury that has happened through this, I want my keyboard and my mouse at the exact perfect height. Basically, allow your arms to be parallel with the bottom of the floor. And I did a lot of research and looking around and saying, okay, if I get this desk, do I need to add a keyboard tray below it?
So just keep those things in mind as you're looking for a solution, is that you still want it to be ergonomic, because like so many desks, the keyboard is too high and it's not appropriate, and you're going to potentially injure yourself if you do a lot of keyboarding at it. But I also think some of this is also probably genetic based. I think there are some people that can be keyboard warriors no matter what their position, and they'll be fine forever. But just take that into account as you're choosing your keyboard and your desk.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: And whatnot I will tell you, I haven't met many of those, at least not many of those over the age of 30. Because if you're a programmer over the age of 30, you probably got some pain somewhere.
So that kind of takes care of the lower body part of this. Also, I recommend foot rests. I've got a nice foot rest so I can lift my chair up and make sure my thighs are parallel to the floor and my foot's on nice cushiony stuff.
I've just got a floor foot rest.
I mean, it's made as a foot rest, but it's cushioned. It's got memory foam in it.
And those aren't that expensive. I think I spent like $30 on this one. And you can height adjust it. It's got like, things you can velcro off to adjust the height up and down, but they're not that expensive. And that's something else I'd recommend because your feet get really tired standing on, especially if you're in an office that's got thin carpet on concrete.
That's something you want to take care of, too.
So let's talk a little bit about monitor setup, because I think a lot of people don't think about that. But I think it's an important thing to consider because my eyes suck. And lately I just went to the eye doctor because I have to upgrade my prescriptions. But I get headaches a lot because of eye strain. Right.
And one of the things that I'm getting ready to do because my setup is I've got the monitors side by side at just a little bit higher than eye level, so I'm not looking down.
And they're big monitors. I think they're 27 inch or 28 inch monitors. And then I've got one to the side a little bit smaller, one sitting on a desk to the side that's kind of that I use a lot for production stuff like the zoom is over here right now and the pretzel music and things I don't have to look at very much. But one of the things that I've noticed, and I was talking with my eye doctor about this is that the horizontal movement of your eyes is actually a little more stressful than vertical movements of your eyes.
So she was suggesting that rather than having side by side monitors, if you can have top and bottom monitors, that it may reduce the amount of because you don't have to turn your head as much. So that's less neck strain.
And she was saying it looking up and down is less stressful than looking side to side for your eyes. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I'm going to experiment and find out. But I figure she's an eye doctor. She should know better than me anyway. What kind of monitor set up do you have?
[00:25:34] Speaker C: I just changed mine up, and I'm getting used to it. And now you're saying these things, and I'm rethinking everything. So thank you for that.
I was doing the side by side 27 inch, and I liked it.
I don't know why I felt the need to change it up. It was probably just like I wanted.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Two monitor, 227 inch monitor.
[00:25:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Two right, side by side. And now I have a single 34 inch curved, like, smack dab in the center. That's where the browser and the IDE goes. And then I have one of those 27 inches off to the left that's vertical, which is actually pretty cool. But I don't actually put anything but, like, slack and the terminal over there because those are, like, things that I glance at, but I don't need them in my face all the time. And I bring them over to the main screen.
If I'm actively involved in a Slack conversation or I'm doing something in the terminal, I'm not using the Vs code one, and it's been working so far.
That's what I'm using right now.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Cool about you, Kristen?
[00:26:44] Speaker B: 99% of the time, I'm using a 27 inch monitor, 1440p monitor. That's it. I have one off to the side that I use 1% of the time. If I am doing live streaming or if I need, like, to look at OBS with regard to something open broadcasting software if I'm doing some sort of recording, but the rest of the time I'm just an alt tab man. I just like, that's how I roll. I don't have multiple monitors or anything like that on a regular basis.
[00:27:25] Speaker C: I mean, that's the thing about all the dev environment setup stuff is it's so personal, right?
You're a bit of a minimalist, and if it works for you, then rock on. No one should ever make you feel bad for, like, you only use one monitor. What is wrong with you? You're obviously not a real dev. That should never be a thing. Although, three, you knew, I've heard people get on other people for not having a mechanical keyboard or not having certain bits in their office. And I'm like, if it doesn't work for you, who cares? Or if the basic thing works and good on you, you probably saved a couple of $100 that the rest of us spent on stuff we might not have needed, right?
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, I don't have a mechanical keyboard because they annoy the hell out of me, but I understand a lot of people like them.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Here's the thing. It's like there is no space on my desk because, again, I told you, I got the kind of shortest width uplift desk. One model that I got. And given I have speakers on here and lights and different things, the only place I can put a monitor, another one is potentially above my current one. And if I imagine, what the heck am I going to put there? What do I want to look up and look at?
So I just use alt tab. I don't know.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: The problem is we saw too many of those hacker movies in the 90s where they had like 30 monitors or The Matrix, where it's just like, monitor here. Here real time information all the time.
No, it's not how I want to do my job.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: I can't take that much of it. The only reason that I use two monitors while I'm gaming is different. But while I'm Deving, I have my dev environment on one monitor and I just have chrome up on the other one so that I can do quick research. Blips, if I need to look something up, which I could do on one monitor, it's just faster for me to have that up because also I can be programming and looking at some code and going, oh, okay, that's what they mean while I'm still in the midst of programming.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: That's what works for you. And that's the most important part, is everybody I mean, this is a good type of podcast because we have three people giving their opinions, and then people can base their research off of what they're hearing and what they think they like. And that's the most important thing, is, like, researching. And you're probably going to do a couple of Amazon returns before you find exactly what you like, don't settle for the first thing you buy.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Exactly.
Unless you get lucky or do many months of research and be very sure of what you're buying or you're a.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: Stubborn bastard, but I don't recommend that.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I suffered from that for way too long.
That's kind of the main hardware things that you're dealing with as a dev. What other kinds of non software things do you think are essential for you as a dev?
[00:30:31] Speaker C: I have a new one.
It was born because I started rock climbing again. I rock climbed when I was younger, stopped for a really long time, just started again. And so I got these grip strength trainers, and they're basically just glorified stress balls with an extra bit to stretch your fingers. But, holy crap, have I forgotten how nice it is to think and just do this?
I have Fidget toys, and they all are great. They're great for meetings or whatever, but just when I'm thinking to do this, it's like a superpower. It's so nice.
But I had completely forgotten about it. And it's so funny that we're talking about monitors and desks and chairs, and I'm like, yeah, like a $5 stress ball makes a huge difference in my ability to think when I'm just focused on a bug or a problem, and I'm just, like, staring at code. Like, I don't know what it is. Blood flow, distraction.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: What?
[00:31:32] Speaker C: But next to a walk, this thing's awesome.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: I am a big pacer.
[00:31:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a standing desk.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So I step away. I step away, and I just start pacing back and forth. It's like when I choose my office or my home office, I'm like, okay, do I have lanes that I can travel and do my pacing?
[00:31:55] Speaker C: Yeah, big time.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things that I've got that I put in my home office that I never really cared about for a long time, but the past couple of years, I've kind of gotten really attached to it is I've got an essential oils infuser next to my desk that I put lavender in, lavender oil.
[00:32:13] Speaker C: And.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: It helps me center my brain so well.
Just having that nice smell in the office and hearing that it's got a tiny little and it's sitting right behind my monitor. So it's just got that kind of white noise background thing going on, which also helps.
[00:32:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I actually have a good one. Goes back to what you were talking about with eye strain. I got blue light blocking glasses, which are awesome when you're doing long sessions in front of a screen. I just pop these on when it starts getting later in the night. And I've noticed it helps with my sleep. It helps with the eye strain. It helps with my overall mood. So, like, that and water.
It's amazing how the simple things I think Creston might have dialed in on this. He's minimalist. He's got it all figured out. But yeah, water and taking care of your eyes and just like, that kind of stuff makes such a big difference to your ability to do your job. And that's what everything should do, right? Everything should make it easier to do your job right. And some of us need distractions like toys, and some of us don't. But yeah. Blue light blockers. Highly recommend if you don't have yeah.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I get blue light.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: So I understand a benefit from if you're coding late and allowing you to not disturb your sleep by getting too much blue light in before going to bed. So I understand that benefit. But what are the other benefits of blocking the blue light just in a regular workday from the screen?
[00:33:55] Speaker C: I don't know. I got them predominantly four when I code later because I've been doing a lot of later shifts. But from my understanding, blue light is the part that's kind of tough to absorb nonstop, constantly. So blocking some of the blue light just makes it less stress for your eyes.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's kind of what I was.
[00:34:15] Speaker C: For me, it's going into night because I work a bit of a weird shift. I start later in the day, so I code later at night. And I notice if I don't put those on, probably 05:00. Ish there's a noticeable difference in my bedtime and how easy it is to fall asleep?
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I've had a couple of doctors tell me that during the day. The reason I got it on mine, like I said, I have a lot of problems with stress, headaches from my eye stress and stuff. And that really helps because I'm at a computer pretty much all day, and then I'm done with work, so I game all night. So I'm always looking at a computer screen, pretty much. So that really helps reduce the eye strain and stuff.
Two different eye doctors told me that, and my personal experience seems to prove that out.
[00:35:15] Speaker C: Yeah, and it's funny because even if it is a placebo effect thing, even if it isn't actually doing anything for you, if putting them on or knowing that they're there makes you physically feel better, whether you're actually doing anything for your eye stress or not, that's an effect. That's a feature, not a bug. The placebo effect is a real strong thing, like the power of thought. So that's another thing to keep in mind as you're researching stuff, is like, if it works great, you don't necessarily have to be like, that's fake. It doesn't actually work. It's like, well, it works for me, so go away and leave me alone and let me enjoy my blue light blocking or my special this or my fancy that. Yeah.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: And the good news is blue light, like adding blue light coating to my glasses prescription is super cheap. I mean, it's like an extra ten or $15 or something. So if you got to spend $15 once a year, even if it is just a placebo effect like you said to me. That's worth $15.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right.
So that's kind of the hardware stuff. Let's take care of our bodies. And I think devs have a hard time thinking about that because we're such a thinky profession. We're always dealing with brain things.
We kind of forget sometimes that hey, we got to take care of the brain container.
[00:36:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: I did want to ask some other hardware related question or bring something up related to that. So vast majority of developers that I've associated with or know or whatever use laptops or they take their laptops, they plug it into their monitors and whatnot. I'm different in that I'm a desktop guy. I only like using desktops. My laptop is my backup computer.
If heaven forbid, I try to install Sonoma or whatever.
[00:37:27] Speaker C: I mean fair.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: So basically I use my own machine and I built it and I'm running Linux on it. So I don't have the typical MacBook, Air, whatever it is.
But what are you guys using? Or Rocking?
[00:37:51] Speaker C: I have a MacBook Pro.
That's what I've always had given to me by jobs that I've had and that's where Podia requires us to have one.
They don't care if it's a MacBook Pro or if it's the desktop, the Mac Mini or whatever. It's just got to meet certain specifications.
So yeah, laptop just because I don't want to have two machines. I would rather just, hey, I need to leave the house. I'm taking my laptop with me.
I've noticed when I had two machines, one for work, one for personal, just like syncing settings and stuff was a pain in the ass. So it's so nice to be like one machine. And I know that goes against what a lot of people recommend, but it is nice to just operate on one machine for me.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Which I mean I've got sitting right next to me. My fourth monitor is my MacBook Pro. That is work provided that is my work machine, which I remote into for my desktop because I hate working on a laptop.
The only reason it's there is to stay connected to power so that I can remote into it. Right.
I've got a full keyboard here. I've got nice big monitors. Why the hell would I want to be on that thing, right?
And you said it's nice to have a laptop to leave the house. Well, I never leave the house, so what the hell do I need a laptop for? Outside sucks. I'd rather be in here.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: Resolution is pretty good.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I guess that's a thing.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: We're right next door to the sun so it makes right harder than other places.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Going outside is not a thing we like to do very often. We get about two weeks a year where you can go outside and not die from heat stroke in 5 minutes.
[00:39:54] Speaker C: Go to Phoenix. Go to Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, I'll do that.
[00:39:59] Speaker C: Yeah. I went out to visit a friend of mine, and he lives in Phoenix, and I went in July because I'm just the smartest man alive. And it was 115 degrees when I got off the plane.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: I was just like, what the yeah. And then after July in Phoenix, come to central Florida in August and get 95 degrees. Feels like 130 because there's 115% humidity.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: Yeah. No, see, at least out there, sweat works. Sweat actually does something. Shade is a real thing, provides benefit to you. Florida is just no, thank you.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Here.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: If you sweat, you're just adding inches to the know.
It doesn't work here.
[00:40:44] Speaker C: Walking through the week, I used to always go to take my daughter to Disney and Universal the week before school started. So August, and it was just gross.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Yup.
[00:40:57] Speaker C: I have sweat in places. I don't want to have sweat right now.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: I'm so sweaty, it's sweating on somebody else.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: Let me take a step back for a second.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Where did this episode go?
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Yeah, where are we going? So how do you remote into your laptop or what tool are you using to do that?
[00:41:20] Speaker A: TeamViewer.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: TeamViewer. Okay.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah, because it's cross platform, and I used to use a different one, but it went bad. I can't even remember what it's called now because TeamViewer had, for a while a bad reputation because all the Scammers used it. Right. But TeamViewer has gotten very proactive about shutting Scammers down.
They actually work with, like, Kit Bogan, a lot of those other Scam fighter folks that you see on YouTube. They'll work with them and actually help, know, talk to them, especially if they're live and shut down Scammers accounts and just completely block them out.
Whole IP addresses and stuff, like know, and they've done a lot to improve their security and stuff. And my research and my experience shows now that they're one of the more secure remote options out there. So that's what I use.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: So now we're kind of pulling into the software arena.
What kind of software outside the IDE do you guys use to help with your development?
[00:42:45] Speaker C: I just started using the Arc browser not too long ago. It's been like, maybe two months that I've been using it, and I've been enjoying it. It's nothing drastically different than any other browser. Like, it's still a browser for the Internet. There's just a couple of little tools, features niceties, built in that I enjoy.
It makes it really easy to switch between profiles. It makes it really easy to split your views.
And it's a browser, so it's free to download and give it a try.
I've been recommending it to people to, like, if they're unhappy with whatever they're using to at least give it a whirl. Like, worst case scenario, you just don't like it, you go back to whatever you're using. But I've been enjoying it. Quite a bit.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: So what's the upside of Arc? Let's say Over Chrome.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Well, I mean, under the hood, it's chromium, so it's still going to use half your Ram or more. But like I was saying, it has some really nice ways to set up what they call spaces, which are sort of profiles and make it really nice to switch between them. And you have tab groups in them, the way that they do bookmarking and everything. It's a little more your tabs are always there, but they're not necessarily always open. And so you can kind of see them and you click into them. It's really easy to break it out into a split view, side by side or up and down.
You can really easily and I know we can do this because we're devs, but not everybody can. You can really easily remove elements from a web page. They have these what are they called? They're called, like, boosts. You can just change the background color, like edit the CSS, essentially, but they make it really easy to do that. You can have themes for the whole browser. When you're on a certain page, you can remove, like if you're over on Twitter and you're like, I hate this one section over here that tells me the trending crap going on in the world. You can just click a button to delete that, and every time you're on Twitter, that side just goes away.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Okay, I'm downloading Arc browser right now.
[00:44:58] Speaker C: All right. Just for that, run through the list of features until you find something that everybody can get in on.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: That's very interesting.
[00:45:08] Speaker C: It's pretty cool. Yeah. Like I said, it's just a browser. It's not like, oh, my God, the Internet has changed forever. It's just a way to consume the Internet. But I've been enjoying it quite a bit. There was a small learning curve because it's a sidebar instead of everything on the top, and things are a little more hidden because you're supposed to use a lot more keyboard shortcuts.
But once you get used to it I have been very pleased with my decision.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Okay, I've bookmarked that download page. I'll be coming back to that after the show.
[00:45:41] Speaker C: There you go. Yeah.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: All right. Worth the price of admission. But browsers in general, I mean, I think all of us because let's be honest, folks, developers aren't the best programmers. We're just really damn good at Google.
You got to have a browser, obviously. I don't think I've ever run into a dev or could conceive of a dev who doesn't have a browser open almost all the time.
I think that's general population at this point in time, but even before that was a thing, I think devs were pretty active on the Internet. Bulletin boards and news groups and stuff, trying to figure this crap out because it's, um what other kinds of software stuff do you guys use?
[00:46:45] Speaker B: Crescent.
[00:46:45] Speaker C: I've been doing a lot of talking save my.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Mean, I was struggling to come up with this because it's really just standard productivity.
Mean, I do use three different browsers on a regular basis just because I like to do certain things in different ones. So, like, Google Chrome is where I'm always logged in there as me. Creston. So I get Gmail, I get my calendar, and I'm fine with whatever's tracking, you know, where most of my work is done. But I don't like Google tracking by that particular account what I'm searching for on a regular basis. So I usually tend to do that in a different browser with a different search engine potentially, and then based upon how you log into different AWS consoles or whatnot, because I do a lot of consulting with different companies. Sometimes I keep different browsers or different profiles open for different customers because otherwise it'll get confusing fast. So that's a little bit of different stuff that I do. And of course, the typical productivity tools like having a word processor in Excel, one of those, as well as Slack for communication for certain clients.
But other than that, again, I'm mostly a minimalist. So that's pretty much it.
Like I had mentioned previously in our IDE episodes, I'm still rocking the Sublime text.
[00:48:28] Speaker C: Yes, old school and minimalist. Nice.
I also do have other browsers that I'll open up mostly for when I'm doing front end work, like JavaScript or CSS bugs that are exclusive to usually Safari.
But yeah, usually it'll just be like, hey, on some browsers, it's goofy.
And I've kind of gotten used to. If I'm doing anything other than standard stuff for a front end feature, I'll test it myself in multiple browsers before I push it up. Just because that's been the number one thing with front end work that's bitten me. Is like, I do all my testing in a chromium based browser, and then someone opens it in Safari or back in the day Ie, and it's like everything's broken.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: Great.
[00:49:18] Speaker C: Never mind. Let me open it on that real quick.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: Actually, that is something that's bitten me in that particularly the fonts are different. Like, I'm using Ubuntu, and it looks a certain way on Chrome on Ubuntu, and then I go to a Windows, and the fonts are different enough that it's just changed the layout of certain things, like, oh, man, come on.
[00:49:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:47] Speaker A: All right, so we've talked hardware and software, and I've got a last little bit that I want to kind of touch on here before we end the show. And that is your overall programming environment. So this is going to be highly personal, but there's people that I like to go to the coffee shop where there's a lot of background noise and stuff going on. I need to have it completely quiet. I got to have a place where I can put headphones on and pump some music in.
So, Drew, what's your preferred environment for dev oh, man.
[00:50:19] Speaker C: It depends.
Sorry, I had to get at least one. It depends in there, but it really does. It depends on the work I'm doing. If I'm really trying to focus, it helps to have a mostly quiet environment for me, the noise canceling, headphones for the environment, stuff that I can't control. If folks come to mow the lawn, I'm not getting any work done when they're mowing the lawn unless I have my headphones in. But I do have some focus music. Whether or not it's a good thing or not, it's placebo effect. It helps me just stay a little more engaged, really low in the background. That's how I like to focus on things. Do a lot of pairing at Podia, so that doesn't always work.
So then it's a lot more of like, I want to be comfortable. I want to be able to communicate with my partner. I want my partner to have a good experience. We use Tuple a lot because it is hands down the best pairing tool you will ever find.
But yeah, the headphones are great if I'm doing deep solo work, but other than that, I don't put music on.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: A lot about you.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Kreston so external noises don't bother me a lot unless it gets really loud. So that doesn't usually bother me. But to get into the zone when I know I'm just going to be programming and kind of like a heads down thing, I just put on music without lyrics. So this could be movie soundtracks. This could be classical music or something. Bombastic is better. Like World of Warcraft soundtrack or some of the MCU soundtracks. Like, I have particular playlists that have it, but basically no words. More bombastic better.
And then just go to town. That's kind of what it is.
I know there's other people that a lot of exterior noises bother them. It has to get up to a really high volume to actually disturb me. But that's me.
[00:52:25] Speaker C: That sounds nice.
It's not even a volume thing. It's just like any noise that I'm sort of not in control of. It is just noise sensitivity puts me into sensory overload. And then I'm just like, I can't focus. I can't think of about anything but that. It's very frustrating. So I'm very jealous that you can.
[00:52:45] Speaker B: Just well, my daughter, I think, has a little bit of that, where even just like, if she's getting ready to go to bed at night, there must be complete silence.
Yeah, I've got a daughter and I'm like our bedrooms. She's on the other side of the wall as me. So I am closed capturing the film, but I had the volume up a little bit. But inevitably there's always the Doc on the wall. Like, doc, Doc, doc, I'm trying to go to bed here.
[00:53:18] Speaker A: It's like, okay, yeah. My youngest daughter is very sound sensitive, too. She's got really good head canceling noise canceling. Head canceling noise well, that's a different show, I think.
[00:53:36] Speaker C: Guillotine.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: Jeez, maybe I need another cup of coffee here.
So she'll put in the earbuds with some music and the noise canceling headphones when she's trying to concentrate because she can't take I mean, she's very noise sensitive.
I've got basically two modes of dev.
Either I have these headphones on. They're not noise canceling, but they're enough to kind of mute the sounds around me because three kids and a wife running around the house doing things and the lawnmower outside and all that kind of stuff, this is enough. Usually if I really want to concentrate, I'll put Mozart on. But what I've caught myself because I'm so used to having these headphones on, I'll actually get up to leave and forget to take them off. And I'm like because it's part of my head now.
[00:54:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: But yeah, I can take a little bit of noise, but I generally try to mute it for the most part at least keep it low.
But then also we do recording in here and we were doing the live streams and stuff so the people in my house know to not run around screaming and yelling and stuff because yeah, but anyway, yeah, that was interesting.
There's obviously lots of personal stuff to how you set up your environment and what tools you use and things. Hopefully people who haven't had a chance to experiment much with these things yet, like chairs and headphones and glasses and things, get something from this episode that they can use to kind of help make them more comfortable and more effective programmers and happier in their environments.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: But what I thought was interesting is how different each of us is with our environment. So I found that very interesting. And it just goes to show you everybody is different.
[00:55:47] Speaker C: For yeah, I hope there's a lot of feedback when this episode comes out of people saying, oh, this is what I use. Or I found a lot of benefit from keeping this on my desk or using this type of whatever, because I'm always interested in finding out what other people are using and at least giving it a whirl myself. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but hopefully we get a lot of feedback from this episode so that we can have more things to research.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: Go ahead and post that in the comments, please, everyone.
[00:56:16] Speaker A: Yeah, if you've got some cool thing, cool hardware that you like to use, or cool software that you use that helps you be a better dev or you just want to describe what your environment is, we're really interested to hear that stuff. So please put it in the comments below. Drew, thank you very much for joining us today. That was a fun conversation and it was great to see you again. Haven't gotten to see you for a while, so it's good to see you.
[00:56:42] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
So hope you guys enjoyed that. I certainly did. And we will be back next week with we don't know what the topic is yet. So maybe I'll just make the thumbnail with the title We Don't Know What the Topic Is and go with that.
But if you did enjoy that, please make sure and like and subscribe and go ahead and ding that notification bell so that you know when our videos drop.
Or if you're a podcast person, you can listen to the podcast. It's your favorite podcast provider. We covered them just about all, I think.
So listen where you're comfortable. You can also check us out on Twitter at Ducky dev show.
I talk to people on there. That's how I communicate with Drew. So it works, I promise we're there. You can also email us, robert
[email protected], or you can come hang out on our discord. We'll have links in the descriptions for all that fun stuff, but we will see you guys next Thursday. And until then, happy programming.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Happy programming.
[00:58:02] Speaker C: Happy programming.
