Software I use, hardware, themes and plugins I recommend.
I use a whole host of different tools to assist me with general development and help me stay productive in my role. Also who doesn't love a kick ass color theme!
Workstation
14” MacBook Pro, M1 Pro, 16GB RAM (2021)
I was using an Intel-based 16” MacBook Pro prior to this and the difference is night and day. I use this machine for all development tasks and it never struggles with a heavy workload.
Dell UltraSharp 34 Curved U3421WE
I have recently upated my dual monitor setup and replaced it with a singluar ultrawide 34". Resolution is not as pixel perfect as a Studio Display but the real estate makes multitasking a breeze.
Apple Magic Mouse
The magic mouse has been my go to for the last few years and I found it does everything that I need when im not working standalone on my laptop using the trackpad.
Apple Magic Keyboard
Like the mouse I also use the magic keyboard for development. I love the long battery life and how fast it is to type with.
Development
VSCode
I have been using VSCode as my primary IDE for a few years now. It offers a fanstasic plugin ecosystem and useful shortcuts.
Iterm2
My primary terminal is Iterm2, its fast and offers split panes, hot keys along with built in search functionaility and pairs with oh-my-zsh.
Tower
I primarily use the terminal for Git however from time to time also use tower when dealing with complex rebases across multiple different files.
Slack
Slack has been the primary communication platform for pretty much every company I have worked in. Handy for deployment and error notifications too along with custom built bots.
Plugins
GitLens
A great Git companion for VSCode, it unlocks most of the git features so at a glace you can see changes made along with history and revision and branches.
Total Typescript
Sometimes TypeScript errors are not as streightforward as they seem, Total Typescript is used to translate errors into human-readable language.
Duplicate Action
Allows for easy duplication across multiple different files with one click of the mouse or via a shortcut command.
Night Owl Theme
My prefered theme for a few years running now its easy on the eyes for those late night coding sessions. I also pair it with the Dank Mono font.
Simple React Snippets
A useful plugin for creating new function components, hooks or classes without having to type them out from scratch.
Window Colors
A simple plugin that automatically colors the window to something different each time, handy if you are working with different repos at the same time.
Babel ES6/ES7
The Babel plugin improves majorly on the grammar distributed by default with vscode and therefore helps when writing JavaScript code with syntax highlighting.
Apollo GraphQL
A few of my projects have been running using Apollo and GraphQL. This plugin provides rich metadata from your graph API.
© Tom Blaymire 2025. All rights reserved.