Ashley Rich portrait

My workstation and development tools.

I sometimes get asked about my day-to-day hardware and development tools, specifically the editor and theme I use. Here’s a list of my favourite stuff (updated Dec 2022).

Workstation

  • 14” MacBook Pro

    M1 Pro, 10-Core CPU, 16GB RAM (2021)

  • Apple Studio Display

    Tilt-adjustable stand, standard glass

  • Fully Jarvis Standing Desk

    Natural bamboo, 120cm x 80cm. It’s a really well-made desk, but I don’t stand nearly often enough.

  • Herman Miller Mirra 2 Chair

    Solid and highly adjustable.

  • Apple Airpods Max

    When at my desk, these rarely leave my head. Sometimes, I don’t even have anything playing.

  • Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad

    I’ve tried mechanical keyboards, but I much prefer the short key travel.

  • Apple Magic Trackpad

    I miss gestures when using a mouse.

Development

  • Laravel Valet

    I love the simplicity and speed of running the development environment directly on the machine versus alternatives such as Docker.

  • PhpStorm

    I’ve tried most editors and always return to PhpStorm for its code intelligence. My only wish is that it was lighter out of the box and didn’t come with the kitchen sink. I use the One Dark Vivid Italic theme with MonoLisa font, ligatures enabled, and copious amounts of line height (2.0).PhpStorm screenshot

  • iTerm2

    I use Oh My Zsh with the Spaceship prompt.iTerm2 screenshot

  • TablePlus

    I was an avid Sequel Pro user for years before switching to Table Plus due to the lack of updates. I love being able to enable safe mode for production servers.

  • Ray

    As someone who spends a large portion of time developing with queues in Laravel, Ray is a godsend for debugging.

  • GitHub Desktop

    I rarely use Git on the CLI.

  • Google Chrome

    Safari is my daily driver, but I use Chrome for development as I feel much more at home in Chrome’s Dev Tools.