My Minimal Web Development Setup

Publish Date: Aug 8 '22

108 25

This is the setup I use daily to get things done as a full-stack web developer. I love knowing about tools other people are using and here I'm sharing my exact set up so it can give inspiration to others. I will try to keep this guide updated.

Laptop and OS

My main computer at the time of writing is an early 2020 Macbook pro (not M1) I'm really happy with the laptop but chances are I would upgrade to M2 MacBook air when it comes out 🤞. I use mac os but I don't think there is anything that makes it any better than windows 11 or Linux in general, I used to use windows in the past and the only reason I'm using macOS is that I can test and debug websites on safari if I ever need to.

Apps

Spotlight

I use macOS's Spotlight to open apps, find files, and just get around the OS. I rarely ever use Launchpad to open apps.

Firefox

I use Firefox as my default browser. I find chrome's design a bit too rounded and I don't use safari because I don't think it's good for me to get locked in apple's ecosystem.

I use very few extensions. uBlockOirgin, Bitwarden, React Devtools and Grammarly are the only extension I have installed.

Visual Studio Code

I have tried many editors in the past, I have tried Sublime Text, VIM, Webstorm, and everything in-between but VS Code feels the one with the best defaults and most active development. I don't use (n)vim because of its configuration-heavy nature. I have written another post about my exact setup in visual studio code and with all the plugins I use. bottom line I'm pretty happy with vs code and I don't think I will be changing editors anytime soon.

Bitwarden

Bitwarden is my password manager of choice. I'm still on the free plan and I don't have any complaints. I don't like the UI that much but on the functionality side of things it's good enough, It gives everything you might need from your password managers even in the free plan.

Obsidian

I use Obsidian for taking notes and writing posts. I have tried Notion, and Evernote in the past. Evernote feels kind of bloated and tailored for more advanced use cases and Notion is more tailored for teams and people who need very customized workflows, I just need a Markdown-based editor and cloud syncing. I have also tried Simplenote it was really good but there were two problems (1) it didn't support uploading images (2) It doesn't support folders so everything was flat and very hard to find.

Insomnia

Insomnia is a testing tool for graphql and REST APIs. I use it for testing our backend and sometimes external 3rd party APIs

Xcode

I recently tried swift UI and it looks super cool. The UI layer is inspired by React and its cross-platform atleast in the Apple ecosystem.

Postbird

Postbird is a GUI for Postgres database nothing special I use it for creating new users/databases and sometimes connecting to a remote database.

Slack

Our company uses slack for communication not much to talk about it, I don't use any custom themes or anything just have a few custom icons installed.

Homebrew

Every other operating system comes with a preinstalled package manager (even windows 11 has winget) but you have to use this third-party service on macOS. It works well but I wish mac had something native for this.

NVM

Node Version Manager or NVM helps you to use different versions of Node for different projects I don't work on projects that require a very specific version of node but it makes updating node easier so I have it installed.

Default Mac Terminal

I use the default macOS terminal. I never found a use case for iTerm so I stick to the native terminal. I have increased the font size to 14 and that's all the customization I have done to my terminal.

Excalidraw and Figma

I use this to make flow charts and rough design sketches. Excalidraw is good for doing whiteboard-like problem-solving.

And sometimes when I need to create a UI mockup, I use Figma for that.

Conclusion

I have tried to keep my setup minimal I feel once you start customizing things you just spend a lot of time on a never-ending quest for the perfect setup and end up spending more time in setup than what it would save you. You should watch this video by mpj for some context.

Originally posted on itsjzt.com

Comments 25 total

WjAug 8, 2022
nice!
- Saurabh SharmaAug 10, 2022
  Thanks WJ
Andrew BaisdenAug 8, 2022
Great setup I can see that we use similar tools.
- Saurabh SharmaAug 13, 2022
  Thanks Andrew
Wojtek KalkaAug 8, 2022
Pretty bad setup, from the os to everything else, these days wsl and real linux is the way to go .. and oh-my-zsh and other stuff .. nvin plus vscode, only bitwarden is good here ..
- Ben SinclairAug 8, 2022
  It's ok to have an opinion, but there's nothing "bad" about OP's configuration.
  "wsl and real linux" is a bit of an odd phrase, do you mean "wsl OR real linux", or are you advocating having two systems instead of one? I run WSL and separate MacOS and Linux systems myself, but I wouldn't pitch it in a post about a "minimal web development setup".
  
  My differing opinion is that "oh-my-zsh" is pointless bloatware because it doesn't really offer much you don't get out the box with zsh (or bash for that matter).
  - Wojtek KalkaAug 8, 2022
    with wsl2 you run a native linux distro of your choice, macport/homebrew is crap compared to it, and learn nvim, osx is just outdated and slows down development only useful if you need it for ios stuff, also you need virtualization as developer else you have no snapshots etc pp, and oh-my-zsh helps a lot with git ..
- dikamiloAug 9, 2022
  Can't agree. Worked over year with WSL1 and WSL2 and few years before on bare Linux distros. Switched to Mac OS fully last year and for me, it is the best setup (zsh, oh-my-zsh, iterm 2, IntelliJ IDE).
  
  WSL2 is still lacking, memory issues (including huge leaks), sync issues, slow I/O, almost every time require running everything inside WSL for "smooth" performance using external xserver software. Not worth it in my opinion.
  - Wojtek KalkaAug 9, 2022
    YOu do not need an xserver any more on wsl they run native on win11
  - zanothisAug 10, 2022
    For the slow I/O with WSL2, disk access to files on the Linux file system is fine, it's when you're trying to access the windows filesystem that causes problems. I'd expect it to get better over time, but I don't use it much myself.
    - dikamiloAug 10, 2022
      No is not. If you have for example IDE on Windows, and code/git on WSL2 then it will be slow and have some inconsistency between files - I had a lot of problems with that. It's for sure faster than on WSL1, but still not here.
- Saurabh SharmaAug 13, 2022
  I have tried WSL 2 and it works fine, I just like having safari to test things whenever needed.
Cristian EstarlichAug 8, 2022
Nice setup! I'm a bit curious about obsidian, for me notion works like a charm but I'm seeing a lot of devs working with this app, will take a look for sure!
- Saurabh SharmaAug 13, 2022
  I like obsidian because of its offline capabilities but for the most part obsidian and notion are alike
George C. G. BarbosaAug 8, 2022
Nice setup!

I used to have a bunch of softwares too...

I do everything and more with doom emacs now :)
- Saurabh SharmaAug 13, 2022
  Thanks George.
  
  Emacs FTW
Locky KeaneyAug 8, 2022
I've got an M1 Macbook Air for personal use, but it's much better than my 16" Macbook Pro (2019) so I've found myself using it more lately. I can happily recommend.
- Saurabh SharmaAug 10, 2022
  Yeah M1 macbook are very capable machines
WilmelaAug 9, 2022
Great!, I think I will borrow one or two things here.
- Saurabh SharmaAug 10, 2022
  Thank Wilmela, Glad you found it helpful
Chad AdamsAug 9, 2022
Similar to mine though I use...
- Joplin instead of Obsidian for dev notes
- Beekeeper Studio instead of Postbird for Database GUI
- Hoppscotch instead of Insomnia REST API
- Penpot instead of Figma (I still use Figma but been playing around with PenPot because it's an open source Figma alternative)
- Warp for the terminal (Because it has good intellisense and as a web developer I like stuff to look good. The default terminal is ugly)
- Saurabh SharmaAug 10, 2022
  Nice setup
zanothisAug 10, 2022
For windows, PowerToys Run looks comparable to Spotlight.
Alex RadetskyAug 11, 2022
I use iterm2 instead of default terminal because of few things - nice full screen shortcut and copy to the clipboard while selecting the text without additional command.

Fish as default shell.

DBeaver for RDBMS.

Do not forget about docker, Firefox for Developers, etc.
- Saurabh SharmaAug 13, 2022
  I tried iterm but the features provided by default terminal were enough for me.

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Saurabh Sharma @itsjzt