Steve Heyes

What I Use.

Steve Heyes with a nice brick wall in the background

What I used to build this site

This site is pure HTML and CSS. Nothing more. It was previously built with Gatsby but it got so out of date that updating it was a pain. So, the easiest way to get this rebuilt was with plain ol' HTML and CSS. And it was a joy. No build. No NPM installs. Just the platform

It’s hosted on Github Pages and the domain is with NameCheap.

Programming Languages

Javascript:

Javascript is now the lanugage I use day-in-day-out. More specifically I use Typescript. I have to say, I kinda like statically typed languages. It can create a lot of boilerplate and the trade of is less bugs and easier to understand code across a team. For backend/API work I use NestJS with a React/React Native front end.

Ruby:

While I don’t do a lot of Ruby any more I used it for about 5 years solid. This has mostly been with Ruby on Rails, and I have dabbled with Sinatra.

PHP:

Again, I don’t write much PHP these days. That said it still holds a special place in my heart as my first language I ever really got to grips with. I still watch what happens in the Laravel ecosystem.

Software

Visual Studio Code

I’ve been through all the IDE’s and text editors but now that I write multiple languages I find Code to be the best at the moment. The theme I use is Github Dark. After trailing using Jet Brains Mono I’ve moved back to Fira Code. Fira Code feels a bit more friendly. You can check out my settings on my Gist profile.

iTerm2

This is terminal and has been for years. The design improvements in >v3.3 are cracking. I use ZSH as my shell, with Night Owl and Fira Code for the styling.

Notion

I resisted Notion for a long time. I didn’t get it. It was slow and clunky compared to other note taking apps. Also; the task management was not as slick as Todoist/Things/etc. That said after watching some YouTube videos things started to click. I’m a month or so in now and I am enjoying it. Having tasks and notes in the same place is nice.

1Password

The nicest password manager I’ve used.

Utilities

Shout out to Wes Bos for the idea of this page.