Greg Robson
Greg Robson avatar

Tools of the trade

/uses

A collection of tools and technologies I use in my daily life, both personally and professionally.

The idea is based on uses.tech, a site that showcases the tools and setups of various individuals.

Operating System

Current - MacOS / Mac Mini

Mac Mini M6 - 32GB RAM, 512GB storage. After quarter of a century of using Windows I finally made the switch as my PC was starting to feel all of it’s six years of age. No regrets, this device is a BEAST!

Previously - Windows

I used Windows on various custom built PCs since the late 90s (I’m old!). It served me well, but the recent changes in Windows 11 and the improvements in hardware/software from Apple really made the switch more enticing. (Plus, I’ve been an iPhone user since the beginning and the integration is perfect).

Keyboard

Keychron K3 QMK Wireless Mechanical Keyboard - after using various slim profile and ultra quiet keyboards I went mechnical in August 2025. I don’t use the LED lights on it. It’s a real workhouse as (on a good day) I can hit 60-70wpm.

Text Editor

Current - Zed Editor

Zed I started experimenting with it mid-2026 as the performance and fully integrated AI features seemed pretty neat and so far I’ve not hit any issues with it. I did end up upgrading to a new Mac Mini as my old PC couldn’t hack the GPU accelerated UI!

Previous Editors

Many editors! Going back in time:

  • Visual Studio Code for several years - lots of features, but eventually the quality and performance began to suffer.
  • Sublime Text - Super-fast, it really got me into the habit of using the keyboard over the mouse.
  • Notepad++ - probably used it in the early 2000s?
  • Windows Notepad - my first attempts at web coding when we had to upload files to a special /cgi-bin folder to get code to run!

Coding Typeface

I am a big fan of MonoLisa (yes, a paid typeface!). I bought it in August 2022 and I have not even contemplated changing since. I have two customised versions of it: one with ligatures for coding, and one without for the terminal.

Local Development Server

Laravel Herd handles my local PHP development environment. It’s nice not having to spend much time configuring web servers and PHP installations. It’s the basic version so I use PostgreSQL installed separately.

Other tools

  • Text Expansion: Espanso saves me a surprising amount of repetitive typing.

Languages and Frameworks

PHP and JavaScript are the two languages I work with most frequently.

  • Laravel: Laravel has become my framework of choice for new PHP projects. I particularly like its ecosystem and the amount of functionality available out of the box.
  • Filament: I’ve been using Filament extensively for building administration interfaces and applications. It’s remarkable how much functionality you can put together without having to build everything from scratch.
  • PostgreSQL: My preferred database for new projects, particularly those involving large amounts of structured and semi-structured data. I’m a big fan of its JSONB functionality.
  • Tailwind CSS: Tailwind is generally my first choice for styling web applications.

I’ve also spent many years working with WordPress, WooCommerce and Moodle, although I’m increasingly interested in building standalone applications and developer tools.

AI-assisted Development

AI has become an increasingly important part of my development workflow.

I’ve been using OpenAI Codex alongside Zed, both for implementing features and exploring different approaches to problems.

I’m particularly interested in how AI changes the economics of software development. Things that would previously have taken days to build can sometimes be put together in hours, which opens up some interesting possibilities for individual developers and smaller projects.

Hosting and Infrastructure

I’ve worked extensively with AWS over the years, but for personal projects I’m increasingly drawn towards services that reduce the amount of infrastructure I need to manage.

  • Cloudflare: I use Cloudflare for DNS, static website hosting and various other services.
  • Laravel Cloud: I’ve been experimenting with Laravel Cloud for hosting Laravel applications.
  • GitHub: GitHub is where I keep my code and manage projects.

Writing

I’ve recently rediscovered an interest in writing, which has sent me down something of a rabbit hole looking for the perfect writing application.

After trying various applications, including Scrivener, Ulysses, iA Writer and Apple Pages, I found myself doing what developers sometimes do when they can’t find precisely what they’re looking for: building something myself.

I’ve been experimenting with Tiptap, a rich-text editor based on ProseMirror, to build a writing environment that works the way I want it to.

This website

After initially trying Jekyll, I decided to go all in and build a theme from scratch with Hugo. So far it’s going okay!

The styling is done with Tailwind, with DaisyUI providing the bulk of the styling with a lot of the customisations driven by me and Codex.

The website is deliberately simple. I wanted somewhere to publish articles and experiments without having to maintain a database, content management system or complicated hosting environment.

One of the things I particularly like about Hugo is being able to write everything in Markdown and generate a completely static website.