I don’t even know if I posted in here earlier. Guess we can consider it an update if I did!
Like @manuelmoreale I use Sublime Text. Not just for coding, but all of my notes and writing as well. With spell check enabled and markdown for formatting, it has everything I need without getting in my way.
My website(s) are hosted on a virtual machine from openbsd.amsterdam. It’s pretty cool, and I’ve learned a lot from setting up everything “from scratch” to serve my websites from that VM. Just getting comfortable with the command line, managing permissions, config files and all that jazz.
All my sites are static HTML/CSS. I generate them on my home server, before a script “deploys” by uploading every new and updated file to the server.
Most of my workflows are powered by Shortcuts. So I usually just hit cmd + space and type the name of the relevant shortcut to trigger it. For instance, if I’m browsing the web and want to share a site, I copy the excerpt I want to include as a quote (if any) and trigger the shortcut “Share link”. The shortcut creates a draft note based on how I structure content for my static site generator, including the name and the link to the page, and opens it in Sublime Text. I add my thoughts and whatnot, and save it to the content directory which triggers my SSG, and my website is updated moments later.
For my workout log, I just connect my Garmin to my Mac. A script fetches new fit files from the Garmin and triggers the rest of the process to update the log.
I used to chase after new and shiny software tools, but it’s amazing how far you can go with just a text editor and simple scripts and automations.
Coding for my site in HTML/CSS only: Visual Studio Code
Site hosting: Neocities
Image storage: catbox.moe
The only other thing related to my website is that I am using firefox as my preferred browser, obv with certain settings messed with to make it a little more private.
I use a Mac but I also have a mini PC running Omarchy Linux which is fun now and again.
Most of my coding time is spent building Pagecord, my open source blogging app. You should try it! I use VS Code but sometimes NeoVim. I’m trying to get better with Vim, and I’m quite proficient, but I’m still faster with VS so I flip flop depending on mood.
I use Claude Code to do all the boring tasks, but I’ve been trying Gemini recently but it’s not quite as good (I don’t have access to v3 yet).
I used to use GitHub Desktop but lately I’ve been using the amazing LazyGit.
I use Obdisian for notes and writing longer drafts. I pay for their Sync which is very good.
I ( and like most people ) use VS Code for work now.
I prefer Netbeans for personal projects though. It has a pretty verbose editor window but I kinda like that. The major boon for something like Neocities is it has CSS preprocessors built in. You could probably do that with VS Code but using all the extensions in VS is kinda messy for me idk, I like it all-in-one even if it’s antiquated.
Highly recommend learning if you hate writing .really .long .css .trees .every .time .you .want .to .go .deeper {} also handles variables so you don’t have to paste the same color hex over and over
for the majority of inside pages I just needed common text mardown formatting. So I write many interior pages with simple notations like you would use in discord, like asterisks for italic or bold and so-on and the processor turns it into html on the site. Makes article writing faster/more natural
is a beast of a batch processor. iMagick is great for server-side but this is great if you run Neocities for example. I use it for crushing down my 100+ book review covers for a kind of funky pixilated effect that’s both a big space-saver and looks cool.
Flatfile databases ( Neocities problem solving )
While you can’t write to any file on Neocities, you can still utilize file databases. I use JSON arrays quite a bit to store data and have page fetch and build out html based on it.
Google sheets can also be exported as a .csv or converted to .json.
That is how I maintain my book reviews - I write it to the spreadsheet first, and do a simple export and drag to my file folder along with the cover art. Pretty painless. The JS does a bunch of other calculations for me and makes it filterable.
( General advice ) just think hard about your “limit” to how annoyed you’ll be if you had to XYZ over and over, and how to program the site to avoid annoying you. Where there’s a will there’s a way. I have had fun forcing Neocities to behave more like a templated serverside site.
For editors, I use VS codium and in the terminal I like Micro but I feel like knowing VIM well is a superpower so I’ve been slowly learning it (well, neovim anyways).
Speaking of terminals, I’ve been trying out Ghostty lately. I like it–zippy and simple. And while I prefer Fish shell, Manjaro comes with ZSH installed so I just kept it. No complaints.
Some command line tools: bat, fd, lsd, mise ←- so good! tldr (tealdeer) ←- I can’t live without! I was using paru but it broke one day so I switched to yay
I want to use Dangerzone (it’s for potentially unsafe PDFs) but I haven’t gotten it working yet (installed from AUR, but maybe I should try building from source?) The developer (and writer) Micah F. Lee also made OnionShare and Cyd and wrote this book that’s free online. Good stuff!
I’m in need of a solution for bookmarks and note-taking so this thread will be useful! Thanks y’all!
I use VS Code but sometimes NeoVim. I’m trying to get better with Vim, and I’m quite proficient, but I’m still faster with VS so I flip flop depending on mood.