Ask HN: What software do you depend on for day-to-day tasks?

On my local machine for normal work stuff: Phpstorm, git, rsync, vim, os x terminal, chrome, firefox, omnifocus, sequel pro, photoshop, 1Password, etc

Less common stuff, but thing I install on any new computer (os x) - I think they are all from the App Store for a few dollars each:

Color picker (puts an icon in bar at top of screen, i click it then click anywhere else and it puts the colour hex code in the clipboard.

CommandQ - makes me hold down command + q to quit an app. I hate the default OS X way of clicking command + q to quit an app. Not from app store - https://clickontyler.com/commandq/

Flycut - remembers 100 clipboard items. Cmd+shift+v, then i can 'scroll' through 100 previous clipboard items with left/right arrow keys.

Disk inventory X - see what kind of files are taking up space

Skitch - for quick screenshots with nice annotations (from evernote)

If your day to day tasks refer to things not necessarily related to programming, see my question from yesterday (loads of links in the replies): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12794292

For work related things (I'm an embedded developer, with some side projects, work-work is on Windows with some Linux servers, personal stuff I use a combination of Ubuntu and OSX):

  - GitLab CE (self hosted)
  - Jira (self hosted)
  - DokuWiki
  - PyCharm
  - Eclipse
  - MobaXterm (Windows terminal program)
  - SourceTree (Windows/OSX Git GUI)
  - tmux
  - vim
  - jupyter notebook (self hosted)
  - any.do (migrating away from this)
  - Realterm (terminal emulator for serial comms)
  - HipChat

Search and Replace for Windows (that nifty little tool with blue binoculars icon), HxD - Hexeditor, Sublime Text, Visual Studio Express (web and desktop), Beyond Compare, MS Paint, GIMP, sometimes Inkscape, Calculator, Glary Utilities (This was a lifesaver when I accidentally deleted source copy instead of last modified backup copy of code I had written all day. I learnt a lesson - never do file delete at 2 AM when tired and sleepy). All these are pinned to the task bar, except calc which I can just start->run.

The one tool I wouldn't want to live without is BeyondCompare (http://scootersoftware.com/)

My organizer: it is how I think & keep track of things, efficiently. For me, like GTD only very efficient and ~"infinitely" nestable & fast. I wrote it because it is what I wanted. AGPL. Details under "About" at: http://onemodel.org

For dev tasks nothing fancy -- a terminal, browser, and Sublime mostly.

For non-dev tasks, I spend a ton of time reading with a Safari Books subscription, Instapaper, and the Kindle app for iOS.

For business tasks, I use Reminders.app as a tickler file (GTD) and Due for OS X / iOS. Google Keep is pretty nice for re-usable checklists.

It's silly, but after trying all kinds of different todo systems, the most effective I've found is an "Ideas" Google Doc. Psychologically, I think my mind prefers that the doc is a list of ideas that are optional rather than a list of mandatory todos.

Apart from sublime text and terminal for work and a browser, there is a nice piece of software called pomello. It works with trello and essentially builds a pomodoro timer on top of it. It helps me very much with getting things done.

I try to depend on as little as possible.

A text editor & access to some sort of programming language. If my terminal dies I want minimum downtime. If my laptop dies, ditto.

That's not to say tools aren't useful but relying on them is trouble.

Webstrorm with lot of live templates + terminal with lot of aliases. Related files backed up to Dropbox again via an alias.

Chrome, cygwin and notepad++.

Total Commander (ghisler.com)

Atom, Google Chrome, Google Inbox, GitHub, Whatsapp, Spotify.