Recommended Tools | Dustin Ewers

These are tools I use regularly and recommend to other developers.

Development

Visual Studio Code

My primary code editor. Fast, extensible, and free. I’ll occasionally open full Visual Studio, but this is my daily driver.

While it lacks the “cool” factor of many AI Dev tools, Copilot has been a reliable AI sidekick over the past couple of years. Whether it’s the VS Code flavor or the CLI flavor, both are nice. One of the big advantages of Copilot over Gemini or Claude code is that you get a wide variety of models to pick from.

If you’re slinging code professionally, you need to be using AI. The specific tool matters less than you think as long as you can target one of the frontier models. Just pick one and get used to it.

Open Code

Open Code is a fantastic Open Source alternative to Claude Code, Gemini CLI, or Copilot CLI. It’s compatible with your Copilot sub or you can point it at other models on Open Router or Zen.

Windows Terminal

A modern terminal for Windows with tabs, profiles, and customization.

Alacritty

If you’re rocking Linux, Alacrity is fantastic.

Terminus

SSH from your phone and you can code from anywhere.

Productivity

Obsidian

My note-taking and knowledge management tool. Markdown-based, local-first, and extensible with plugins. Another big advantage of Obsidian is that it’a markdown based, so it’s easy to port or read with other tools (like Claude Code)

Hardware

Mechanical Keyboard

I wrote about why every developer should treat themselves to a good mechanical keyboard. Membrane keyboards are trash and good mechanical keyboards are much more affordable than a few years ago. Treat yourself.