Development Tools
The current text editor of choice is Windsurf. It’s got all the VS Code plugins, but it works faster, has decent free AI built in and I’ve never liked VS Code. I always find it too heavy, add ons based and slow.
I also love Zed since it's lightning fast. This is the only reason I used to keep Sublime around and I've fully moved past it. Zed is just as fast but fully featured. I would love to escape VS Code fully and I almost can. But the add ons aren't as rich (yet) and strangely, I haven’t found a theme I really like.
I've been using Claude themes for my VS code since I first saw the theme and gosh it speaks to me. I love orange and manilla and green and everything. The dark theme isn't amazing, but gosh do I adore the light one.
Relatedly, I use Claude Code a lot, it’s gotten amazingly good since November. But the usage does vary with time of day, because of the number of users. So I switch to Gemini when it’s performing poorly, which frankly happens every day. With Gemini too.
My terminal of choice is Ghosty and I have set up a local Ollama running 2 coding agents. Also Clawdbot, which changed it's name right after I set it up. I still haven't used either of them much so more to come.
Extras
There has been a lot of changes in the code editor space and I love it. The days of dominant VS code are over and I can't be happier. We keep letting Microsoft hold a monopoly on tools we use everyday and we all suffer for it.
I also know there are far more AI code editors out there, a lot of which I've downloaded and haven't opened. That is a pattern of mine, where I over-stack on software, thinking that if I have it around I'll eventually open it. It never works though. But hey, both Windsurf and Zed were once such downloads and here I am using them constantly.