How to become a tech bro

The word Tech-Bro can range from being a weird guy to a the normal, depending on your location of living. However, this post is focussed for people who actually want to get good and actually understand the technical things in the daily life. The reason I’m writing this post is for my friends to understand and learn, what I actually do and why I do it, and more importantly how can they do it too.

This list will be written in the order of which I’ve written them down. The order written is not important, you can pick and implement what you think works for you and ignore the rest. But for your sake, please don’t blindly just follow all of them without understanding why you’re following them. The “WHY” is the most important factor for doing or using any product or tool.

Obsidian- For Notes, Thinking, Organising - Since, this post is being written in Obsidian. The first tool I would recommend it be Obsidian itself. The most important reason to write is to think itself. It’s close to impossible to organize your thoughts and think, if you’re unable to write them down on somewhere. The second and other important reason that I do this is for creating a second brain. Where all the things or interests that I have be written down linked and can be parsed easily through a graph.

NetNewsWire- RSS Aggregator - The best way to get the news is from the original mouth (source) itself. So, I follow most blogs / newsrooms of companies and people that I want hear from and keep track of. This doesn’t mean I would every single article / post that’s added to my RSS Feed. It’ll be a nightmare to read every single article from start to end, as I have about 40-50 articles per day as of writing this post. NetNewsWire, is only available for apple devices, if you’re on other devices, you can find plenty other options.

x.com- News, Social Media, Network, poasting - 𝕏 has been the fastest and the most reliable source of information that I’m interested in. The second most important thing is that you actually have a chance for your voice to get heard by the people that make decisions, be it CEOs, leadership, politicians etc. You can actually make a real world difference by just posting on the platform. But make sure, that you’re not spending too much time.

Helix Editor- Code Editor, keyboard-based motions - As of writing this post, I have to admit that I’m a noob. I’ve come to realize the benefits of using purely keyboard based approach for getting things dones. There are other alternatives like Neovim, Emacs that are more popular than Helix, you can choose any of them. However, if you prefer any other IDE, you’re free to use it or can make use of these motions in your favourite IDE. But please understand and master the basic details and internals of how your code editor works and how you can make the most use of them.

Zshin Ghostty- shell, Terminal - As of writing I’m still a very noob when coming to use a terminal or customizing it. I know of various tools and quirks, but I haven’t spent learning shell language, or the internals of how this shell works and the unix operating system’s user’s guide or let alone how to make the most of it. But I believe, that a simple Command Line Interface can simplify life by a very big margin over using complicated GUIs.

Homebrew- package manager - This package manager is treated as the default first install for any tech bro after they buy a mac. You would install all your tools through this for the most part. If you’re on windows, you’ll probably use chocolatey or winget etc. If you’re linux distros, you can also download brew, or use the default one given to you in your distro. However, the cool kids these days prefer to use Nix, I chose not to dabble in it yet.

Where are the productivity tools bro???

I’ve come to realize that using the default apps present in my apple ecosystem are good enough for everyday use. I don’t need to download 10 additional apps for todos, calendar, email etc. I’ve come to embrace the defaults and master them for daily use. I use the default Calendar, Reminders, Books, Podcasts apps.

That’s it?? The list seems short

Yep, for now that’s it. This list does seem short. I’ve chosen not to write any computer domain specific tools as everyone generally needs to use the same set of them from Git, Docker, Interpreters, Compilers, LSPs, Debuggers, etc..

Using these tools itself doesn’t make you a Tech Bro. It’s a mindset, which stems from the belief that anything in the world can be solved by using Technology albeit more efficiently than the current state across the world.