My everyday workflow

What does my everyday workflow look like?

It’s pretty simple actually. As a web developer all I need is task management, an IDE and version control. Which tools and services I use for that doesn’t really matter as long as they do the job. At the moment, I use: Linear for task management, PhpStorm as an IDE and Git (with GitHub) for version control.

Linear

You might be asking why Linear out of all the other tools. At PentestPad we were using Jira before Linear, and we didn’t really see it as a good fit. Jira felt cluttered with too many views and options, and for a smaller team like PentestPad we felt that we were slowed down by it.

We also tried Canny and Mattermost before Jira, but that didn’t last long.

Linear, on the other hand, felt perfect for us. It was fast and simple to use. It didn’t have a load of unnecessary functionalities.

1. It has keyboard shortcuts for pretty much everything which makes it even faster to use.
2. It also has a lot of integration options, like GitHub, Figma, and Teams, which we use on a daily basis. I know Jira also has integrations, but I feel like Linear made them feel like part of the app inside of Linear, and not just an integration.
3. Customer feedback is awesome as well. If one of our users emails us some feedback, we can link it with their company inside of Linear and create a new issue based on it. We will have the full context of the email, which means we can easily track who and why asked for which change.

There’s probably a lot more great things I can say about Linear but I don’t want to make this post too long. There is one thing that I miss while using Linear, and that is changing the “currently assigned” person on an issue. For example, if someone has to jump in on a task for a bit, I don’t want to change the “main assignee”.

PhpStorm

I’ve used a handful of JetBrains products so far, and honestly I think they are all great. The reason why I’m using PhpStorm over something like WebStorm, VSCode or Cursor is because:

1. Great integrations with Laravel and other PHP-related features
2. Built-in database tools - I don’t have to open a new app to view database changes
3. Loads of integrations and customizations - I can change pretty much every part of the app, so it can be used as I see fit

The only problem that I found with it is that it was pretty overwhelming when I started using it. There’s seriously so many things you can change in it, and it has so many options. I’m pretty sure I don’t even know about 10% of it yet.

Git and GitHub

Not much to say about this. I’ve been using Git from the start of my career.

1. I know how to use it
2. It’s fast
3. It works

And for something this simple I don’t feel a need to change this.

GitHub on the other hand is experiencing a lot of issues lately, like huge downtimes, unreliable workflows, actions failing often and so on… And this lead us to explore alternatives like GitLab, however we didn’t make the switch yet.

I don’t think it’s over for GitHub (yet). They have a huge community, a generous free tier for anyone just starting out (hosting, actions) but something will have to change soon.

Other tools

Figma

I also often use Figma, for designing our apps, logos, banners and so on… We also use it to prototype and brainstorm new ideas.

1. UX is soooooo good. Everything is intuitive, simple and fast
2. It uses variables prefectly - for example: I have dark and light variables with different colors, and all I have to do to change the mode is one click of a button, and poof I’ll instantly see how the design would look like in dark or light mode
3. Collaboration is straightforward - we can design things together, view what others are working on in real time and leave comments to track what needs to be changed

Obsidian

I mostly use Obsidian to take quick notes of what I have to do or how I should do something, but I’m slowly changing it into my “brain/database” where I document everything I think I’ll need in the future.

Honorable mentions

There are a lot more tools that I use on a daily basis, but I’ve covered the core ones. Some other tools and services that I use are: Affinity, AWS, Brave, Cloudflare, DaVinci Resolve, Ghostty, Handy, Proton mail, Proton Pass, OBS, OrbStack, Raycast, VSCode, WireGuard, Render, Resend…

I hope you found this informative and that it gave you a push to start using some of these tools 🙂. In the next blog post I’d like to focus more on which languages, frameworks, testing tools, development tools, dependencies and LLMs I use.