Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is George Nachman. I'm a software engineer. I work at Google on the Google Search App for iOS, and my 20% project is iTerm2. I'm also into woodworking and my goal is to build all my home furniture from scratch. I love making stuff, whether physical or virtual, and always have. Helping others to be more productive is how I accumulate karma.

What hardware do you use?

My setup at work is pretty cool: I sit in a zero-gravity recliner, which is the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. My monitor is a Dell 4K display. It's on a pole-mounted monitor arm so I can position it exactly where I need it when lying almost horizontally. I use an Apple bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, which is the greatest thing since oxygen. I use a Mac Pro, and have a 15" MacBook Pro for when I'm on the go.

At home, I use a 13" MacBook Pro. I used to use a 15" but I got tired of elbowing strangers on airplanes.

And what software?

I switched over to the Apple universe in 2007, having previously used Windows and Linux. I still use Linux for server-side stuff, but I spend 90% of my time doing client development, which suits my personality (read: short attention span) much better. Not using Windows has been a blessing, because I'm no longer competent to fix broken Windows computers.

For coding, I use vim when possible and XCode when necessary. Most desktop GUIs do more harm than good, and I'd rather hang out in a TTY all day. Since I'm old-school, my shell is still tcsh. I'd like to use bash but tcsh's shortcuts are in the ganglia of my fingers. I got a shell account at my local ISP when I was in high school and learned Unix by typing random commands until something worked. I strongly believe that a person without access to a *nix shell at all times is not living up to his or her full human potential.

That notwithstanding, I think Alfred is a darn fine program. I use Photoshop and Pixelmator for graphics stuff. On my iPhone, I'm a big fan of Downcast for listening to podcasts, and Reeder for RSS feeds (backed by Feedbin, which is quite awesome). I'm still addicted to Flappy Bird, and my high score is 81, which I'm both proud and ashamed of.

What would be your dream setup?

I'm pretty sure I have it already. I do wish there were more options for ergonomic keyboards with built-in trackpads, though. It would be really cool to get waterproof equipment and work from a hot tub, but that's probably impractical somehow.