A recent Computer Science PhD graduate from the University of California, San Diego. My thesis proposed methods to improve computational efficiency of deep learning models.
I'm a proponent of open-source software and an avid self-hoster.Over the years I have gone down the rabbit hole of optimizing my workflow for better user experience and efficiency. This includes completely resetting my mac and starting from scratch multiple times.
Hookmark
Hookmark is an amazing app that has increased my productivity by manifold. It is a linking app that allows you to create bi-directional links between anything !! I mean anything. You can create links to pdfs (supports deep links), tasks, files, emails, notes, etc. For any item, hookmark provides a searchable list of everything linked to it. This frees me from the cognitive overload of having to organize everything in a central place. I no longer need to worry about where things are. I always have access to everything related to what I’m working with. Wish I had discovered this app earlier.
Terminal
Terminal is my most used application. I love working with the command line and try my best to do everything I possibly can in it. For this, my choice is WezTerm. It’s lightweight (slightly heavier than alacritty), has a built-in multiplexer, supports font-ligatures and it works over ssh. Moreover, WezTerm is supported on linux, Mac and Windows allowing me to have a uniform setup across platforms. It’s highly configurable and uses Lua for configuration making it easy to extend.
Text Editor
Terminal
As I mentioned before, I love working in a terminal. My choice of editor is helix modal text editor. Helix calls itself a “post modern” text editor and is similar to neovim. I really enjoy using helix as it comes with everything essential out-of-the-box and requires minimal config. It’s extremely fast and lightweight, has a much simpler learning curve (kakoune style key-bindings) due to its symmetric bindings.
GUI
For some tasks, a GUI is helpful. For this, I use Zed. Written in Rust, Zed is a fast and lightweight editor with a beautiful UI and smooth user experience. It has all essential features out of the box and supports extensions (althought still young). It also has ChatGPT baked into it in an intuitive manner allowing you to interact with code using OpenAI models and Copilot.
Note Taking
Obsidian is a very popular note-taking app. It’s a free app that uses plain text files for notes. It uses markdown for formatting and supports latex equations, mermaid diagrams and excalidraw. It’s highly extensible with a rich plugin ecosystem. I mostly use Helix with markdown-oxide LSP for editing notes and Obsidian for viewing, search and collation. It also integrates with a wide variety of apps via plugins allowing seamless integration. For eg. Hookmark allows backlinks to Obsidian.
Reference Manager
Bookends is a recent discovery of mine. It has quickly become one of my favorate reference and document manager. I read a lot of papers and bookends allows me to easily import papers, manage references, export citations and notes. Other noteworthy applications include, Highlight, and Zotero. Main reason I chose Bookends over these is because of its integration with Hookmark allowing me to link my papers with Obsidian notes.