Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 029 What Setup Do You Recommend For a C# Developer?

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029 What Setup Do You Recommend For a C# Developer? · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: What setup do you recommend for C Sharp developers?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is a question recently asked me by Oshu Kurov.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry if I'm getting that name wrong.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I do my best.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's a great question to talk about because what really is necessary for a C sharp developer as far as hardware and software as well, and maybe even the stuff around that, the peripherals.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're going to talk about what I recommend as well as what I use when it comes to developing for C sharp.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the the first thing to look at is do you want to talk about a desktop or a laptop?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And either will work for a Visual Studio developer.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have developed on both.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I have a preference though.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it it does depend on your preferences.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: But my preference is to work on a desktop.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is because I have a lot more space, I can have much larger primary monitors, and I can have monitors plural much easier that are matched.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I prefer to work on a desktop, but either will work.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not as much about the desktop versus laptop as it is about the operating system.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: When you're working with Visual Studio, even though it's cross-platform now with.NET Core and.NET 5, which is an extension of.NET Core, if you didn't know.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: But even with all of that, the best environment for building C applications is going to be Windows.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's going to be that way for a while.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is because we have 20 years of built-up experience and shortcuts and benefits from our Visual Studio.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Visual Studio runs primarily on Windows.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: There is a VS for Mac and there is VS Code as well, but those are lagging behind as far as the amount of features that you have available to you.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to just writing the code itself, you can write on any platform.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to all the niceties that help make your process faster, Visual Studio for Windows still reigns supreme.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So for all those reasons, I'd recommend getting Windows if at all possible.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: All right, now let's talk to the hardware side of things.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I would personally recommend at least 8 gigabytes of RAM.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now you can do it less, but I would recommend at least 8 gigabytes.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I personally find that it's much more performant if you get 16.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's a lot.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to change your environment just because that's it'd be better.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: What you can do though is say, in my next machine, these are the things I want to look for.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And one of them is the amount of RAM you have available to you.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Visual Studio is a big product, and as such, it takes up a lot of memory.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not a bad thing.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like it shouldn't.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's doing a lot of work for us.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's taking some of our load off of ourselves and doing it itself.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: But that means extra load on the machine.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore, give it more RAM to feed it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's one part.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other part is your hard drive.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to speed your computer up, the number one thing you can do is replace your primary hard drive with a SSD, a solid state drive.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's different ones out there, they're very cheap now.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't used to be.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do some comparisons as far as speed because not everything is created equal, but a solid state drive will dramatically increase the speed of your computer.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And let's take a pause here for one minute to talk about why it is important to have a fast computer for development.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can do it on a slow computer, you can do it on an old computer, you can do it in VS Code, you can do it in notepad.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I feel kind of like Dr.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Seuss here.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: But you can do it wherever you want.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: But the the old adage, time is money, really comes to play here.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna spend all day trying to fight with your notepad in order to get the right C sharp code in there and try to remember what the syntax is and having problems won't compile and you have to redo things, that's wasted time.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if it took this, if it took you half an hour to do it in Visual Studio 2019 on a Windows machine, that's a lot of time savings.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to look at those comparisons and say, well, you know, if if this, if getting eight gigabytes more of RAM, so go from eight to 16, if that's going to speed up my my work by 10 minutes a day, how many days does it take to pay off that RAM?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, every day is 10 minutes.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: That adds up.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: After a week, you've got an hour of time that you've saved by having that extra RAM.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Over the course of a year, you now have two full days of time that you have saved.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of time for what would probably be around$50 worth of equipment.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can do these things, do them because they will pay you back as long as you can afford it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So solid state hard drive, that's probably my number one thing to look at to make sure that your system has or will have in the future.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then number two is that RAM.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you have it up to a level that at least eight gigabytes, but try for 16.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can get more, go for it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not gonna hurt you.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, it might help a little bit.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is a diminishing return, though, so don't go crazy like I did, but we'll talk about that in a minute.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: But um just know that there is a diminishing return over time.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's what I'd recommend from the hardware side.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Windows, solid state hard drive, 16 gigabytes of RAM.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the big deals.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for me personally, um I have a desktop because, like I said, I wanted to have my monitors be my primary machine or primary view and be matched.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I have two monitors.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another thing to talk about is the idea that you have more than one monitor.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Having two monitors speeds you up significantly.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you can have three monitors, that'll actually speed you up even more.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not quite as much as going from one to two, but from two to three is still a jump in productivity.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Again, figure that out over the course of a year to identify that, yeah, that makes sense.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have to approach your boss to ask for more equipment, talk to them in that manner.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Say, this is going to save me X amount of time per week.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Multiply it out, throw your salary in there and say, okay, if I'm making, you know, a dollar an hour and I saved a hundred hours, that's a hundred dollar savings.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, obviously, you're hopefully making more than a dollar an hour, but you can do the math for your boss that way.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd recommend, you know, two plus monitors, but I like to have a desktop because then I can have both monitors be the same.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have two 27-inch monitors.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had to think about that for a minute.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're both 4K, but I have them running at 1080p, which seems like a waste in some ways.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But what that does is allows me to get the right resolutions for recording video and yet still have that crisp ability um to go to 4K when I need to.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I do personally.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, also for me, I have my development machine is also a recording machine.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have really done some overkill stuff on it in order to get the most efficiency possible.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I look at it as if it can save me one hour, period, then it's worth hundreds of dollars.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it these upgrades haven't just saved me one hour, they save me multiple hours.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, I do processing of these videos on my computer.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: This video will take up gigabytes of storage that I will then process and render.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that takes a lot of work, but because I've overkilled my computer, I can do other things while that's processing.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: It used to lock my machine up, I couldn't do anything.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: But now I have a Ryzen, AMD Ryzen uh processor that actually has 32 processors on it that, or actually it's 64 virtual processors.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of insane.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of processors in my machine.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was building it, I hand built my machine.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had the option for not a lot much more money to upgrade from 32 gigabytes of RAM to 128 gigabytes of RAM.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's overkill.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that much more money, and it was gonna save me some time.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot, but some.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said it's worth it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I put that extra RAM in there.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have two different M2 solid state drives.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: They are they plug right into your motherboard.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot faster than just even an SSD that's plugged in via SATA.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I have two of those that are two terabytes and one terabyte, I believe.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So again, I spent some extra money on it, but the end result is it saves me time.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to have multiple drives or doing weird backup things or you know, deleting files.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't delete files pretty much ever.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So this saves me a lot of time doing that because I didn't I don't have to delete anymore.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so that's what I do for me personally.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, I also use a wireless keyboard and mouse.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I use a um actually it's right here, um, a Logitech K800 wireless keyboard that I have abused.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've put a lot of a lot of miles on my keyboard, and I have a Logitech MX Master mouse that again I have abused with how much work I put into it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: But wireless just gives the freedom to move my keyboard back and forward.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: It gives me the ability to change the position of my body.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I'm if my back is hurting, I can change, I can shift and move around, and my keyboard can come to me instead of me coming to my keyboard, say I'm a mouse.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd recommend that as well.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Having that wireless freedom, even though it's it the wireless, it plugs right at my desk.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's wireless for all of a foot.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: But that foot is a big deal for me.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a cable moving all around, making sure I you know have it in place.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So think about that.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I do is I have um a USB hub on my desk that's for plugging in thumb drives and other things.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's right there instead of having to reach over and down to my actual desktop.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I have is a USB charging hub.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a difference.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have a USB hub that actually has USB to my computer.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: The charging hub just plugs into an outlet.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: All it's there for is for charging devices.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like everything anymore charges through your USB.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: So my Fitbit watch, my keyboard, my mouse, um, my VR hand goggle thing or hand things.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole list of things that now my headphones, they also charge via um USB.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so having that that dedicated place for charging allows me to keep my cables plugged in, a little messy, but I can then just plug my cable in real quick and go ahead and charge something.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I do.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's for efficiency's sake.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I also have on my desk a stand-up wireless charger for my iPhone.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: That way I can just put my iPhone there.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: It holds it in a certain position so I can see what's on the iPhone, and at the same time it charges it so that I never have to think about, oh, did I plug my iPhone in?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just always charged.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I do.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Again, you don't have to do any of those things, but these are the things that I think through when I'm looking at my hardware setup is how is this gonna help me efficiency-wise?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: If it's gonna help me, then I'm gonna do it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I can get a few more minutes free a day, I can do other things with those minutes.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And my time is valuable.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Your time is valuable.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, think about how you can be more efficient with your day.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so that's hardware.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the only other thing that I do have, I'll show you here.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I have these are Sony, I think they're WH3000.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: The Sony Wireless Bluetooth headphones.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, noise canceling, big deal.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'll link all this down uh down below in the description of YouTube if you're watching on YouTube.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're listening via podcast, look in the podcast notes, we'll have links for all these.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: But being able to put those in my my head allows me to tune out everything else going on around me.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: It it turns everything else off.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Noise canceling headphones are a big deal, and so I'll play a little bit of music in the background, or I also have um one of those soundtracks, I believe it's um brain.fm, weird name, but it'll play some background noise that just allows me to not hear anything else and concentrate.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also helpful for keeping me more efficient in doing my job when I'm doing it.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And here's part of the key here.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: When you are more efficient at your job, you can either do more of your job or you can do your job for less time.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Either of those can be a good thing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can get your job done faster, cool, go and do something else.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're like me where you're self-employed, you can get more done in the same amount of time so that the time you have dedicated to your job, you're getting more stuff done and you're more efficient, and you you know, you make more money, you you hand, you know, are able to help more customers, whatever it is you're able to do in that same amount of time.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So saving time is important.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you can do to help that is important.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so that's all hardware stuff.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about software for a C sharp developer.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's only really two things.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Two, maybe three.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll talk about these.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: First one is of course Visual Studio.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I highly recommend Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's free unless you're working for a business that makes over a million dollars a year, in which case you have to pay for it and get the Visual Studio 2019 Professional Edition, which is practically the same thing as Community Edition.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not you're not losing anything by using community edition.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've been using community edition even though I have access to enterprise edition.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just because I'm demoing things so much, I don't want to have to do that that dance of, oh, is this in Only Enterprise?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Which is not a ton of stuff in Only Enterprise.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: But this way you can just say, you know what, I have the same stuff Tim has.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So VS 2019 Community Edition, go to Visual Studio.com and and download that for free.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Install it if at all possible.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that's Windows.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: There is a VS for Mac, but again, if you're on a Mac, that's what you got, unless you can do a um a virtual machine with Windows.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, if you only have Mac, then it's definitely better than Notepad, um, for sure.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not quite to the same level as Visual Studio for Windows.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I've been playing around with a VS for Mac, just trying to see what the differences are.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a pretty good Visual Studio.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not perfect, but it's a lot further along than it used to be.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's also further along than VS Code because VS Code is not an IDE, it's not an integrated developer environment.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: It is a a code or a text editor, essentially, that has some plugins.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just by design.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not meant to be a Visual Studio replacement.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, with that, I recommend Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: The other one I recommend is one that people often either don't know about or overlook, and that is Microsoft OneDrive.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is huge.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Use OneDrive if you can.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I believe you get five gigabytes for free of online storage.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have been using OneDrive for years, and it has its quirks, it has its problems, but OneDrive is an excellent backup solution.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: What I do is I tell it that all of my documents, all of my images, all of my um desktop things all get backed up through OneDrive.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, I point all of my Visual Studio projects to OneDrive so that if I decide tomorrow to get a new machine, or if I decide I need to move to a laptop, not a problem.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I just start, I log into that laptop, brand new laptop.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: It will download all the settings I need and it will have a um kind of a cloud version of everything I need on the machine.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: What it does is it puts an icon on a machine like it's the actual file, but it doesn't download it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: That way you're not downloading gigabytes of stuff every time you open a new machine.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: But when you need it, it'll download that file.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I use this extensively.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have the um Office 360.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, now it's called Microsoft 365.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: They've changed the name.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um Microsoft 365, I have the business edition, but you can get the personal edition for uh$70 a year or$100 a year for a family plan.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I recommend the family plan if you can.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is for$100 per year, you get, I think, five or six accounts with all of Microsoft Office.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you have, you know, OneNote and you have Word and Excel and PowerPoint and all the good stuff.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, you have one one terabyte OneDrive account per one of those six.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you have six one terabyte OneDrive accounts, not one six terabyte, it's six one terabyte um OneDrive accounts.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So really cool there because now you can give that to your family.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: They can all have the latest Microsoft Office product, and they can have their machines backed up to the cloud automatically.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to worry about losing files as much.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's still ways you can lose files, but even if you delete it on your machine, it stays in the cloud for 30 days in the the um recycle bin.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you can go there and cover it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can see versions of a file.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty important stuff, I think.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, it's saving me time.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I use OneDrive, I don't have to think, did I back my machine up?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Or when lightning strikes and you know I won't worry about my machine not turning on.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to panic because even if my machine blew up, I could, first of all, access all of my files on my phone.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I still have access to every file I need, but I could also go out and buy a brand new laptop, turn it on, open the lid up, turn it on, log in for the very first time, download all my stuff, and I'd be up and running in an hour or two after I installed, you know, Visual Studio and the Windows updates, probably.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be about it I'd have to do, and I'd be back up and running as if nothing happened.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a big deal for me.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's peace of mind.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: It saved me time doing the work of backing it up manually, and it's just there and available for me.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the second piece of software I'd recommend.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: The third, we could talk about this piece of software, I guess, software as a service.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: That would be an Azure subscription.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'd recommend having one because of all the niceties it adds, you know, free Azure.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: DevOps, and then you have things like the free 10 websites and those credits you get, those things that are free for a year, the 25 things that are free for life.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's some really great stuff in there that I'd recommend checking out at least.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be doing a video in the future, maybe in a course on getting started with Azure because it's really important to know all the cool stuff that's available to you in Azure.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the software side of things.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about what I do personally outside of that.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, we're talking about um efficiency.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: The more efficient I can be, the better.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: But also we're talking about personal health.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you have a desk job, you should invest in things that will help you personally, physically, and help you maintain that and not and not get hurt.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I have had, I think this is um my fourth or fifth fit bit um that I've had.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I keep upgrading them because what this does is it it helps to remind me of move.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um if I'm not careful, I get locked in the zone and I just work and I will sit at my desk and just work and the whole day go by and I won't have I won't have moved.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm not careful, I don't think about that.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I gotta report, well, first of all, my wrist every day I can check um and see how many steps I've got.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: So today's not been horrible, but it's not been great.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I have 3,700 steps.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not a ton.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: But some days I'll look at my wrist and go, you have 500 steps.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll go, okay, it's time to move.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's time to do something.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, my Fitbit alerts me every hour saying, here's how many steps left to fill out the hour.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of encourages you to take just a few more steps to fill out the hour.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then I get a report once a week saying, Here's how you did the past week.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll look at that and go, I need to do better.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so it'll encourage me to get up and move around and do things.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not perfect.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I go for bike rides, it doesn't, it doesn't track my bike rides, unfortunately.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I get no steps.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: So today I went for a two-mile ride.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have no steps from that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: But it encourages me to move.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's the big deal because that's good for my body, it's good for my health.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And with a constant desk job, it's important that I have things like that in my life that do that.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that's very valuable to me.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I've invested in, like I said, five or six of them, where you know, if it has newer features or better stuff, I'll go, you know what?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's worth it because my health is worth it.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one thing.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is uh my chair.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something where part of this comes down to who I am as an individual.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I am six foot eight and I am 250 pounds.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a large person.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I am not meant for small things.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to desk chairs, none of them fit me.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: None.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Just none.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you can find a chair that fits a six foot eight person, let me know.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because I haven't found one that's that does that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them say, you know, this is for you know for tall people to six five.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I'm a little taller than that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um I have gone through desk chair after desk chair trying to find ones that work.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, usually spend$100,$150 on a chair, and I'm like, you know, this has got to work out well, but it doesn't.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I've just been dissatisfied and I've gotten a new one or they break, whatever.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so finally I bit the bullet and I spent a thousand dollars on a desk chair.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that to me is super extravagant.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but again, what's my long-term health worth?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I purchased a Herman Miller Aeron chair.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're known as the developer's chair, they're a chair for people who are gonna spend a long time in their chair.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is a chair that um the people at Stack Overflow, that's one of the things they used to give to, I'm not sure if they still do or not.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think they do.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was the chair they gave to all their new developers because they wanted to encourage that healthy work environment.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the the idea behind the Hurry Miller chair is that it's just, first of all, long-term supported.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a 10-year warranty on it, and these things just don't break.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a mesh chair, but it's designed to move in about a hundred different directions, it feels like, um, in order to make sure it fits your body just right.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And there you have a version of the chair.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's uh the type C or is the C size um that is for people up to six five.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm I'm using that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: It um, of course, isn't quite designed for me, but it's close.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, now you can actually see the see the background.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: This right here, the headrest, is actually additional.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was not something that came from Herman Miller, but from a third party.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because Herman Miller didn't provide headrests, and I kind of like a red headrest.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I lean back and think, so I like to have my head supported.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's what I've been using for the past goodness, three years, maybe two or three years.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I love it.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: It has done wonders for my body.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: My body doesn't ache as much.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have weird pains as often.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting older, so weird pains are just a fact of life sometimes.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, it's helped me be a lot more comfortable in a sitting position and yet be have a good posture while doing it, which helps me long term.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm sitting for a long period of time or you know, many days in a row.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, I try and get to move and help my body in that circulation, but um having a good chair to sit in is important.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're talking about um, you know, what you should invest in as a developer, this is another area to think about.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna be sitting at home working, you know, um at a desk, don't just get a horrible chair.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you can afford it, and I understand that not everyone can, I get that.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can afford it, think through what's gonna fit well for your body type and what's gonna work for you um physically.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: It may be one of those exercise balls you sit on, or it may be that you have two or three you swap out.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just find what works for you and make sure that you think about the fact that you're investing in your health long term, not just saying it's an expensive chair.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the stuff that that both I do and I recommend as well.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: I recommend you look at again, Windows, solid state hard drive, 16 gigabytes of RAM, Visual Studio 2019, and then uh OneDrive, look into that for sure.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then look into your your physical, you know, whether it be your your uh Herman Miller chair or a Fitbit to keep you moving, or even just those little things to help make your life a little better, a little uh more convenient, like the uh USB hubs on your desk.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that was a kind of a long roundabout answer to that question.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um Oshukurov, I I think is the pronunciation.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I appreciate the question.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like your question answered in this series, either use the form on the podcast page or at I am Tim Corey or leave a comment on the YouTube video.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: As always, thanks for sharing this episode.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's always appreciated, and thanks for listening.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I am Tim Corey.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer.
• 30:17
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• 30:25
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• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did.
• 30:37
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