HC

Technology we use, software we love and other things we recommend.

We get asked a lot about the things we use to build software and stay productive. Here's a list of some of our favourite things.

Apple

  • Swift

    A pleasant language to use for both functional and imperative styles with decent dependency management in the form of Swift Package Manager (SPM).

  • SwiftUI

    Replacing verbose imperative UIKit code with succinct declarative SwiftUI code results in quicker user interface composition and simpler multi form factor support, what's not to like?

  • The Composable Architecture (TCA)

    A sensational Swift functional programming library made by Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis of pointfree.co.

Native Web

  • TypeScript

    The goto for type safe browser based app development, we find TypeScript invaluable for large projects and whilst it isn't as enjoyable to use as some alternative functional languages it has the simple benefit of reading much like the resultant JavaScript executed in the browser.

  • Tailwind CSS

    A layer of abstraction over native css, using Tailwind means your project has minimal custom css (faster load times), instead you use Tailwind's pre-canned utility classes directly on your HTML elements, removing the need for additional css definitions and making it clear what styles affect the HTML you're looking at.

  • React

    Why React for frontend development? It's easy to hire for React, it has a decent developer experience, is easy to test and can result in performant web applications.

  • Elixir

    Why Elixir for backend development? It's type safe (less bugs), functional (less bugs) and runs on a virtual machine architected for resilience and high uptime.

  • Visual Studio Code

    Shareable profiles, realtime collaboration and an endless stream of new features.

Design

  • Adobe Creative Cloud

    Adobe has best in class design apps, we find their cloud storage and collaboration features invaluable.

Productivity

  • Notion

    We connect and collaborate using Notion, it has a wonderfully intuitive interface that offers a central place for our teams, projects and docs.

  • XMind

    A snappy and capable mind map desktop application that many of us use to facilitate all kinds of create work.

  • proton.me

    We're early adopters of ProtonMail and have enjoyed it's expansion into calendaring and file storage.