We're living in the age of AI. Every day, a new tool pops up promising to 10x our productivity, write all our code, and probably make us breakfast. And don't get me wrong, AI is a fantastic and it's making us productive! But I’ve found that even with the best AI assistant, our foundational tools, the "metal" we work on can be the biggest drag or the biggest accelerator.  Over the last few months, I’ve been on a mission to fine-tune my setup, and I’ve landed on a stack of software and hardware that has genuinely made a huge difference. Let's dive in. The Software This is the digital engine. Make it fast, make it smart, and make it work for you. 1. The OS: Linux/Ubuntu To me, speed is everything. I’ve been a Windows user for a long time, but over the years I started to notice how slow things felt, especially when working on multiple projects at the same time with several applications open. Build times dragged, the OS felt heavy, and the overall experience starte...