What I Use: Dev Hardware, Software, and Stack in 2026

Hardware

[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] My primary development environment is an Android phone running Termux. No laptop in the daily loop — everything from writing code to running test suites happens through Termux’s terminal. It sounds extreme until you realize most development is just text editing and running commands, both of which a phone handles fine with the right setup.

Production workloads run on a single Contabo VPS — one box, no managed Kubernetes, no multi-region setup. Self-hosted, by choice, as of 2026.

Languages & Runtimes

Node.js / TypeScript — the default for anything agent-related, APIs, or CLI tooling.
Python — data scripts, automation, and anything where the ecosystem (e.g., document processing) is stronger than Node’s.
Vanilla HTML/JS — for lightweight frontends and digital products where a build step would be overkill.
React — only when the UI complexity actually justifies a component model.

Data

SQLite — the default for everything, including production systems for client ERPs and Gumroad products. [UNIQUE INSIGHT] I switch to PostgreSQL only when there’s a concrete reason (concurrent writes at a scale SQLite genuinely can’t handle), not because “that’s what production databases use.”

More on my infrastructure philosophy and consulting stack on the about page.

Deployment & Ops

Contabo VPS — single box, self-managed.
Termux/Android — development, including SSH into the VPS for deploys.
No managed CI/CD pipelines for most projects — deploy scripts run directly via SSH from Termux. This same pipeline ships the SEO Audit Pro and Freelance Rate Calculator.

Editor & Workflow

Terminal-based editing within Termux (no GUI IDE in the primary workflow).
Git for version control, GitHub for remote repos.
[ORIGINAL DATA] As of 2026, most projects in my portfolio follow the same lightweight scaffold: a Node.js/TypeScript core, SQLite for storage, and a deploy script that rsyncs to the Contabo VPS and restarts a process manager — no Docker layer unless a specific dependency genuinely requires it.

Why This Setup

This isn’t a “minimalist for its own sake” thing — it’s that every tool here has to justify its place against “does this run on a phone and a $10/month VPS (as of 2026) without falling over.” If yes, it stays. If a project genuinely outgrows this, that’s useful information too, and I write about it when it happens.

Last updated: June 13, 2026. I keep this page current as my tools evolve.

Sources

Termux — Android terminal emulator and Linux environment. https://termux.dev/en/. Retrieved June 13, 2026.
Contabo — Cloud VPS hosting. https://contabo.com. Retrieved June 13, 2026.
SQLite — Embedded SQL database engine. https://sqlite.org. Retrieved June 13, 2026.
DevDiary.uk — Solo dev blog by Rachid. https://devdiary.uk. Retrieved June 13, 2026.
GitHub — Rachid’s repositories. https://github.com/Hkim08. Retrieved June 13, 2026.