Developer Life Hacks: top tips from the naf Community
What you're reading: A distilled analysis of productivity tools and techniques shared in a recent NAF Slack thread where network automation developers discussed their favorite "dev tools & lifestyle hacks." Rather than presenting these as universal truths, this post captures the real dynamics of the conversation (including skeptical voices and pushback) to help you evaluate what might work for your specific workflow. Most recommendations came from individual advocates sharing personal favorites, so treat this as a curated list of interesting experiments rather than proven community standards.
🔥 Wide Community Support
1. Todo Tree VS Code Extension
What it does: Quickly searches your workspace for comment tags like TODO and FIXME, and displays them in a tree view in the activity bar
Positive feedback: Steinzi loves it for tracking fixes, Joseph Nicholson uses it to prevent TODOs reaching production
Criticism: Mischa Diehm was skeptical: "for me it would be pure frustration having this plugin" - questioning whether people actually fix their TODOs
Best practice: Joseph sets up pipeline checks to fail if TODOs are found
Verdict: Useful for disciplined teams, but requires workflow discipline to be effective
⚡ Individual Recommendations
2. Enhanced Shell History Search
The Problem: Default Ctrl+R in bash/zsh uses basic substring matching, which is limited
Two Main Solutions:
Option A: fzf + Ctrl+R (Simpler)
Enhances the built-in Ctrl+R with fuzzy search capabilities
"Using Ctrl-r and fzf roughly doubled my efficiency in the shell overnight"
No setup complexity, works immediately
Best for: Users who want better search without changing their workflow
Option B: Atuin (More Advanced)
Complete shell history replacement with sync, search and backup capabilities
"when I started with atuin I never got back to fzf"
Cross-machine history sync and advanced filtering (by host, directory, etc.)
Shares history between tmux sessions automatically
Best for: Power users who work across multiple machines
Recommendation: Start with fzf + Ctrl+R for immediate productivity gains, then consider Atuin if you need cross-machine sync or advanced features
3. Python Package Management Evolution
UV (Emerging Tool): Roman Dodin: "uv is the best thing that happened to python in a decade"
10-100x faster than pip, written in Rust
Pushback: Steinzi: "You will take pip from my cold dead hands!!!!"
Poetry (Established Alternative): Cristian Sirbu: "even poetry for me has been a big improvement, but reducing tool fragmentation is definitely great"
Better dependency management than pip, but slower than UV
The Spectrum: pip (universal standard) → Poetry (better project management) → UV (bleeding edge speed)
Reality check: UV is very new with limited real-world testing
Recommendation: pip for simplicity, Poetry for complex projects, UV for experimentation
4. Vimium Browser Extension
Advocate: William - "This changed my life. Naming book marks and being able to recall them (docs, portals, builds, registries, etc) at VIM speed has been incredible"
What it does: Provides keyboard shortcuts for navigation and control in the spirit of Vim
Best for: Developers comfortable with Vim-style navigation who want to reduce mouse usage
5. Modern Unix Tools Refresh
Advocate: Mischa Diehm mentioned "yazi, ff, rg (recursive grep) and bat"
Context: "after sticking to the original Unix power tools for years I must say these are a breeze of fresh air"
Tools breakdown:
yazi: Fast terminal file manager (Rust-based)
rg (ripgrep): Enhanced recursive grep
bat: Cat with syntax highlighting
ff: Fast file finder
Caveat: Single mention, limited discussion in thread
🛠️ Utility Mentions
6. GitLab Wiki for Free Media Storage
Advocate: Roman Dodin
Hack: "drag and drop a file in the wiki - get a public link that I then use in the docs sites"
Value: Free S3-like experience for documentation assets
7. Squoosh for Image Optimization
Advocate: Roman Dodin
Purpose: "convert fatty pngs to webp and get 75% downsizing"
Best for: Quick image compression without installing tools
8. RSS Feeds for News Curation
Advocate: Seth Gehring
Why: "Use RSS feeds in 2025 instead of <social media platform> to get tailored news"
Minimal discussion: Single mention with no community response
🔧 Workflow Techniques
9. Containerlab for Quick Network Labs
Advocate: Roman Dodin
Method: Create topology as gist, use short URLs for quick deployment
Command:
clab dep -c -t <short url>Niche: Specific to network automation/testing
10. Development Pipeline TODO Checks
Advocate: Joseph Nicholson
Method: "setup a pipeline to look for them and fail just in case"
Purpose: Prevent TODO comments from reaching production
🧐 Thread Reality Check
What this thread actually shows:
Most recommendations came from individual advocates sharing personal favorites
Very few tools had multiple people chiming in with support
Several tools are very new (UV) or niche (containerlab)
The thread was more "show and tell" than consensus-building
Key Takeaway: These are interesting tools worth investigating, but they represent individual preferences rather than proven community standards. The most valuable insights are the workflow patterns (keyboard-driven interfaces, faster feedback loops, reducing context switching) rather than specific tool recommendations.
🎯 Implementation Strategy
Low risk/High reward: fzf + Ctrl+R (universally useful)
If you use VS Code: Try Todo Tree (but establish TODO cleanup discipline)
For Vim users: Vimium browser extension
Experimental: Try modern Unix tools (yazi, rg, bat) in non-critical workflows
Python developers: Monitor UV adoption but stick with pip/poetry for production
This post is based on community discussions and represents the collective experience and opinions of individual practitioners, including: Steinn (Steinzi) Örvar, Mischa Diehm, Roman Dodin, Joseph Nicholson, Luke Richardson, Mark Prosser, Simon, Cristian Sirbu, Ryan Shaw, Seth Gehring, William Collins, Urs Baumann, Bart Dorlandt, Jesus Illescas. Approaches should be evaluated and adapted based on your specific network environment and requirements.
The conversation continues in the Network Automation Forum community – find us on Slack or LinkedIn.
