Ask HN: What non-LLM tools have meaningfully improved your dev productivity?

Curious what tools people are using that aren't GenAI/LLM-based. Things that have actually changed how you work, not just minor conveniences.

4 points | by primaprashant 19 hours ago

4 comments

  • kentich 18 hours ago
    Code Mind Map extension for Visual Studio / VS Code to create mind maps with nodes linked to code. https://codemindmap.com
  • K0IN 15 hours ago
    Docker starting test DBS, getting apps quickly to run without setting up all deps on my system.

    Vscode.

  • 3dsnano 18 hours ago
    deep listening... the willingness to observe and feel without needing to judge or react!!!!
  • kingkongjaffa 8 hours ago
    Ruff solved python formatting and linting.

    uv solved packaging.

    Both were better in terms of user ergonomics and also much faster that what we used before, black, mypy, pylint etc.

    IDK it Typescript is too generic but TS made me think of javascript as a proper language and not something just to do silly little animations on websites for. Types unlock proper data modeling and application code to me.

    Figma and Figjam are really great tools for design and planning. I didn't like Miro's pricing model, and stuff we used before like Sketch wasn't as good.

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    • primaprashant 6 hours ago
      yeah, big fan of uv and ruff and recently ty. It's also from astral and it fixed type checking. You should check it out