3 massive upgrades for anyone building software:
1. Start using Development Containers.
They work across IDEs, making your life 10x easier, especially if you work with a team or want to run your projects on multiple computers.
You can configure a Dev Container with everything you need, install libraries, set environment variables, and even install plugins you want to use on your IDE.
Anyone using this container will have access to the same exact environment. When you delete the container, everything that came with it disappears.
2. Start using "uv" to manage your Python environments.
This is probably the biggest upgrade I made during 2024. Forget about poetry, conda, venv, and anything else. UV is the best, and it's not even close.
UV is faster, easier to use, and has great documentation.
3. Start using "just" to create recipes to run project-specific commands.
This easily saves me 1 hour daily of remembering specific commands or sequences.
For example, I'm constantly running an MLflow server like this:
$ uv run -- mlflow server --host 127.0.0.1 --port 5000
Instead, I can create a recipe using "just" and run it like this:
$ just mlflow
Faster, easier to remember, and prevents mistakes.
In summary:
1. Dev containers
2. uv
3. just