Final yr, at Cisco Dwell 2025 in Las Vegas, I used to be reviewing every part for my session “DEVNET-3707 – Community Telemetry and AI for Community Incident Response“. I at all times check my demos earlier than my session, so I could be calm figuring out it’s going to work. Nonetheless, this time throughout testing, I seen the metrics in my Grafana dashboard weren’t exhibiting up. I panicked and began troubleshooting. After some time I discovered an error within the Python script that was amassing telemetry knowledge utilizing NETCONF, however didn’t know why. Supposedly my script ought to at all times work whatever the surroundings however it was not working. As engineer, I deleted all of the containers I used, Grafana, Telegraf, InfluxDB and created them once more, time and again till it labored.
The demo labored and my session went properly, however this was not one thing I wished to repeat. I at all times attempt to make my initiatives comply with my mantra of “construct and overlook” however I did discover that the script utilized by Telegraf was not following my mantra. I used Poetry at the moment and debugging it may take me some time.
Once I say “construct and overlook”, I imply mainly to create and configure your initiatives in a method which you could construct them as soon as and overlook about them as a result of they work each single time. That is how I wish to construct and that is what I wished to share in my month of developer productiveness collection on our YouTube channel. It covers the developer productiveness instruments builders and engineers must cease preventing their surroundings and begin coding.
Within the first video I present how one can set your surroundings like a professional. As soon as your surroundings is ready, video 2 makes certain your IDE catches errors earlier than they trigger issues. Even with all of that, issues nonetheless go mistaken, so video 3 offers you the instruments to seek out out why. And when it really works, video 4 makes certain it really works all over the place, not simply in your machine.
Video 1 – Your Dev Atmosphere
In my first video, “Set Up Your Dev Atmosphere Like a Professional,” I share some helpful VS Code extensions and settings, together with how Distant Explorer with distant.SSH.defaultExtensions can assist you get your surroundings on a VM straight away and for those who configure your SSH shopper to ahead your SSH keys, it looks like magic; having a whole surroundings together with your favourite extensions in a model new VM able to push to GitHub straight away. And for those who use containers as a substitute, Dev Containers are the way in which to go. Right here you’ll be able to outline your surroundings (together with your extensions) in a devcontainer.json file and have it prepared in seconds. Better of all, this configuration is model managed and everybody who clones your repo can have the identical surroundings. You will discover the video right here, together with how one can configure your OpenSSH shopper: Watch the video
Video 2 – Make Your IDE Work for You
After you have your surroundings prepared, it’s nice to ensure your IDE is doing the give you the results you want with easy however very highly effective instruments. In my expertise, once you don’t use these instruments, it is extremely laborious to comply with the code and perceive what’s going on. In my second video I configure formatters like Prettier and Black, linters like Pylint, Ruff and sort checkers like Pylance and ty. Each time you save your Python code, Black codecs it properly, Ruff and Pylint verify for errors, Pylance and ty verify for kind errors. And with editor.codeActionsOnSave set to supply.fixAll: "express" and editor.formatOnSave set to true, Ruff may even repair a few of the errors for you, each time you save your code. The second video is right here: Watch the video
Video 3 – Debug Like You Imply It
After the surroundings and your IDE are accomplished, a reasonably widespread job is to debug your code. Errors are so widespread, particularly when coping with distant knowledge constructions like YANG fashions, the place you don’t have a transparent REST API schema and also you solely have the YANG schema, which isn’t that simple to comply with. Right here a debugger is right provided that relying on how your machine is configured, the info you expect may be lacking. The launch.json file helps you configure your debugger so, with a easy F5, you can begin debugging your code rapidly. Breakpoints, watch expressions, the debug console (REPL), conditional breakpoints and logpoints are a few of your greatest associates when issues go south and also you don’t know why. In my third video I clarify the launch.json file and undergo these debugger instruments: Watch the video
Video 4 – Ship It Wherever
Lastly, it’s time to ship your code, and one thing that contradicts my mantra “construct and overlook” is the “it solely works on my pc” concept. The “overlook” half applies anyplace, your laptop computer, your coworker’s laptop computer, a server, a pipeline, and many others. If you’re creating with Python, I’ve discovered that uv is nice for reproducible builds. Use it appropriately and you’ll at all times have the identical dependencies and similar surroundings, so your code will at all times work. Neglect about points with dependencies which might be damaged and usually are not in your management, the dependency hell. However uv alone is just not sufficient, to get probably the most out of uv you may want to make use of particular flags and instructions which with time you’ll overlook (at the least I do), that’s why uv + make is a superb mixture. I solely have to recollect easy instructions like make construct and make run and the Makefile will handle the remainder. And for those who put that on a container, you could be certain it’s going to run anyplace. I cowl this very helpful sample in my fourth video: Watch the video
Keep in mind the mantra “construct and overlook” and apply it to your initiatives; it’s going to make your life simpler. I’ve been following this mantra for all my newer initiatives they usually simply work, and I can chill out.
Assets
Listed here are a few of the sources I discussed within the movies:
Add any questions or feedback you have got concerning the movies or the weblog. I might be joyful to reply them.