I'm writing Node.js exclusively these days. Even the bits of client side JS is actually backend Node being tweaked to work in the browser.
As for productivity hacks: get rid of build steps, reduce test times, complain about stuff that doesn't work, don't accept crap.
I'm going to be publishing a blog post on semantic release (which is super awesome if you don't already use it) and another post on my development flow in Node, which again is without a build process. Basically: code to node@6.