Visual Studio Code is my code editor of choice. I regularly use Linux, MacOS, and Windows, and it is very nice to have a consistent tool between each operating system. I have listed my recommended VS Code extensions below. In this post, I talk about general development tools I like to use in each operating system.
General
- GitLens — Git supercharged
Awesome parsing of the project’s git information. This extension pulls in the git history and blame from the project, and can show git history on the highlighted line. - change-case
An easy way to change the case of selected text. - Code Spell Checker
A regular spell checker. It’s smart enough to parse most words separately in a variable name. - IntelliSense for CSS class names in HTML
Auto-completion for CSS names based on existing rules. - Path Intellisense
Path auto-completions. - Docker
Useful tooling for Docker. - ESLint
The de facto Javascript linter. - Excel Viewer
Can parse CSV as a table. - Markdown All in One
Shortcuts and tooling to help write Markdown in the VS Code editor. My personal favorite utility here is creating and keeping an up to date a table of contents based on the header structure. - Live Server
An easy way to launch a server from inside the project. - Todo Tree
Helps organize TODOs so they don’t get lost. - Live Share Extension Pack
This is a really powerful paired programming tool. It works and is cross-compatible Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, or in a browser (the session host has to use Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code).
Angular
- Angular Essentials
A pack of extensions maintained by John Papa, one of the celebrities in the Angular world. I have found this to be a comprehensive set of extensions for Angular, especially since I don’t use snippets much.
C#
- C#
This is the official C# extension from Microsoft and handles everything including syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, and debugging. It is a dogfooded tool and it shows.
Settings
In addition to the above extensions, I have some settings I configure in Visual Studio Code:
- CodeLens for Javascript and Typescript. This parses projects for class, method, and property references and shows them above the class/method/property declaration. It does cause slight slowdown when loading a file, but I consider it a worthy tradeoff.
- Breadcrumbs. These show file path breadcrumbs above the editor window.
If I find any other recommended VS Code extensions, I will add them here.
Category: Development