Advantages of extensions
Visual Studio Code is widely used nowadays for writing software. It is highly extensible and there are a lot of contributors that create useful extensions for it, to give this editor superpowers. It’s not a joke, you can really speed up your development with these tools and enhance the contribution with teammates.
Here is my top 10 extension that you should try in Vs Code:
Video
If you prefer to watch a video instead of reading, you can check out the video that I made on the topic on my YouTube channel:
The toplist of VsCode extensions
10. Gitlens
GitLens is an open-source extension that combines the capabilities of Git and VsCode. One of the best features of this extension, is the ability to visualize code authorship via Git blame annotations and code lens. You can also navigate in the history of a file back and forth to see the changes that were made on it. With the current-line blame you have the ability to click on a single line in the code and you can see the last commit that modified it and you also get a link to the pull request that introduced that change. Overall a really useful tool if you use git as your version control system.
9. Live Server
Oh I really wish this extension existed when I started to learn web development. It spins up a light nodejs server and serves your html file and all assets from the given directory. On top of that any saved changes you make to your website will be reflected immediately in the browser, which gives a really fast and enjoyable developer experience. You can find this functionality in tools for modern frameworks and libraries like Angular and React, but with this extension you can have the same functionality in any web development project.
8. Import Cost
You know that feeling when you look at npm’s website and see a cool package, install it immediately and import it into your project. So do I, the problem is that we often don’t think of the overhead that it can cause. This is why this little extension is so important. It enables you to track the size of the imported packages and libraries, so you can control the amount of code size that you import. Especially in web development, you should mind every single byte you import as they will negatively affect the load speed of your site, may harm user experience and even SEO rankings.
7. Prettier
Prettier is an opinionated code formatter, which you can set up according to your preferences. It just simply formats your code, and it is really beneficial to have a consistent formatting and styling across your code, because it can save you a lot of time, especially when you collaborate with other developers. You can use Prettier plugins to further enhance the capabilities of this extension, and you can also make it format your code automatically when you save a file.
6. Icons
This is not a specific extension rather a collection of extensions. If you install an icon extension VsCode will show little icons before your directory names and filenames. Every file extension will have it’s custom icon which makes it 10 times easier to navigate in the code and find the file or folder that you searched for. Even directories can have their specific icons based on their names and purpose. My go-to option is Material Icon Theme, but there are other really cool ones like vscode-icons, Simple Icons, Material Theme Icons. Find out which one suits you the most.
5. MarkDown all in one
Writing documentation is part of the developer job, whether you like it or not. The most commonly used markup to write documentations or even blog posts is markdown. Markdown all in one makes this process more enjoyable by providing useful shortcuts, autocomplete and live-preview features. It really speeds up documentation writing, so you can get back to developing new features much faster.
4. Better Comments
Better comments help you write more human-friendly, readable comments. Comments help you understand your own and others' code. This extension helps to visually organize your comments, so it will be much more digestible. You can categorize your annotations to highlighted text, errors and warnings, questions, strikethrough and TODO. With these formatted annotations being visually separated you won’t miss out on any must-read comments.
3. Snippets
This is again not a single extension but a collection of extensions. Using code snippets is a really good way to save time during development and increase productivity. For example if you use react and install the ES7/React/redux/GraphQL/React-native snippet you can simply type “rfc” and hit enter to import React and create a functional component. You can also find code snippet extensions for angular, vue, python, html and so on.
2. Path intellisense
Path intellisense is a great tool which makes it easier to work with files. It autocompletes filenames, and can be really useful if you work with lots of node modules or files in general.
1. Auto Rename Tag
This is a must-have extension for web developers. As the name suggests, it automatically renames the second tag if the first one is modified and vice versa. In bigger projects where you have nested tags and elements manual update can be difficult and tedious. And the great thing is that it works with JSX so you can use it with React too!
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Top comments (30)
Great list. I'd add Assistant to the list: marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...
Very useful article, thanks for sharing! 🍻
You’re welcome. Hope you will or already use dome of these 😉
I have been using Prettier which is a must-have to me. I have tried Gitlens but I'm still not used to all those buttons/features. For Live Server, I just use the one that comes with React. For Auto Rename Tag, I press F2 (Windows) and type the new tag name, but this extension is a faster way. The other ones are really useful.
Yes definetely Prettier is a must have for me either 👍
Hi, I've made a productivity extension VS Utils, hope it can save your time.
I'll update the extension every month, like VS Code. Let's try and let me know your opinions.
Extremely Cool 😎.
Waiting for the next article ☺️☺️
Thanks!
Hope you won't need to wait for so long.
Next blogpost is planned to release today afternoon.
i18n folks: The Inlang VS Code extension we are building has been a lifesaver for me in handling i18n complexities. It's effortless to translate, detect missing translations, and update content seamlessly within my VS Code. There is also a typesafe JS library and a CLI for machine translations.
Hey @javascriptacademy thanks for the list.. you can also check this little extension of mine. It gives you CTRL + SHIFT + T shortcut to surround your codeblocks with snippets.
🔥A simple yet powerful extension to add wrapper templates around your code blocks
Surround
A simple yet powerful extension to add wrapper snippets around your code blocks
Features
Demo 1: Choosing a wrapper snippet from quick pick menu
Demo 2: Wrapping multi selections
How To Use
After selecting the code block, you can
to get list of commands and pick one of them.
List of commands
surround.with(ctrl+shift+T)surround.with.ifsurround.with.ifElseCheers, 🚀🖖
Maybe you will also like the VSCode extension "Blockman". It highlights nested codes blocks based on curly/square/round brackets, html/xml tags and Python/Yaml indentation. (I am the author of Blockman).
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i.ibb.co/31F0rm9/vscode-blockman-i...
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You're right. That extension is no more useful since months.
Checkout this Javascript Extension Pack for VS Code
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=demystifying-javascript.javascript-fullstack-developer-extension-pack&ssr=false#review-details
It has the most popular and some of my favorites extensions all in one place
If you want to learn Javascript, follow and subscribe to my channel youtube.com/channel/UCVhh3gpOXCb-r...
Extremely useful, thanks a lot.
You're welcome!