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Visual Studio code is by far my weapon of choice for most of my development work.
I also use NeoVim from time to time and regular old Visual Studio and XCode for more specific needs.
However, I always tend to gravitate back to VSCode. After all, it is a kinda lightweight (not as much as Vim, but waay more than any IDE), trivial to configure, and super extensible.
With the right extensions, it can be almost as powerful as a fully fledged IDE.
I'm probably missing many cool extensions, so let me know in the comments if I left out any one you like 😁
Utilities
Vim
The Hanna Montana of the code editors, it's the best of both worlds 🎶
The navigation and functionality of Vim, with the easy of use and configuration of VSCode.
I simply can't live without it.
Link
GitLens
The default Git support on steroids.
Link
ErrorLens
Displays error and warning messages inline.
Quite useful when using the Vim extension.
Link
Trailing Spaces
Simply puts in red the trailing white spaces of each line (if any).
Great to keep files clean and nice before sending them to review.
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TODO Highlight
Highligths usual comments such as TODO, FIXME, etc.
You can also configure your own, with custom colors.
Link
Themes
I switch color themes very often, however, these are the ones that I'm using at the moment.
Light Theme
I find light thems easier to read and less tiring for the eyes, however, there is a lot less diversity and quality of light themes compared to dark ones.
The default Light+ works fine enough for now.
Dark Theme
For late night coding sessions I still like to use dark themes. Good old Gruvbox is my favorite atm. Warm and colorful, with great syntaxis highlighting.
Languages
This will heavily depend on what languages you use, but I'll share my stack, in case someone finds it useful.
Pretty basic collection.
C/C++
Microsoft's must have if you write C/C++ code.
Provides auto-completion, code navigation and debugging tools.
Intellisense is just great.
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CMake & CMake Tools
If you write C/C++, you probably remember CMake from your PTSD flashbacks.
Bad jokes aside, this couple of extensions makes your life a little easier, which is always welcome.
Language Support
Tools
Rust
I'm currently learning Rust, so this extension comes really handy.
It provides IDE features for the Rust language, but keep in mind that it needs a separate language server (the extension will download and install it anyway if you don't have it already).
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Shader languages support
Quite limited, but at least makes easier to work with GLSL/HLSL shaders.
Link
For Unity's shaderlab, I use ShaderlabVSCode(free)
If you work with Metal, I guess Metal Shader Extension should work fine, but I haven't tried it myself (yet).
Markdown All in One
Live preview for markdown files with some extra cool things such as an auto table of contents.
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Cover photo by Todd Quackenbush
Utilities photo by Abigail Keenan
Themes Photo by Burgess Milner
Languages photo by Chris Reid
Top comments (2)
Nice Post
Keep it up
We'd love to get on your list with Marquee, Javier. Also very much interested in your feedback: dev.to/sourishkrout/lost-in-vs-cod...