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If We Only Had Five VS Code Extensions

Dennis Persson on May 28, 2023

If you had to choose five and only five VS Code extensions, which would you choose? I asked that question to myself, and I have picked out the fiv...
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Calin Baenen

Clearly this list list was made for JavaScript people.
Clearly Rust-Analyzer would have been a better pick over ESLint.
    /satire

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Andre Greeff

against my better judgement, I'm going to poke the proverbial bear and beg to disagree with you on, well, the whole list... and for context: I use VSCode daily for multiple different web-related projects, including JS, TS, Dart, sometimes even a little Java.


Git Graph? nah, you're much better off with a decent quality dedicated Git GUI... the official Git website has a long list with a little something for everyone. "Fork" is absolutely brilliant if you can justify the license cost (and don't use Linux), "GittyUp" is my next best option.

Auto Hide? it's great in principle, but have you actually tried to use it? like, regularly?? I did.. then I spent days trying to hack it into submission.. it relies on the same actions that mouse or keyboard interactions use, which also change focus. so, this would be a solid no. (FWIW, I believe there are ideas for APIs that will improve this, but I haven't followed up on that for quite a while)

Peacock? and negate all those many hours we've spent looking for that "perfect dark theme"? hmmm.. I don't know anybody personally that would do that.

ESLint? sure you could install this in your main profile and have it always available.. or you could just add it to the extension list for whatever dev container actually requires it.

Package Json Upgrade? yeah, I used to use this.. really like the way it lets one pick the update to do, between "major", "minor" or "patch" (as applicable). but overall I would say Version Lens is better, since it supports numerous project types in addition to Node.


yeah, so since the entire premise of this argument is personal preference, my personal top 5, for web dev and more:

  • Better Comments, because the colours mean you will never unwittingly scroll past a TODO or FIXME comment again.
  • Code Spell Checker, because who doesn't love a good camelCaseFriendlySpellChecker? (:
  • Gremlins Tracker, because these little suckers can and do cause utterly ridiculous problems in all languages..
  • Formatting Toggle, because we all know that "special someone" who downright refuses to format his/her code.. and bitches when your auto formatting changes everything that they did.. this is the high road. take it, move on with life.
  • Dev Containers, because once you go full container, you'll never want to go back.
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Matthias Hryniszak

I completely agree with pretty much everything you wrote although I'd say the described extensions are more eye candy for those who need to stimulate them selves visually rather than increase productivity. ESLint is probably the only one I'd agree with to the point that it can be always installed but each project needs to have its own config that makes sense. And don't even get me started on prettier....

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Red Ochsenbein (he/him)

"No VS Code extensions needed" - neovim user😅

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Paweł Świątkowski

There's really only one extension needed:
github.com/hoovercj/vscode-power-mode

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Debojyoti Chatterjee

It would be a little distracting tbh! Looks cool though

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Paweł Świątkowski

yeah, only turn it on when you are screen sharing ;)

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Matthias Hryniszak

Eye candy.. It's not only distracting but hurts productivity. Yeah... nice if you need to emphasize something during a presentation, like one or two lines of code that really rock - strongly harmful otherwise.

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Schemetastic (Rodrigo)

Peacock seems very interesting, haha, I just currently use a theme that I like (Dark Orange).

For me, one of my faves would be Vite along with the Browse Lite extension (that if I'm not wrong automatically installs it when you install Vite), a Vite powered app starts as soon as I open VS Code and then automatically opens the app in the integrated browser, and when I make changes, the hot reloading let me see the changes almost immediately.

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Monero Jeanniton

Peacockis exactly what I was looking for.

I use different colors to differentiate the window of my App and its API.

Thank you

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G33kNoob

When gou upgrade your package.json you have 1 job check the availability api usage, for me better check the changelog before update anything

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Petr Plenkov

1 - Gitlense ( cannot imagine now work without it )
2 - Prettier
3 - Nx (improves Nx.dev experience for JS monorepos )
4 - Docker (helps to access Docker and compose images from IDE)
5 - Dev containers ( game changer in terms of VS Code experience )

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Hector Sosa

All of these are just gems! Great share! If you want to make your content stand out. Try framing your screenshots here and there.

We've built an OSS tool to help with this. Check it out and let me know know what you think: useScreenshot.app/GitHub. I'd appreciate giving it a star on GitHub if you find it useful! Cheers!

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vifeng

marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...
Inline parameters... Can't live without it

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Mark

Pretty neat. FWIW- VSCode does have a setting for this that comes standard, but it's much more conditional and limited than this extension.

I will definitely check this out, thanks for sharing!

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Manuel Sayago

I think I got used to ESLint, definitely! At first I got upset, hahaha. But it's a really nice tool, thanks for mention it.

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Michael Hipp

Vim extension.

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Tulsi Prasad

Thanks for the list! I didn't knew about package-json-upgrade, it'll be a game changer! 🔥

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Bhanu Sunka

I think you should give a try to jellyfish-x-retro vscode theme.. I'm sure you gonnna love it! 😉

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Lens0021 / Leslie • Edited

Please remember that Git Graph has not been maintained, and the license does not allow forking. The day you have to find out an alternative will be coming.

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Peter Wone • Edited

This is incorrect. The license does not prevent forking.

It forbids publishing a fork to the marketplace.

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Tracy Gilmore

Hi Dennis, Nice selection of extensions. Sorry, but I spotted a typo. I think it should be "Package Json Upgrade has one job...".
Kind regards, Tracy

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Robin Kretzschmar

Package Json Upgrade sounds nice. My opinion is that if you use a JS project, you should run a clean npm i from time to time even locally and with that you'll get the notifications about relevant updates in the console.

Do you really check the package file that often manually that this extension is useful?

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Tom Canham

Thank you for this. I got here looking for a side panel autohide extension, and you're right: just moving the panel to the right side has been a surprising boost of productivity for me! I'll be sure to check out the other extensions you mention.

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Bogdan Ionita

You can use "gitk" from the shell - it comes bundled together with Git for Windows (you can install it separately on most linux distros too using the package manager). It looks just like that graph you mentioned and no additional extensions are required

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leob

You don't even need these 5, so you can cut it down to zero, lol ... less is more, lean is mean.

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Red Ochsenbein (he/him)

Pretty much, yes