How Pro Ruby Developers Customize VS Code

#vscode #ruby #rails #webdev

I recently asked twenty-five professional, freelance Ruby developers about their favorite extensions for Visual Studio Code.

This wasn't a formal survey, just a way to dig into what makes for a great VS Code extension and use that to inform the design of our own AppMap extension.

I tallied the results and a clear picture emerged about which extensions were top of mind for Ruby developers.

The most popular responses

These are the heavyweights. No big surprises, but it was interesting to see these names appear with such consistency.

Rubocop - A VS Code interface for the Rubocop static code analyzer.
ESLint - JavaScript Linter. With close to thirteen million downloads, we are all well aware of this one.
Prettier - Text formatter.
Ruby - Provides enhanced Ruby support specific to VS Code.
GitLens - Provides enhanced Git support specific to VS Code.

There was a dropoff and the results got more varied

These extensions are not necessarily less popular in terms of sheer download numbers. They were just not top of mind for these developers. Part of being a great extension is seamlessly blending into and improving an existing workflow. Consequently, some of the best extensions are nearly invisible and rarely thought about.

ERB Formatter - Provides syntax formatting for ERB.
Intellicode - AI-assisted development for Java, C#, Python, and a handful of other languages, but not Ruby.
Docker - A VS Code interface for managing containers.
Ruby Solargraph - Provides code completion and inline docs for Ruby.
Live Share - Enables real-time collaborative coding.

Incredibly useful extensions that are not new but were new to me

These are two extensions that I discovered during this exercise and added to my own toolkit. I was definitely late to the party on these, but happy to have them now.

CSS Peek - Jump directly to CSS definitions from an id or class name in HTML.
Todo highlight - Highlight TODO in your code.

The obscure indie

Simple but so useful.

Rails Routes - Jump to a route definition from wherever it is being called in the code

One well-known developer responded to my question by pasting his plugins.json file into a DM. It actually ended up being interesting to pick through. Kind of like watching the credits of a movie. Check it out.

If you have any extensions that you really like and think would be useful to a Ruby developer, please comment.

The raw data

Extension	Developer	Mentions
Rubocop	Misogi	9
Prettier	Prettier	9
ESlint	Dirk Baeumer	8
VSCode Ruby	Stafford Bunk	8
Ruby	Peng Lv	7
GitLens	Eric Amodio	6
ERB Formatter	Ali Ariff	3
Intellicode	Microsoft	3
Docker	Microsoft	3
Solargraph	Castwide	3
Live Share	Microsoft	3
ERB	Craig Maslowski	3
Live Server	Ritwick Dey	2
Bracket Pair Colorizer	CoenraadS	2
Auto Close Tag	Jun Han	2
vetur	Pine Wu	2
JS Code Snippets	charalampos karypidis	2
Peacock	John Papa	2
Stylelint	Stylelint	1
Boostrap 4 snippets	Zaczero	1
Bootstrap 4, Font Awesome	Ashok Koyi	1
Pro Snippets	uncprocore	1
Redux DevTools 8	Jingkai	1
Auto Rename Tag	Jun han	1
Error Lens	Alexander	1
Live Server	Street Side Software	1
Rails Go To Spec	Sporto	1
Better TOML	Bung cip	1
VS Code Elixir	Matt McLoughlin	1
Better HAML	Karuna Murti	1
VS Code PDF	tomoki1207	1
Add New Line To Files	Jeremy Forsythe	1
CSS Peek	Pranay Prakash	1
Rest Client	Huachao Mao	1
Ruby Linter	Cody hoover	1
Simple Ruby ERB	Victor Ortiz Heredia	1
Trailing Spaces	Shardul Mahadik	1
VS Code Database	Bajdzis	1
Todo Highlight	Wayou Liu	1
Endwise	Kai Wood	1
Gem Lense	ninoseki	1
Rails Routes	aki77	1