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20 VS Code Extensions You'll Actually Use

Al Romano on February 08, 2019

I've noticed several VS Code extension posts and have been thoroughly disappointed with the mentioned extensions with the exception of a couple so ...
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Jefry Pozo

Some other useful extensions are

ESLint: For linting your javascript code,
Serverless: For working with serverless projects(Azure, AWS, GCP),
Serverless-Offline: For testing a serverless project on your localhost
Material Theme & Material Icon Theme: Beatiful theme and icons
Window Colors: Gives every VSCode window a diferente window color

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Al Romano

Hey Jefry,

Big fan of Material Theme & Icons but, recenetly switched it up to Code Blue.

I have ESLint but some like JSHint instead, or other linters, so I left it out.

Windows Colours looks helpful as well - will need to check that out!

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Bhanu Sunka

I found one really cool vscode theme named Jellyfish-x-retro theme.. Do checkout! πŸš€πŸš€

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Leandro Ardissone

Serverless-offline is an extension? Haven't found it in the marketplace.

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Jefry Pozo

My bad. It is an NPM package, serverless is a NPM package too.

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Mihail Malo

Is Rainbow Brackets superior to Bracket Pair Colorizer 2?
NPM Dependency seems vastly inferior to Version Lens, which in addition to better UI even supports a few other repositories like dotNET core.
Will be looking into Better Comments.
And Prettier > Beautify.
The code plugin beautifully integrates with the same config your git hooks can use, and generally has better and more deterministic formatting.

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Al Romano • Edited

Hey Mihail,

I haven't specifically tried BPC-2 but it appears to do the same thing - the only difference I can tell is that Rainbow will highlight in red the isolated right bracket so you always know where you currently are inside any set of coloured brackets. That being said I'm giving BPC-2 a try right now!

Didn't even know of Version Lens - you're right it's way better. Updating list.

I had Prettier for a while but out of the box, it couldn't handle HTML markup inside .js/.ejs template files and was driving me crazy - Beautify gives an option to treat unknown markup as "HTML, CSS, JS" regardless of file ending from a Prompt dropdown.

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Mihail Malo • Edited

What is "HTML markup in .js files"?
It does script/css in html, jsx inside js, and any language it supports as a tagged code block inside markdown by default.
If your file IS valid HTML, but also contains for example moustache tags in the text node positions, you can set a configuration override for your extension of the parser option.

Edit: I looked up what ejs is, and there is, indeed, no support. Does your plugin beautify it by parsing it as pure HTML?

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vip3rousmango profile image
Al Romano

Hey Mihail,

That's correct when Beautify hits markup it wasn't expecting (like HTML inside a .js/.ejs file as EJS templating can handle this) it lets you pick how to handle it. Very nifty.

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Austin Standing

I love Bracket Pair Colorizer! I just discovered 2 today, making the switch now. For what it's worth, the marketplace shows Rainbow Brackets hasn't been updated since 2016, meanwhile Bracket Pair Colorizer 2 was updated just yesterday. That being said, it still has the beta label, so take that for what it's worth.

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miku86

I add:

  • Auto Close Tag
  • Auto Import
  • Auto Rename Tag
  • Code Runner
  • ES7 React/Redux/GraphQL
  • Import Cost
  • indent-rainbow (colorized stripes for indentation!)
  • npm Intellisense
  • path Intellisense
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Al Romano

All great additions, I also have npm/path intellisense but not everyone uses NPM so I decided not to add it.

Never headr of indent-rainbow that I'll have to check out for sure!

I used to have Auto Close Tag but I found it rather annoying when doing templating partials.

If you think of others I'll check 'em out!

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Jorge Reyes

Settings Sync my fav

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Al Romano

It's a great extension. So simple, but I totally take it for granted when I don't have it and need to re-install everything from memory. :(

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Jorge Reyes

I have automated the installation in windows with boxstarter + choco and later I use code CLI for extensions.

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Bee Wilkerson

Great suggestions, use some of these many times a day! If you do a follow up story for 2020, please consider this new extension: marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...

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Al Romano

Whoa this looks awesome! Will check it out and see if it makes the cut for my 2020 post. ;)

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🎧CirphrankπŸ‘£

Faster Coding
'1' - you wrote "CSS Peak" instead of *CSS Peek.

Great article sir.

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Al Romano

Nice catch! That I did... corrected!

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Manish Kumar

Prettier should be on the list as well

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Al Romano

Hey Manish,

While I am also a big fan of Prettier, I can't personally recommend is as I had many headaches using it with some static site generators that use HTML markup inside .js/.ejs files. Beautfy has .ejs file support and can format HTML markup inside .js-based templating files.

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Michael De Abreu

Al have you tried the latest version of Prettier?

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vip3rousmango profile image
Al Romano

No, but after seeing your comment I checked the changelog and it appears they have support for HTML template literals!

I'll give it another look if I can get my proper formatting inside .ejs files!

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Jang Rush • Edited

Possible typos:

to collapse and open all you're freaking elements

your

One of my favourite Bracket features

Brackets

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Al Romano

Corrected! Thanks.

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YuanHao Chiang

For some reason I've been living under a rock and never heard about Better Comments. Awesome extension. Thanks for the tip! 🍺

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Tyler V. (he/him)

Thanks for the write up! Polacode looks super sweet! :D

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Al Romano

No problem! Glad you enjoyed. Yeah, Polacode is great when I need to whip up some documentation and I like to provide code examples right from the project itself! Makes it super easy to do.

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Chris Bertrand

Nice list, will check out some I haven't heard of!

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Gabe

Awesome list, thank you for it

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Al Romano

You're welcome!

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Pravin kumar

WakaTime do better things in analytics

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Al Romano

Hey Pravin, I have a premium membership to WakaTime, it's a great plugin but I'm not sure what everyone's data policies are even with WakaTime's privacy and obfustication so I didn't recommend it here. It's definatly a worthy one to note!

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demystifying-javascript

Checkout this Javascript Fullstack Developer 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...

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dumdumdev

Love Rainbow Brakets!

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Al Romano

I am a big fan. That used with Guides has helped my eyes and sanity for many years.

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Vicki Langer • Edited

Thanks. Now I know how people are getting the nice looking code snippets.
code snippet an 8-ball thingy

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Luiz Machado

I use some and already recommended a lot of the extensions here, nice post!

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Martin Nepita

Thank you very much for this extension!

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demystifying-javascript

Checkout this Javascript Fullstack Developer 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...

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Olalani Oluwaseun • Edited

Hey, I have installed the polacode-2019 but how can I use it
???

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Al Romano

Hey Olalani,

Typically I use command pallet to run Polacode then once it appears on the right side, I highlight the code I want to include and it will automatically update!

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Olalani Oluwaseun

Thank you boss and have performed it and it really work out.πŸ‘Œ

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Olalani Oluwaseun

Thank you boss

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Alice-sos

Chinese version:nextfe.com/vscode-extensions/

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Al Romano

Cool! That's awesome, thank you.

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Stephen Chiang

All good extensions, haven't tried better comments, thanks!

Polacode is awesome... Not enough opportunities to use it haha.