[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What extensions/packs of VS Code are must fo...
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Ask HN: What extensions/packs of VS Code are must for
web/developers to install?
They may increase productivity tremendously They may only be
common among experienced developers They may be used at innovative
startups They may even be used at FAANGs They need not cater to
web developers only They may help amazingly to learn coding They
may useful for a new programmer The criteria is anything that has
helped you from all diverse sectors of the industry.
Author : philonoist
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-11-19 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
| myroon5 wrote:
| If using CloudFormation:
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kddejong...
| johnl1479 wrote:
| Pretty subjective, but I'm a fan of code-folding, so I rely
| heavily on the Auto Fold extension.
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bobmagic...
| dboreham wrote:
| Bookmarks
| zerkten wrote:
| >> They may even be used at FAANGs
|
| Why would this matter?
| ed_balls wrote:
| licensing I presume
| airstrike wrote:
| Also isn't it MAANGs now? Or possibly MAANA, but in that case
| I'd rather rewrite it as MAAAN...
| tester756 wrote:
| MAGMA <3
| mastersip wrote:
| NAGMA (Bollywood edition)
| dilippkumar wrote:
| I second this.
| ant6n wrote:
| Shouldn't Microsoft be included these days as well?
|
| Working for the MMAAAN...
|
| ...you gotta use these fancy VS Code extensions
| gardaani wrote:
| Shouldn't Tesla be included? Largest companies by market
| cap: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Meta =
| TAMAMA
| ant6n wrote:
| But Nvidia and Netflix too, right?
|
| TA MMAANN?
| m00dy wrote:
| Working at FAANGs is not cool anymore. Go and build your thing
| at web3. Stakeholder capitalism is the new cool kid in town.
| jwalton wrote:
| This is the set of VSCode plugins I install:
|
| https://github.com/jwalton/environment/blob/master/vscode-ex...
|
| If you're after some snippets, this is my modest collection:
|
| https://github.com/jwalton/environment/tree/master/vscode/pr...
|
| Mostly I add snippets like `rrrfn` to create a new react function
| component (it starts with `rrr` so it won't show up in
| suggestions unless I explicitly want it), or "jestfile" to
| scaffold out a test case.
| luciomartinez wrote:
| a.k.a. the reason of why I use IntelliJ, everything built in.
| aeze wrote:
| That's not true though. IntelliJ has its own plugin system for
| this reason.
| jackdh wrote:
| Their remote development is still lacking compared to VS Code
| however I've found.
| crdrost wrote:
| Is there a way to script IntelliJ?
|
| I find myself in a job with 30ish coupled microservices,
| because they are coupled flipping between them is not
| unusual... But trying to set up a project that has all of them
| as parallel sub-projects, (a) gives me no way to impose a
| folder hierarchy and (b) it seems like I have to set up Cloud
| Code and each individual subproject separately.
|
| So I am using VS Code for java dev despite its shortcomings (in
| particular in the same setup it does not work well with a
| monorepo hosting those other repos as git submodules, so you
| want to just load up a plain folder with the microservices in
| subfolders, but then the Java plugins do not recognize that you
| have loaded a Java project...) and like it's ok but I did
| prefer the testing of IntelliJ and some other features... But
| is there anyway to take these things that take 5 minutes or
| less to configure on a single microservice/subproject, and
| apply them to everything with 10 minutes of effort, rather than
| hours of doing it by hand?
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Well, database result exporters (into CSV/TSV/whatever) and
| JPA entity generators are built as IDE scripts, so there is
| at least some level of support. I could never find any decent
| documentation though.
|
| Look into
|
| Alt+1 - Scratches and consoles - Extensions
|
| And here's a random "blog post" with some additional
| examples:
|
| https://gist.github.com/gregsh/b7ef2e4ebbc4c4c11ee9
| eitland wrote:
| > Is there a way to script IntelliJ?
|
| There is in NetBeans so I guess there is one for IntelliJ as
| well.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| What kind of work do you do? I use have about a dozen plugins,
| and I hate installing them, so that's only things that are
| absolutely necessary (like prettier).
| andyonthewings wrote:
| VS Code Remote - Containers [1] is a game changer.
|
| https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/containers
| [deleted]
| dzonga wrote:
| probably not running into issues with node modules symlink like
| you would with plain wsl
| arcbyte wrote:
| Yep, although I mostly do Remote WSL these days.
| vanillax wrote:
| Yea when you have tons of python packages to install, VS code
| containers become real nice. I was new to VS code containers
| and had a issue trying to debug python inside of it. I wrote an
| article for anyone who might be having the same issue.
| https://python.plainenglish.io/python-debugging-within-visua...
| danieka wrote:
| I'm considering contains for frontend development (Vue) at
| work. What are the biggest benefits in your experience?
| zamalek wrote:
| 1. Team onboarding is almost zero effort. I spent upwards of
| a week onboarding in the past (install this library, install
| this server, install is broken, try again, etc.). That
| becomes clone, click, and forget with dev-containers.
|
| 2. If you CI you dev-container and publish to a private
| registry, only one computer is spending the time installing
| and setting up dependencies. Everyone else simply bases their
| local image off of that one (and saving productive working
| time).
|
| 3. If you mess up the dev environment with some failed
| experiment, simply recreate the container and carry on.
|
| 4. The dockerfile is a form of documentation: what is needed
| for this thing to run.
|
| 5. If you use Github, you can run your environment in a
| browser if you are in a pinch. I've only done this once, but
| it was hella useful.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| SQLTools and SQLTools PostgreSQL Driver
|
| You can use VSCode to edit your SQL queries, and run them without
| pasting into PGAdmin or whatever.
| bitwidget wrote:
| Peacock is pretty important for me. When I have multiple VSCode
| windows open, the extension lets me have different colors for
| these windows and helps me quickly identify what project is on
| what window.
| hikarudo wrote:
| Awesome, thanks for the suggestion!
| m00dy wrote:
| Github's copilot
| eitland wrote:
| Related: anyone figured out how we are supposed to have install
| an extension in only one workspace instead of installing it once
| and then do "disable in this workspace" in the other 6
| workspaces?
| tester756 wrote:
| Remote SSH
|
| https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh
| emerged wrote:
| That one literally changed my life. It probably doubled my
| productivity without exaggerating and maybe more.
| samrohn777 wrote:
| Tabnine extension. Improves my productivity with auto code
| completion
| cdaringe wrote:
| I write markdown everyday. Tables are slow to format by hand in
| GFM. This extension lets you write your tables nearly at the
| speed of plaintext. Excellent extension
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RomanPes...
| WithinReason wrote:
| Another good Markdown extension (e.g. live preview):
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yzhang.m...
| bobblywobbles wrote:
| (Note) self-promotion
|
| I needed cells in Excel to be translated into a list that SQL
| would like. I copied rows from Excel into VSCode, and would run a
| series of regex commands to format it into a valid SQL list. I
| got tired of running this manually, and turned it into an
| extension.
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=reZach.l...
| yarinr wrote:
| Find myself doing that often too (not specifically from Excel,
| but generally formatting lines to SQL list with regex). Will
| definitely give your extension a try!
| bobblywobbles wrote:
| Thanks for trying it out!
| nikivi wrote:
| Here are ones I use: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/text-
| editors/vs-code/vs-code...
|
| For web dev I like: Error Lens, Version Lens, Tailwind CSS
| IntelliSense & Highlight Matching Tag
| AlbinoDrought wrote:
| Indent rainbow for staying sane while editing YAML files:
| https://open-vsx.org/extension/oderwat/indent-rainbow
| maleldil wrote:
| Have you tried the built-in `"editor.guides.bracketPairs":
| true`? It will colour the indent guides.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| For those not following the release notes
| `"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true` is a new
| option in VSCode (since September's release) after the team
| saw how common extensions like Indent Rainbow and Bracket
| Pair Colorizer 2 were _and_ how many complaints were out
| there about how slow they were, so they decided to add it as
| a built in feature that can reuse the same processes as the
| core indent guides. Also a lot of interesting work went into
| optimizing the algorithms at work:
| https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/09/29/bracket-
| pair-...
|
| An interesting case of the team watching the extensions
| ecosystem for ideas to make the core product better.
| jbirer wrote:
| Tomorrow and Tomorrow night color scheme
|
| "ES7 React/Redux/GraphQL/React-Native snippets"
|
| Vim
| throwaddzuzxd wrote:
| Two lesser known extensions I always install are:
|
| - "Bookmarks", to persistently mark some lines and easily find
| them later (there's even an explorer pane with the bookmarks by
| file). It's must have when navigating a big code base
|
| - "Todo Tree", to list all the TODOs and FIXMEs from the codebase
| in a panel
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| Over the years, gitlens is an extension I've installed everytime
| I installed vscode on a new machine.
|
| Other than that, the kubernetes extension is something that I use
| often enough although others say the Lens IDE is better for this
| purpose.
| bebop wrote:
| +1 for gitlens. I often use jetbrains for development work but
| fire up vs code with gitlens for tricky merge conflicts or a
| deep dive with blame.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| I've found JetBrains IDEs have pretty good Git tooling, and
| can show you history for selection and viewing complex commit
| histories. What do you use in GitLens that you find better
| than IDEA? I'm curious if it is worth making the jump.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Not exactly an extension, but a practice that I'm shocked many
| people don't seem to use is to set up autoformatting on save.
|
| I will hit ctrl+s after every few lines of code or so, allowing
| my "coding wingman" to tidy things up as I go. It releases me
| from caring, in the slightest, about formatting, so I'm focused
| entirely on writing syntactically valid code, and letting the
| formatter worry about the deterministic minutiae that is
| formatting.
|
| The reason I like doing this in real-time rather than some `run
| formatting before committing` workflow is that I benefit
| instantly from tidy code as I'm writing it.
|
| If you are _ever_ thinking about formatting and you spend time
| manipulating proper spacing and layout, semicolons, or other
| language-specific quirks yourself, you may be wasting time that
| could be spent on the non-trivial parts of writing code. Consider
| trying it!
| rolisz wrote:
| I just tried enabling that this week, but I found that I often
| press Ctrl-S out of habit, even when I have syntactically
| invalid code and then the autoformatter messes things up
| royally and I get lost. For now, I just memorized the shortcut
| for autoformatting and I'm running it manually when I feel the
| need to "tidy up" the code.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm curious what language you're working on and what
| formatter it uses? In my experience many formatters will not
| run if the AST is invalid.
| rolisz wrote:
| I'm using Python and PyCharm. It happily underlines the
| invalid syntax and then reformats things more or less
| randomly.
| goodells wrote:
| Mine won't do any auto-formatting when the syntax is invalid,
| so when I hit CMD + S and it _doesn't_ format it's a cue to
| start looking for errors.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The only issue I have with this is that I wish it would
| chirp more loudly when there's a syntax error.
|
| Every so often I don't notice red underline and I begin
| wondering why my autoformatter and autocomplete aren't
| working anymore.
|
| Maybe a red border or something any time a file's syntax is
| invalid.
| Ciantic wrote:
| I agree 100%. So much so, that I think every professional
| language should have it. Every tab, newline and space one has
| to do manually is lost effort.
|
| It still amazes me that C# doesn't have good _opinionated_
| formatter. It has lot of non-opinionated formatters, but I
| found one: Csharpier [1], check it out. It 's slow, but at
| least the author is trying.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/belav/csharpier
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I like to reformat frequently with Alt+Shift+F, but only save
| when my code will actually run, so as not to break the running
| program.
| dsteinman wrote:
| Prettier has a VSCode extension to autoformat on save.
|
| https://prettier.io/docs/en/install.html
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yes, very true. For TypeScript I do use Prettier so yeah,
| there _is_ an extension involved. For others, this is
| basically what it takes (plus making the conscious decision
| to enforce formatting on your repo, which I think you
| should!):
|
| Install the plugin and add this config:
| "[typescript]": { "editor.defaultFormatter":
| "esbenp.prettier-vscode", "editor.formatOnSave": true
| }
| 0x008 wrote:
| What is the benefit of using prettier as opposed to the
| built in typescript formatter?
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| I believe it is something to do with style formatting
| than the syntax formatting. I use VSCodium for HTML/CSS
| and I use Prettier to "style" it in a particular way.
| Some will style it into a long code and other will style
| it in chucks.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Are you using the default built in beautifier in vscode? Does
| it allow you to set your preferred styles?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Python: Black
|
| TypeScript, JavaScript, JSON: Prettier
|
| HTML: Built-in
|
| Rust: rust-analyzer + whatever the formatter is built in to
| Rust's toolchain.
|
| XML: XML Tools
|
| They all operate using the same API, I think, so setting up
| `formatOnSave: true` is all I have to do for most of them.
| nknealk wrote:
| Does this work well for SQL?
| CSSer wrote:
| Are you asking about pure SQL files (with .sql extension) or
| SQL embedded in expressions in other file types? The answer
| is a simple yes for the former with the right
| extension/configuration. Searching for adpyke.vscode-sql-
| formatter should give you a good one. Unfortunately, in the
| latter (and for me, more common) case, I can't find a good
| solution.
| marpstar wrote:
| Excel Viewer[1] and Rainbow CSV[2] are very useful for anyone
| regularly working with CSV files in Code.
|
| [1]:
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GrapeCit...
|
| [2]:
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mechatro...
| aigo wrote:
| The MSFT team themselves have some of the best extensions. The
| remote pack - containers, SSH, docker - is fantastic.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| Could not imagine living without Prettier. It's a code formatter.
| The team agrees on how we want to do formatting, and we check in
| our Prettier preferences, so everyone's code on the team is
| formatted the same automatically.
|
| Helps keep the entire code base formatted consistently.
|
| Prettier - Code formatter
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=esbenp.p...
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I think this is probably the only piece of software that I can
| think of that we pretty much lived our entire lives without,
| then almost immediately after it was launched not a single
| person who knew about it could ever fathom not having it.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| It even changed my personal coding style. Things I chose to
| do before now look ugly to me.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| I stopped caring about any coding style, as long as we
| agreed on a prettier configuration.
|
| Not caring about this saves me so much mental capacity, I
| would recommend it
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I came here to add Prettier as well.
| thex10 wrote:
| If you have the godforsaken Touch Bar, I've found Nasc VSCode
| Touchbar extension helpful. Now I can finally use the Touch Bar
| for various text manipulation shortcuts.
| zwarag wrote:
| 1. Auto Rename Tag (for xml tag renaming)
|
| 2. Conventional Commits
|
| 3. Git Graph
|
| 4. IntelliJ IDEA Keybindings (as someone who uses both it's a
| blessing)
|
| 5. Path Intellisense
|
| 6. Peacock (changes color of vscode instance when it's in the
| background, usefull when multiple are open)
| windock wrote:
| Would you care to share reasons of using both IDEA and VS Code?
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| I had a similar setup at a previous job. Basically, the
| journey went like:
|
| 1. I already used VSCode as my daily driver. 2. Backend team
| all used IDEA for their Java codebase/had some workflows
| designed with it in mind. 3. I familiarized myself with IDEA
| for working on the backend, but used VSCode for the rest of
| the codebase.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Not OP, but I'm doing the same thing. I spend 95% of my time
| in IDEA, though. VSC is for Ansible playbooks (because it has
| a relatively decent extension), and when I need a quick and
| dirty fix in some other projects (so you don't have to wait
| five times as long for IDEA to warm up).
| jb1991 wrote:
| It's pretty common to have two different IDEs open on the
| same project. For example QT developers will often have the
| QT creator as well as VS code open. Developers on Apple's
| platforms almost always keep Xcode open, while they may also
| have another IDE open alongside it that allows them to work
| in the project with greater productivity, but still build and
| profile and do other things that are only available in Xcode.
| kall wrote:
| In theory, I prefer to keep extensions to a minimum to keep UX
| and performance light. In practice I am using 3 different
| extensions and a bunch of custom CSS to make vscode look like
| Xcode. It's all superfluous though.
|
| I think "project specific" stuff is all I actually need and would
| recommend to someone else, including a language appropriate auto
| formatter. For me currently that's Prettier, ESLint and Apollo
| GraphQL.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I'm just curious, why are you going through that effort just to
| make it look like a different IDE? What are you gaining exactly
| from that?
| 0x1062 wrote:
| Presumably they prefer the look of one IDE and the features
| of another?
| kall wrote:
| For no good reason whatsoever.
|
| Because I am the kind of nerd that has on old copy of the
| Apple Human Interface Guidelines on their bookshelf and VS
| Code is leagues above any well designed editor for TS.
| johnx123-up wrote:
| 1. Starter Bundle
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JasonAMa...
|
| 2. And occasionally skimming through
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/search?target=VSCode&ca...
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| github copilot is something I don't think I could do without now
| that I've tried it... just don't use it exclusively, use the code
| suggestions sure, but be sure it does what you want it to do.
| Know your code!
| kevinslin wrote:
| I find that the biggest aspect for development is keeping track
| of information (eg. documentation, tasks, playbooks, etc) Dendron
| (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dendron....)
| is a note taking tool for developers - its open source, built on
| plaintext markdown, and integrated with VSCode. You can use it to
| manage your own personal knowledge base and to document your code
| base.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the creator of Dendron. We recently did a Launch
| HN post where you can find more details on what we're building:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29176158
| merpnderp wrote:
| VIM. I don't know how people program without being able to
| quickly move the cursor around, quickly regex code, or any of the
| million of things VIM does.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| You mean do regex-based searches on the code? I couldn't think
| of a bigger mental overhead than that.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| String manipulation, Random generator (supports strings and
| UUIDs), Remote Containers ( must have for Docker), Rainbow
| brackets, Settings Sync, Markdown Preview, Editorconfig Support,
| Intellij Keybindings?, A lot of themes!
| shmde wrote:
| I find myself use "Live Server" extension alot.
| SippinLean wrote:
| It's no longer maintained, Five Server replaced it
|
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yandeu.f...
| cipher_system wrote:
| Project Manager. For quickly switching between projects.
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(page generated 2021-11-19 23:02 UTC)