Best Extensions In VS Code Extensions For Web Development
Most software engineers and developers like to focus on coding and wish for the repetitive and tedious tasks to be left to the IDE. A Critical feature that most software engineers and developers tend to overlook is the ability of modern IDEs to reduce the Context Switch for the developer by giving them tools that can perform the day-to-day jobs. Context Switching tends to make the programming expensive. Context switching in the brain of the developer is even more costly than the context switching that happens in a program.
Visual Code, released by Microsoft in 2015 has been deemed the best IDE, especially for the purpose of web development. The IDE quickly grew famous among developers upon its release. A critical feature that VS Code has is that even though it has a lot of functionalities, it does not take up substantial space or CPU footprint. Similar to other IDEs, VS Code also offers numerous extensions so that developers working with this IDE can make use of additional features. VS Code also ranks first among all GitHub projects in terms of the number of developers who have contributed to it. The extensions offered in VS Code can do almost anything. Listed below are the top 20 VS Code extensions that you must have and use as a web developer in 2022. The extensions mentioned in this article are especially focused on reducing context switching.
1. REST Client
If you wish to develop applications, you will most likely be working with GraphQL or REST. This is a simple but useful extension. It works by making it easier to make REST requests or work with GraphQL queries. It also provides support by sending cURL commands. This helps the developer focus their attention on the usage of VS Code and reduces switching to other available tools.
2. JavaScript (ES6) Code Snippets
Many developers have faced a problem where they would have to type the same piece of code snippet over and over. VS Code is preferred for this reason as it comes with a solution to this problem. This extension helps by reducing the time a developer spends on rewriting the same code snippet, instead, they can use that time to focus on working on the code. The code snippets offered by this extension are for the ES6 syntax.
3. ESLint
This extension works as a static analyzer of code. It helps by doing an analysis of the code quickly and finding the issues in the code. The rules in this extension can be configured as well as customized. Custom rules can be defined and later loaded. ESLint also works on the quality of the code and the style issues in codes. The bonus this extension gives is that it can also work on fixing the problems. The extension is designed beautifully and integrates well with VS Code.
4. Bracket Pair Colorizer
It is difficult to handle the brackets while coding. This becomes especially difficult when working with JavaScript that has many callbacks nested. In these situations, the management of brackets becomes a difficult task to keep up with. This extension has been designed to fix this issue for developers. It helps immensely in the management of brackets and also colours them to recognize matching brackets. The extension can be found in the Visual Studio Marketplace and works by matching the brackets and colouring them for easy bracket management. The developer has eased in identifying the brackets that need to be matched.
5. Auto Close Tag
This extension is especially helpful for writing HTML code. Once the programmer opens an HTML tag, this extension will take over and work by writing a closing tag automatically. Available in Visual Studio Marketplace, this extension works by adding the HTML or XML closing tag. It works similar to the VS Code IDE or Sublime Text.
6. Auto Rename Tag
This is a very useful extension and will prove very helpful to web developers. Many developers have faced this problem that you rename one tag and may forget to rename the closing tag. This extension does this work automatically. When the developer renames the opening or the closing tag, the other tag is renamed automatically. The extension is easily available in the Visual Studio Marketplace and works by renaming the HTML/XML tag pairs when one in the open-close tag pair is renamed.
7. Code Spell Checker
This extension is built to offer convenience, making coding convenient for both English speaking developers as well as non-English speaking developers. It can be a cause of some embarrassment when a colleague points out that a mistake is occurring in your code because of a spelling mistake. This extension works by giving a warning when a spelling mistake occurs in your code.
8. vscode-icons
A single web project will have multiple types of files such as CSS, HTML, LSON, JavaScript and so on. This extension lets you choose a beautiful icon for different files in your project on the basis of the extension. The extension now has 5.3 million downloads making it among the top downloaded extensions on VS Code. The extension is available in the Visual Studio Marketplace and helps you bring in icons to your code in Visual Studio.
9. Paste JSON as Code
The use of APIs is generally involved in a web development project. A JSON data structure is often needed and then the development of a class from that JSON is required regardless of whether the developer is working on a server or client-side development. With the help of this extension, a developer will be able to generate Javascript or Typescript classes easily from a JSON data structure. This way the developer is spared the tedious task of generating code from JSON data structure. The code generation offered by this extension is in Typescript, JavaScript and many other programming languages that are popular. The extension can be downloaded from the visual studio marketplace and generates serialization and types code interactively from Typescript, JSON, etc.
10. Docker
This extension works as a disruptive containerisation tech. It has revolutionized how software deployment and software delivery takes place. Many web developers find themselves having to deliver their code in a Docker Container. A useful feature of this extension is that dockerized versions of almost all software can be used without the need for direct installation. This means that a developer can make use of it as well as keep your working machine clean. A CLI is made available by the extension that is capable of performing operations such as installation of a container, delivery of software in containers and many other functions. Another alternative is that this extension can be used for an overview of the docker landscape. It can be used to perform Docker operations through a user interface. Available in the Visual Studio Marketplace, this extension makes it easy for the developer to build, deploy and manage applications in a containerized form from VS Code.
11. Project Manager
A developer can often find himself/herself working on multiple projects at the same time. Instead of having to open different projects from the same folder, this extension helps in managing multiple projects better. It does so by adding a sidebar for projects, enabling you to detect projects from Git or folder. You can also switch between different projects with the help of this extension easily. Remote working is also made easy as an option for remote projects is also available. The extension will add a new sidebar for supporting remote development and projects.
12. Visual Studio IntelliCode
Gmail offers auto-completion that is AI-assisted. The same is also available for code. This extension offers development features that are AI-assisted for programming languages such as Java, Typescript, JavaScript, Python.
13. Quokka.js
This extension comes in handy when you wish to test a snippet of code written in JavaScript or Typescript. The extension acts as a slick scratchpad for the code. It is lightweight and also offers zen mode along with the scratchpad functionality in the browser of your liking.
14. Live Server
A tedious task often encountered in web development is making changes to the code then refreshing the browser every time in order to see the changes. This extension is helpful as it will automatically refresh your browser when there is a change in the code. This way you can have fun with the code and be more productive.
15. GitLens
Git has become the number one VCS system over the years. Whether you work on a private project or as a developer in a company, the use of Git will be required. A large number of commands are available on git to get tasks done, and many developers prefer having a user interface for git. Taking that UI to the next level, this extension provided a full view of your workflow in Gut. It also contains all the functionalities of Git. The extension is able to reduce Context Switching you may have to do between VS Code and other User Interface tools or CLI, thus making you more productive while working on your project.
16. Code Runner
While developing a project, a code or a code snippet needs to be run. Many developers have a preference for specific Shells. This extension makes it possible to run your code or code snippet in various kinds of shells in almost all popular programming languages. This extension has been downloaded over 4 million times and is popular among developers and users of VS Code.
17. Prettier
If you are working in a team for a project, it is important that you keep the formatting of your code consistent. The productivity of the entire team can be affected when there is inconsistency in formatting. This extension will help you take care of the format of your code. A consistent style of code is enforced by this extension. The code is parsed and reprinted based on rules that take into account the maximum length of a line, even wrapping the code when it is needed. The extension also supports all files that are used in web development.
18. Path Intellisense
If you have worked as a backend developer, then you know how you work with the file. There is context switching involved when there are file operations and you have to visit the path, copy and paste it into the Visual Studio Code. This extension works by autocompleting the paths of the files. The 3 million downloads it has received show that it is proving to be quite useful to the developers.
19. Color Picker
Many front-end developers have to work with various colours. Hexadecimal codes of colours can be quite difficult to remember. This extension helps you work more efficiently with colours for CSS. It has a graphic user interface that allows the developer to generate the colour code as a notation in CSS as well as change the colour when needed.
20. Live Sass Compiler
Since SASS or SCSS are more modular compared to CSS, they have many advantages. Many front-end developers nowadays prefer to work with SASS/SCSS instead of CSS. But only CSS is understood by browsers. This extension will transpile your SASS/SCSS code to CSS automatically, even offering a live preview of the compiled style.