These are the Top 15 Essential VSCode Extensions to Boost Your Productivity as a Developer
If “software is eating the world”, then the lack of productivity will eat your time, effort, and resources. Productivity is crucial! Especially in this ever-changing software-driven world!
As Steve C McConnell wisely stated, “It’s better to wait for a productive programmer to become available than it is to wait for the first available programmer to become productive.” This sentiment underscores the importance of efficiency in the software engineering role.
As projects become more complex and the need for efficient, high-quality code increases, developers look for tools to simplify their workflow. In response to this need, Visual Studio Code (VSCode) has emerged as a crucial solution, becoming an indispensable part of any developer’s toolkit.
Microsoft’s VSCode is a popular free and open-source editor. Because of its adaptability, robustness, and rich ecosystem of extensions, it has attracted enormous appeal among developers from all specialties. Language support and debugging tools, as well as linters and beautifiers, are among the extensions that may dramatically enhance productivity by automating repetitive activities, offering intelligent code recommendations, and more. These tools not only make developers more constructive but also ensure that they remain productive, aligning perfectly with McConnell’s insight.
This post explores 15 VSCode extensions every developer should have in their coding environment. They were carefully curated for their usefulness, convenience of use, and, most importantly, capacity to increase your productivity.
1. Lightrun
Lightrun is a powerful observability platform that provides real-time and on-demand capabilities.
With Lightrun VS Code extension, developers can securely add dynamic logs and metrics to running applications without adding source code or redeploying the application. Lightrun allows you to observe and troubleshoot your application code while it’s running locally, in staging or production, right from your IDE, without requiring hotfixes, restarts, or redeployments.
This observability platform is compatible with any environment: It can be used across clouds, on bare-metal servers, inside Kubernetes clusters and serverless functions, and pretty much anywhere else your code can run.
Lightrun Actions offer complete visibility into your application’s running code.
By using Lightrun as well as its VS Code extension, developers’ productivity is remarkably improved. The immediate access to critical information right within their IDE, coupled with the ability to debug and instrument logs and metrics on the fly, means developers can spend less time troubleshooting and more time on value-adding activities such as feature development or system optimization.
2. GitLens
GitLens is a powerful open-source extension for Visual Studio Code that enhances your Git experience. With a deep level of integration, versatility, and ease of use, GitLens helps you and your team understand, write, and review code. It promotes efficient workflow by sitting directly within your editor, reducing context switching. GitLens also goes beyond the basics with rich visualizations and step-by-step guidance to make Git easier and safer for you.
3. GitHub Co-Pilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer that provides autocomplete-style suggestions as you code. You can use it by starting to write your code or by writing a natural language comment that describes what you want the code to do. It uses a special version of GPT-3 trained on public source code to write natural language comments and code.
One important use case is to simplify writing unit tests. Using GitHub Copilot, you can import the unit test package and let it generate the asserts for you with just the Tab key. Research shows that GitHub Copilot helps developers code faster, focus on bigger problems, stay in the flow longer, and feel more fulfilled with their work. In fact, 74% of developers are able to focus on more satisfying work, 88% feel more productive, and 96% are faster with repetitive tasks
4. Tabnine
Tabnine is an AI code assistant that boosts development velocity with real-time code completions in all popular coding languages and IDEs. It uses language-specialized machine learning models trained on open-source code with permissive licenses, which can be run on a developer’s laptop, server, or cloud. With just a hint, Tabnine generates entire functions without ever leaving the editor. It also offers natural language to code completions, making it easier to find the right code for your needs.
5. ChatGPT — Genie AI
ChatGPT — Genie AI is a Visual Studio Code extension that integrates OpenAI’s advanced language models, including GPT-4, GPT-3.5, GPT-3, and Codex, to provide real-time assistance and intelligent suggestions for coding.
This tool streamlines the coding process by providing a diff between your code and the AI’s suggestions, personalized AI assistant features, and real-time, interactive assistance. It can also explain and suggest fixes for compile-time errors and optimize your use of AI resources.
In addition, ChatGPT — Genie AI supports a variety of OpenAI models and allows you to export your conversation history in Markdown format. Overall, it’s a comprehensive tool that helps you write better code, faster.
6. IntelliCode Extension
The Visual Studio IntelliCode extension uses AI to assist Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, and Java developers in Visual Studio Code. It provides insights based on your code context through machine learning.
IntelliCode API Usage Examples is a feature that lets you see real-world examples of how other developers have used a given function. It currently supports Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript (including JSX and TSX files). Examples shown are from public open-source repositories on GitHub.
7. Dependency Analytics
Dependency Analytics uses Snyk Intel Vulnerability DB, an advanced open-source vulnerability database, to provide the latest vulnerabilities from multiple sources. The ‘Dependency Analytics Report’ provides insights about your application dependencies, including:
- Flagging security vulnerabilities (CVE) and suggesting a remedial version
- Showing Github popularity metrics along with the latest version
- Suggesting a project-level license and checking for conflicts between dependency licenses
- AI-based guidance for additional, alternative dependencies
The Dependency Analytics extension currently supports projects using Maven, npm (Node ecosystem), Python, and Golang. Support for other languages is in progress. However, Dependency Analytics does not analyze dev/test dependencies.
8. ChatGPT
Write and improve your code using this extension that uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT API and GPT4 to generate code or natural language responses to your queries. It offers features such as AI-powered assistance, code documentation, code explanation, code refactoring, and bug-finding. The extension integrates AI into your coding process by allowing you to query ChatGPT via an input box in the sidebar or by right-clicking on a code selection. ChatGPT’s responses are displayed in a panel next to the editor and you can insert code snippets from the AI’s response into the active editor by clicking on them, streamlining the process of implementing the AI’s suggestions.
9. Code Runner Extension
Code Runner is a Visual Studio Code extension that can run code files and snippets for a wide range of programming languages. It supports C, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, Lua, Groovy, PowerShell, TypeScript, Swift, Julia, Rust, Kotlin, Dart, Haskell, and more. With Code Runner, you can run code directly from the Text Editor or file explorer, and even execute custom commands. The extension also provides control over code execution, displaying output in the Output Window. Code Runner supports REPL and can enhance your productivity and efficiency.
10. Import Cost Extension
Import Cost is a lightweight Visual Studio Code extension that shows the size of your JavaScript and TypeScript imports in real time. It uses Webpack to calculate and display the size of the imported packages directly in your editor. The extension supports many “import” and “require” methods such as default, entire content, selective, selective with alias, submodule importing, and the use of require. It serves as a quick reference to prevent the inclusion of large packages and supports Webpack’s tree-shaking mechanism. It can be configured to display the minified size, the gzipped size, or both.
11. Docker Extension
The Docker extension for Visual Studio Code streamlines building, managing, and deploying containerized apps. It simplifies the development and debugging process by offering one-click debugging for an app within a container.
The extension supports popular programming languages, including C#, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Java.
The Docker Explorer view lets users easily manage Docker resources, such as containers, images, volumes, networks, and container registries. It also integrates common Docker commands into the Command Palette, including the pruning system, which removes stopped containers, unused networks and volumes, and dangling images.
12. Live Server Extension
Live Server is a powerful Visual Studio Code extension that simplifies your development process by providing a fast development server with an automatic browser reload. You can start or stop the server with one click, and it offers many customization options. You can open an HTML file in the browser directly from the Explorer menu, and exclude files from change detection. It supports hotkeys for quick server management.
Live Server is highly customizable, allowing you to set your preferred port number, server root, and default browser. It supports any browser using advanced command line options and offers Chrome Debugging Attachment for advanced debugging capabilities.
One of the standout features is the ability to remotely connect through WLAN, which allows you to connect with mobile devices for testing and development. It also supports SVG, HTTPS, CORS, and multi-root workspaces. It can handle any file, even dynamic pages, through the Live Server Web Extension. In addition, it offers support for proxy settings, making it an adaptable tool for different development environments.
13. Live Share Extension
Visual Studio Live Share enhances collaborative coding with real-time editing and debugging, regardless of programming languages or application types. With Live Share, developers can join sessions and collaborate productively right away, without cloning repositories or installing SDKs.
This extension also maintains each developer’s editor preferences, including theme and keybindings, while providing their own cursor. This allows for easy transitions between collaborative and independent work, promoting a more natural collaboration experience than traditional pair programming.
14. Polacode Extension
Polacode is a Visual Studio Code extension designed for developers who need to create screenshots of their code. This is helpful for website content, social media sharing, or documentation purposes. Unlike a simple screenshot, Polacode allows you to create professional-looking, aesthetically pleasing images of your code.
The extension is easy to use. After installing Polacode, you can generate an image by highlighting a few lines of code. The resulting image can be resized according to your needs and exported in PNG format. This makes Polacode a practical tool for developers who want to illustrate their work or share code snippets in a visually appealing way.
15. Better Commands Extension
Better Comments is a Visual Studio Code extension designed to improve the readability and organization of comments in your code. It helps developers create more human-friendly comments, making code easier to understand and maintain.
The extension allows you to categorize your annotations into various types, including Alerts, Queries, TODOs, and Highlights. It also provides styling for commented-out code, making it clear that the code should not be active. In addition to these features, you can specify any other comment styles you would like in the settings, offering a high degree of customization.
This tool supports a wide range of programming languages, including but not limited to C, C#, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, Swift, and TypeScript, among many others. This makes it a versatile tool for developers working in mixed coding environments.
Final Thoughts — What’s Next?
VSCode, strengthened by its range of extensions, is an indispensable tool for developers, significantly enhancing their productivity.
The aforementioned extensions can significantly improve your productivity by automating repetitive tasks, providing smart code recommendations, and offering real-time feedback.
