What is Visual Studio Code?

As a fully-featured integrated development environment (IDE), Visual Studio makes it easier for developers to build websites, web applications, mobile apps, and web services by providing a variety of tools and services. Visual Studio 2017 comes with several new and improved tools to enable developers to build, test, and deploy custom software applications by targeting varied devices and platforms. Microsoft further simplifies custom software development by providing a robust source code editor like Visual Studio Code.

Despite being available as open source and free software, Visual Studio Code outperforms other code editors in terms of loading speed, performance, and customizability. Microsoft has developers Visual Studio Code by integrating a robust source code editor with several useful development tools. The developers can run the popular source code editor on three major platforms — Windows, Linux and macOS. Also, they can take advantage of the tools and services provided by Visual Studio Code (VS Code) to build custom software applications with high quality code base.

Understanding Important Aspects of Visual Studio Code

Technology Support

VS Code supports a number of commonly used technologies natively — HTML, CSS, JavaScript and TypeScript. The developers can even use specific extensions to add widely used programming languages — PHP, Python, Go, C# and Ruby — to the source code editor. They can even use the integrated extension manager provided by VS Code to find and add specific programming languages, while availing snippets, code completion, debugger, and linter for the programming language. However, the features provided by VS Code may differ from one programming language to another.

Basic Code Editing

As noted earlier, Microsoft has designed VS Code as a customizable source code editor. It makes it easier for programmers to make changes to the code and navigate the code base by providing a number of code editing features — keyboard shortcuts, multiple cursor support, multiple cursor modifier, shrink/expand selection, column selection, save/auto save, hot exit, search across files, and advanced search options. These options make programmers productive and help them to write high quality code.

IntelliSense

VS Code comes with a feature called IntelliSense which includes a number of code editing features — code completion, quick information, parameter information and member lists. The developers can avail IntelliSense natively for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, and Less. But they need to install specific extensions to use IntelliSense while writing code in other programming languages. In addition to providing options like autocomplete and syntax highlighting, IntelliSense further provides smart completion based in variable types and imported modules.

Debugging

Like other robust integrated development environments, VS Code also comes with built-in debugging tools. The debugger makes it easier for programmers to edit, compile, and debug loops without using additional tools. However, the built-in debugger supports NodeJS runtime natively. It even has the capability to debug the code that can be transpiled to JavaScript. The developers have to use specific extensions to debug code written in other programming languages. They still have option to choose from debuggers for several widely used programming languages.

Version Control

VC Code is designed with built-in source control and native Git support. In addition to managing different versions of code and files through Git, the developers also have option to integrate VS Code with a number of source code providers — Visual Studio Tem Service, Hg and Git History — through specific extensions. VS Code handles multiple source control providers at a time and keeps the source control UI and workflow identical across various source control providers.

Task Automation

VS Code enables programmer to automate common software development tasks like building, packaging, linting, testing, and deployment through widely used tools. For instance, the users can automate linting process by integrating the source code editor with widely used open source linting utilities like ESLint and TSLint. Likewise, they can automate the process of creating executable applications from the source code by using widely used build tools like Gulp, Apache Ant, MSBuild, Make, Jake and Rake.

Integrated Terminal

The built-in terminal provided by VS Code makes it easier for developers to perform command line tasks without switching windows. The developers even have option to open multiple terminals at various locations and navigate between the terminals seamlessly. VS Code even allows users to customize various aspects of the terminal — font size, font weight and line height — simply by changing the default settings. Also, the users can navigate within the integrated terminal quickly through keyboard shortcuts.

Code Snippet Creation

As small blocks of reusable code, code snippets help programmers to write code quickly and efficiently. VS Code allows developers to create code snippets without putting extra time and effort. The developers can use code snippets as template to write repetitive code like conditional-statements and loops. IntelliSense further displays the code snippets along with other suggestions. The latest version of VS Code even allows programmers to create global code snippets that can be used across files.

Extensions

Microsoft has developed VS Code as an extensible and customizable source code editor. The dot net developers can easily add languages, tools, and debugger to the open source tool through specific extensions. They can further browse and install the required extensions directly within VS Code. At the same time, the developers can further take advantage of the tools provided by VS Code to create custom extensions according to their precise needs.

Telemetry Reporting

Microsoft aims to improve Visual Studio Code based on real-time usage data. VS Code sends usage data to Microsoft through telemetry reporting. Many developers consider telemetry reporting as a major shortcoming of the open source tool. However, they still have option to disable telemetry reporting in the settings. Hence, developers can take advantage of the robust source code editor without sending usage data to Microsoft.

At present, a large percentage of software developers prefer Visual Studio Code to mature source code editors like Atom and Sublime Text. Also, Microsoft has been updating the source code editor regularly. Each new version of Visual Studio Code comes with several new and updated tools and services. In January, Microsoft released Visual Studio Code 1.20 with a number of updates — perform actions simultaneously on multiple files, find the right setting easily, navigate errors in the code quickly, and create global snippets that can be used across multiple files.