Visual Studio Code Can Do That?
Why is Visual Studio Code (VS Code) so popular, and do we really need another text editor?
By Burke Holland
About two years ago, I begrudgingly opened Visual Studio Code (VS Code) for the first time. The only reason I even did so is that I was working on a TypeScript project (also quite begrudgingly) and I was tired of fighting with the editor and the compiler and all of the settings that I needed to make a TypeScript project work. Someone mentioned to me that TypeScript “just works” in VS Code and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were right.
I expected that though. VS Code is from Microsoft, so it’s entirely expected that TypeScript would just work. What I did not expect was that virtually anything that I needed to do in VS Code “just worked” too. And I do mean anything. While this article focuses primarily on features for the web as well as JavaScript developers, VS Code has integrations with Go, Python, Java, and Ruby — just to name a few.
Over the next few months, I began to discover things in VS Code that I found remarkable. I made the official switch to VS Code, and I haven’t looked back since. Over the months I’ve been compiling a list of my favorite tips, tricks, and extensions for VS Code that might leave you with the same reaction that I had and continue to have: “VS Code can do that?!” 😲
