My Visual Studio Code Setup

This article is also available on iamdeveloper.com.

This originally was just a gist, but I thought it made sense to just convert it to a blog post.

As the stateofjs.com survey this year noted, Visual Studio Code is quickly becoming the editor of choice for many web developers.

VS Code is my editor of choice. It's great for web dev, and if you're developing with TypeScript, it's definitely the way to go. Fun fact... it's written in TypeScript. If you're interested in learning more about TypeScript, check out my blog post Consider Using TypeScript.

TypeScript is what gives VS Code its refactoring and intellisense capabilities. Here's the really cool part. You get typed intellisense even if you're not using TypeScript via Automatic Type Acquisition.

Alright, let's get to it. Here's my current Visual Studio Code setup.

Extensions

VS Code has a huge array of extensions available on their marketplace. As well as extensions, in 2017, extension packs became available. tl;dr, they're a grouping of extensions.

Settings Sync is a must have extension and I recommend installing it as your first extension. With this extension, you'll be able to backup most of your settings to a private gist. From there, restoring your settings is pretty easy. It's great for backing up settings as well as synching settings, which is what I do between my work and personal laptop.

Node/JS

• Node extension pack (must have)
• Import Cost

Formatting/Linting

• Prettier - Code formatter
• EditorConfig
• TSLint
• Prettify JSON
• markdownlint
• ESLint

CSS

• IntelliSense for CSS class names
• Color Highlight
• Color Picker
• HTML CSS Support
• Color Highlight

Debugging

Language extensions like Go and Python (see below) when installed get all the proper tooling set up to debug for those specific languages. Here's some others. The easiest way to get started with debugging is to press F5 and VS Code will offer you debugging configurations to get set up with.

• Debugger for Chrome

Git

• Git extension pack (must have)
• Git Blame
• gitflow
• Open in GitHub / Bitbucket / Gitlab / VisualStudio.com !

Unit Testing

• JavaScript Unit Test snippets
• Jest

React

• React Redux ES6 Snippets
• Reactjs code snippets
• vscode-styled-components

Other Languages

• Go
• Python

REPLs/Playgrounds

• Quokka.js (check out Introducing Quokka...)

Viewers

• Image Preview
• SVG Viewer
• View in Browser
• Update 2018/02/16: Polacode, not a viewer per se, but a great way to take beautiful images of code snippets.

DevOpsy Stuff

• Jenkinsfile Support
• Docker

Hack the Editor

• Guides
• Custom CSS and JS Loader (currently used for the Cobalt 2 theme.)

Update 2018/01/28: The Custom CSS and JS Loader can also be used to get a kind of Operator Mono look by using two fonts. See the tweet below. I did run in to some issues though. The main one was that the CSS class names had changed. Just read the whole tweet thread for all the info.

TLDR; check out https://gist.github.com/nickytonline/8086319bf5836797ee3dea802a77000d. (maybe another gist to blog post? 😉). And the end result is this. Not sure if I like the cursive in code yet, but maybe it'll grow on me.

Miscellaneous

• Project Manager
• Bookmarks
• Gatsby Snippets
• XML Tools

Themes

• Cobalt 2
• Dracula theme
• One Dark Pro
• Material theme

Current Theme Setup

I'm currently taking the Cobalt 2 theme for a spin with the Fish Shell Fisherman Agnoster theme.

I still love using the Dracula theme with the Fish Shell Fisherman Joker theme, but thought I'd switch it up for a bit.

I've also used One Dark Pro, and Material theme which are great as well.

Shell

I use Fish Shell and Fisherman with the Agnoster theme right now.

Font

I use Fira Code in VS Code. Once you've installed Fira Code, the setup in Code is quite easy.

Open your user settings and add the following:

  // Controls the font family.
  "editor.fontFamily": "Fira Code",
  "editor.fontLigatures": true,
  // Controls the font size.
  "editor.fontSize": 14,

Boom! Bob's your uncle and you now have Fira Code in all it's awesome ligatureness (is that a word?).

Custom Key Bindings

// Place your key bindings in this file to overwrite the defaults
[
  {
    "key": "cmd+shift+z",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.focus"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+shift+a",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusNext"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+shift+s",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.focusPrevious"
  },
  {
    "key": "cmd+shift+x",
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.kill"
  }
]

Also, if you're looking for great tips and tricks on Visual Studio code, check out www.vscodetips.com. One last thing that I'm really looking forward to is the availabilty of Live Share.

Questions or comments? Hit me up on Twitter.

Comments

[Christian Vasquez]

Fira Code is <3

[Aly Sivji]

Made the switch the Fira code (+font size 13) yesterday. Loving the ligatures.

Cheers!

[Adam Braun]

Try changing line height instead.
It improved readability so drastically, I can't understand how I coded before.

[Nick Taylor]

Great to hear Aly! I really love the ligatures too.

[Leah]

What are you using the Custom CSS and JS Loader for?

[Saurabh Sharma]

It is use in cobalt 2 for 3 things

• getting a thick cursor.
• using Operator Mono in sidebar too.
• getting the yellow dot in tab when file is unsaved.

[Nick Taylor]

Leah, it's for Wes Bos' Cobalt 2 theme. See the instructions in marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...

[Franti Saúl Huamán Mera]

Hi. How you get this terminal with path?. Thanks

[Nick Taylor]

I'm not sure I understand your question. Do you mean how did I set up fish shell?

[Franti Saúl Huamán Mera]

I see in your terminal branch name with colors. How I get that?. Thanks

[Nick Taylor]

Gotcha. Install fish shell and Fisherman as mentioned in the article and then add the Agnoster or Joker Theme.

[Camilo Martinez]

Or can use zshell wit iTerm2

iTerm2 + Oh My Zsh! + Powerlevel9K best terminal combination for Geeks!

Camilo Martinez ・ Sep 25 '18 ・ 4 min read

#productivity #terminal #macos #zsh

[Leandro Ardissone]

I love the comments syntax color in your latests screenshots, with a black background, it's the Dracula theme?

[Nick Taylor]

Yes it is the Dracula theme.

[Leandro Ardissone]

Thanks!

[Manuel Torrez]

I'm interested in Visual Studio Code, but do you think it's a good replacement for any IntelliJ-like program? I mean, I know they're different because of the editor and IDE factor, but I'm just curious

[Almenon]

VSCode is great for typescript. It's super light and nice to use. For python pycharm is still better but vscode is still useable. The python extension is being actively developed so hopefully it will improve.

[Nick Taylor]

Came across another great extension today, Code Runner, care of Ryan Burgess giving it a shout out on the Senior Engineer - Master Brewer episode of Front End Happy Hour

[Sathish]

The ligratures are not working for Fira Code for me.

[Nick Taylor]

Is the Fira Font installed? If so can, you provide a gist for your vscode settings.json (minus any sensitive info 😉).

[Sathish]

I only mentioned it im my settings.json and never installed one. I'm new to VS Code btw. Started using from yesterday after I broke up with Atom.

[Sathish]

Resolved it. I forgot to install the font. My mistake.

[Nick Taylor]

Cool. Glad you got it working.

[Sathish]

Imgur

[lukie]

I would add: if you are a die-hard Vim user such as myself, the Vim extension is top of the list: github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim ;)

[Nick Taylor]

Yeah the keybindings from other editors they provide is a great way to transition from your old editor, code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstar....

[Brian Mituka]

Which are the best extensions for VueJs?

[Nick Taylor]

I don't use Vue.js at the moment, but I know Sarah Drasner's Vue VSCode Snippets are supposed to be solid.

[Camilo Martinez]

There is an official VSCode extension named Vetur