Built to Last: VS Code Extensions That Endured Years of Development
These aren't your typical top 10 VS Code extensions or the most unique ones. They are simply collections of useful tools that became staples for my development across software engineering and AI throughout a half-decade.
Having installed and tried hundreds and hundreds throughout years of ever-changing projects and requirements, here's what has survived and proven its worth.
Since we develop in different environments, I only list extensions for non-specific programming languages. Some you may find unneeded, but hopefully, some will add to your arsenal.
Quality of Life
- Code Spell Checker - Spelling checker for source code
- Camel Case Navigation - Provides Camel Case cursor navigation for the Visual Studio Code editor.
- Error Lens - Improve highlighting of errors, warnings and other language diagnostics.
- CodeSnap - 📷 Take beautiful screenshots of your code
- Mardown All in One - All you need for Markdown (keyboard shortcuts, table of contents, auto preview and more).
- vscode-pdf - Display pdf file in VSCode.
- Open Folder Context Menus for VS Code - Quickly open a new instance of VS Code from the Explorer
Productivity
- Wakatime - Metrics, insights, and time tracking automatically generated from your programming activity
Functionality
- Code Runner - Run code snippet or code file for multiple languages: C, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and a lot more
- GitLens - Supercharge Git and unlock untapped knowledge within your repo
- multi-command - Invoke multiple commands as one command.
- Run Terminal Command - Run predefined terminal commands from Explorer context menu or Command Palette.
- Easy Zoom - Enable editor zoom by use of ctrl + mousewheel
Development
- GitHub Codespace - Your instant dev environment
- Remote - SSH - Open any folder on a remote machine using SSH and take advantage of VS Code's full feature set.
- Live Preview - Hosts a local server in your workspace for you to preview your webpages on.
- DotENV - Support for dotenv file syntax
Copilot Stack
- GitHub Copilot - Your AI pair programmer
- GitHub Copilot Chat - AI chat features powered by Copilot
- Vision for Copilot - A chat extension providing vision capabilities in VS Code, with a focus on accessibility
- Web Search for Copilot - Gives access to search engines from within Copilot
Niche Use Cases
- Auto Rename Tag - Auto rename paired HTML/XML tag
- Import Cost - Display import/require package size in the editor
- XML - XML Language Support by Red Hat
- YAML - YAML Language Support by Red Hat, with built-in Kubernetes syntax support
- CSV to Table - Convert a CSV/TSV/PSV file to an ASCII formatted table
- Rainbow CSV - Highlight CSV and TSV files, Run SQL-like queries
Theme
This is extremely subjective. I love JetBrains' Theme, although I use VS Code. No matter the language or framework, it just seems right.
- Darcula IntelliJ Theme - A Darcula Theme inspired by IntelliJ
- JetBrains Icon Theme - JetBrains Icon Theme for VSCode
Major Tip
I wholly recommend keeping your extension footprint as minimal as possible. These take a toll on your machine and loading times, not just on bootup but while making changes.
Divide your environment into profiles (LIFE CHANGING) where you switch settings and other configurations while maintaining extensions only specific to the one you're working at (different languages, frameworks, etc.). This will keep you organized and safely dispose of uneeded extensions for your current use case to restore when needed.
Acknowledgement
In the end, our use cases are different. Moreover, these extensions will change over time - some will be added and removed. These are just based on my experience as a developer throughout the years. Have fun trying them out!