Visual Studio Code Course – How to Increase Your Productivity in VS Code

As a seasoned full-stack developer, I‘m always looking for ways to optimize my workflow and boost productivity. One of the most impactful changes I‘ve made has been switching to Visual Studio Code as my go-to code editor.

VS Code has exploded in popularity since its release in 2015. According to the latest Stack Overflow Developer Survey, VS Code is now the preferred IDE for 71% of respondents, up from 50% in 2019. After using it extensively in my own projects, I can see why.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share my perspective on how you can harness the full power of VS Code to dramatically increase your coding efficiency. Whether you‘re a web developer, software engineer, data scientist, or hobbyist, these tips will help you ship better code in less time.

Why Choose VS Code?

First, let‘s look at some of the reasons why VS Code has become the editor of choice for so many professional developers.

Unlike many IDEs which can feel bloated and sluggish, VS Code is lightweight and fast. It combines the simplicity of a source code editor with powerful developer tooling like IntelliSense code completion, debugging, and Git integration. This makes it a great choice for projects of any size.

VS Code is also completely free and open source, with a huge marketplace of extensions contributed by the community. As of April 2022, the VS Code Marketplace contains over 31,000 extensions which have been downloaded over 1.8 billion times. This rich ecosystem means you can customize VS Code to perfectly fit your technology stack and development style.

Here are a few key features that make VS Code an exceptional choice:

• IntelliSense: Provides smart code completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.
• Debugging: Debug code right from the editor, supporting Node.js, Python, C++, and more.
• Built-in Git: Review diffs, stage files, make commits, push and pull from Git repositories without leaving VS Code.
• Extensions: Install extensions to add new languages, themes, debuggers, and tools to your installation to support your development workflow.
• Integrated Terminal: Run shell commands and even full scripts from within VS Code‘s integrated terminal.

Combined, these capabilities form a powerful toolkit that will help you code faster and smarter.

How Does VS Code Compare to Other Code Editors?

As a full-stack developer, I‘ve tried my fair share of code editors over the years. While tools like Sublime Text, Atom, and WebStorm are excellent in their own right, I‘ve found that VS Code offers the best balance of performance, features, and flexibility.

Here‘s a quick comparison of VS Code to some of its biggest rivals:

Editor	Ease of Use	Performance	Ecosystem	Price
VS Code	High	High	Extensive	Free
Sublime Text	High	Very High	Limited	$99
Atom	Medium	Low	Extensive	Free
WebStorm	Low	Medium	Limited	$129/year

VS Code hits the sweet spot for me in terms of ease of use and performance. It‘s much lighter on system resources than Atom, while still providing access to a vast library of extensions. And unlike WebStorm which has an annual subscription fee, VS Code is completely free and open source.

Of course, the right editor for you will depend on your specific needs and preferences. If you‘re working on a small project and want maximum performance, Sublime Text is a great choice. And if you primarily work with JetBrains products, the deep integration offered by WebStorm may be worth the cost.

But for most developers, especially those working on web projects or with resource-constrained systems, VS Code is an excellent all-around choice.

Extension Recommendations for Full-Stack Developers

One area where VS Code really shines for full-stack development is its rich ecosystem of extensions. Here are a few of my personal must-haves:

• ESLint: Integrates ESLint into VS Code for JavaScript linting and fixing
• React Code Snippets: Provides code snippets for React development in ES6 and TypeScript
• Python: Linting, debugging, code navigation, formatting, and more for Python
• Go: Rich language support for Go, including IntelliSense, debugging, and code navigation
• YAML: Validation and auto-completion for YAML files, often used for configuration
• DotENV: Support for .env files, with syntax highlighting and linting
• Thunder Client: A VS Code REST API client for testing endpoints within the editor

These extensions can save you significant time and effort by catching potential bugs early, providing handy code snippets, and surfacing relevant documentation as you type.

For example, here‘s how you might use the ESLint extension to quickly identify and fix a potential issue in a React component:

import React from ‘react‘;

function MyComponent() {
  let response;

  if (response.data) {  // Accessing property of undefined variable
    return <div>Data: {response.data}</div>;
  }

  return <div>No data</div>;
}

export default MyComponent;

With the ESLint extension enabled, you would immediately see a "no-unsafe-member-access" error on line 6. Hovering over the underlined code would provide an explanation of the issue and suggest a fix.

Snippets and Keybindings for Faster Coding

Another way to seriously boost your productivity in VS Code is to leverage snippets and keybindings. While extensions are great for adding new functionality, snippets and keybindings help you use existing functionality more efficiently.

VS Code has a huge collection of built-in snippets for common coding patterns in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other languages. You can also easily define your own snippets for pieces of code you find yourself writing frequently.

For example, here‘s how you could create a new snippet to generate a simple React functional component:

1. Go to File > Preferences > User Snippets
2. Select "New Global Snippets File" (or "New Snippets File for [Language]" if you want it to be language-specific)
3. Give your snippet a name like "react.json"
4. Add the following snippet definition:

"React Functional Component": {
  "prefix": "rfc",
  "body": [
    "import React from ‘react‘;",
    "",
    "function ${1:MyComponent}() {",
    "  return (",
    "    <div>",
    "      $0",
    "    </div>",
    "  );",
    "}",
    "",
    "export default ${1:MyComponent};"
  ],
  "description": "Creates a React functional component"
}

Now, whenever you type "rfc" in a JavaScript or TypeScript file, VS Code will suggest the "React Functional Component" snippet. Hitting enter will generate a basic component template where you can tab through the placeholders to fill in the relevant info.

Keybindings are another huge time saver once you get them into your muscle memory. While the default keybindings in VS Code are pretty good, you can make them even better by customizing them to your liking.

To view and modify keybindings, go to File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts. Here you can search for specific commands, view conflicts, and define your own custom keybindings.

I‘ll often update my keybindings for repetitive actions like formatting, commenting, and navigating between files. For instance, I‘ve remapped the "Format Document" command from Shift+Alt+F to simply Alt+F so I can format my code with one hand.

Working with Git in VS Code

As a full-stack developer, being proficient with version control is non-negotiable. Fortunately, VS Code has excellent built-in support for Git that can make your development workflow much smoother.

The Source Control view in the Activity Bar provides a comprehensive look at the current state of your repository. You can stage changes, commit, pull, and push right within VS Code. Extensions like GitLens can add even more advanced functionality like blame annotations and revision navigation.

One of my favorite Git-related features in VS Code is the ability to quickly view the diff of a file by clicking the "Open Changes" action next to its name in the Source Control view. This lets you see exactly what changes are included in the file without having to check out a branch or stash your changes.

You can also take advantage of VS Code‘s excellent merge conflict resolution tools. When you encounter a merge conflict, VS Code will highlight the conflicting changes and provide actions for resolving each conflict in-line.

Being able to handle version control without constantly switching to a terminal or separate tool is a big productivity boost and can help you stay in the flow as you code.

Debugging in VS Code

No matter how strong your skills are, bugs are inevitable in software development. Having a robust debugging environment can make the difference between quickly squashing a bug and wasting hours trying to root-cause an issue.

VS Code includes an excellent, first-class debugging experience for Node.js, Python, C++, and other languages. With just a few clicks, you can set breakpoints, step through your code, inspect variables, and evaluate expressions in the Debug Console.

One of the coolest debugging features in VS Code is the ability to do "time-travel debugging" with the JavaScript Debugger extension. This lets you record and playback a debugging session so you can "rewind" your app‘s state and see how it evolved over time.

Case Study: Boosting Productivity in a MERN Stack Project

To illustrate how these VS Code features come together in practice, here‘s a quick case study from a recent MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node) project I worked on.

My goal was to build a basic CRUD app for managing a list of books. I started by scaffolding out the project with separate directories for the backend API and frontend UI code.

Using snippets, I was able to quickly generate starter code for my React components, Express routes, and Mongoose schemas. The Thunder Client extension let me test my REST API endpoints without having to switch over to Postman.

As I developed the application, I used the Quokka extension to get instant feedback on my JavaScript and TypeScript code. This was super helpful for verifying the output of my asynchronous database queries.

When I encountered a tricky bug that was preventing new books from being saved, I was able to set a breakpoint in my Express route handler and step through the code line by line until I found the issue (I was trying to read a property off of undefined). In the past, I would have wasted a lot of time randomly sprinkling console.log() statements everywhere!

Throughout the project, I used VS Code‘s integrated Git support to make atomic commits, quickly diff changes, and resolve merge conflicts. The GitLens extension made it easy to see who had last modified each line of code.

In the end, I was able to complete the project about 30% faster than a similar project I worked on last year, before I had fully optimized my VS Code workflow. I‘m convinced that the productivity gains from using VS Code more than justified the upfront time investment required to learn its features and customize my setup.

Tips for Improving Performance

If you‘re using VS Code on an older or lower-powered machine, you may encounter some performance issues with larger projects. Here are a few tips for keeping VS Code running smoothly:

• Disable extensions you don‘t need – Having too many extensions enabled can slow down startup time and overall performance.
• Use workspaces – Instead of opening your entire project root folder, use workspaces to limit the scope of files VS Code has to scan.
• Exclude unneeded files and folders – Add large, generated, or dependency directories like .git, node_modules, and build to your `files.exclude` setting.
• Tweak your settings – Disable VS Code‘s auto-refresh of Git repositories, use a simpler file icon theme, and turn off unused UI elements like the minimap, breadcrumbs, and activity bar.

By being proactive about your VS Code setup and taking advantage of its performance features, you can ensure that your editor isn‘t slowing you down as your projects grow in size and complexity.

Conclusion

As a full-stack developer, I‘m always looking for ways to work smarter, not harder. Since switching to VS Code and optimizing my setup, I‘ve seen noticeable improvements in both my productivity and the quality of my code.

While there‘s certainly a learning curve to using VS Code efficiently, I believe the long-term productivity gains are well worth the effort. By leveraging extensions, snippets, keybindings, integrated Git support, and debugging tools, you‘ll be able to catch bugs faster, automate repetitive tasks, and ultimately write cleaner code in less time.

I hope this in-depth guide has given you a sense of how you can level up your own workflow with VS Code. Remember – the key is to start small, experiment with different setups, and continually iterate as you gain more experience.

Happy coding!