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VS Code extensions you may not have heard of before

Geoff Stevens on January 23, 2019

One of the best features of VS Code is its large marketplace of extensions. With nearly 10,000 extensions now available, VS Code can be tweaked and...

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Sergey Kislyakov • Jan 24 '19

I don't see any reasons to install these extensions, thus they are not underrated but useless for me at least. I mean, why would you want to control Spotify or play Snake inside your editor/IDE? CodeStream looks interesting, though.

dallgoot • Jan 24 '19

i add a nuance here, some extensiosn can be of use to certain people (messaching, css colors)
however, i strongly discourage adding functionality that has nothing to do with coding (spotify ? really ?) they serve no real need except avoiding ONE ALT-TAB and moreoever they overload VScode which in itself has some issues with performancs already.
We need to focus on our work not on bells and whistles.

Mihail Malo • Jan 26 '19

vscode-spotify is #productivity, because it prevents you from switching to the Spotify app which is not just a separate window but a big distraction, with its flashy interface and discovery features.

Personally, I just use keyboard media keys. Maybe I should add a binding for liking the current song.

Nans Dumortier • Feb 6 '19

Turbo Console Log inserts console.log snippets quickly into your code. Select a variable you would like to debug, type ctrl + alt + l, and the extension will automatically insert a line to log the variable.
I actually made a custom snippet for that, because I didn't know this kind of extension existed !

Here is the config I have:

 { "key": "cmd+k cmd+l", "command": "editor.action.insertSnippet", "when": "editorTextFocus", "args": { "langId": "javascript", "name": "Print to console" } },

And the snippet itself :

"Print to console": { "prefix": "log", "body": [ "console.log('$1', ${TM_SELECTED_TEXT});", ], "description": "Log output to console" }

Jaga santagostino • Jan 24 '19 • Edited

Window Colors it's a god send when dealing with multiple projects 🙏thanks

lesha 🟨⬛️ • Jan 25 '19 • Edited

Really, Color Highlight is the only extension of these that's at least remotely useful.

Controlling music from my IDE? Dude, that's what media keys are for.

VSCode is built on top of Chromium, it's a miracle that it's fast. No need to slow it down installing 10s of extensions.

Here's useful (and relatively unpopular: <100k downloads)one though: github.com/CoenraadS/Bracket-Pair-...

Geoff Stevens • Jan 25 '19

Nice find with the bracket colorizer! Could be really helpful.

Rodrigo Lozano • Jan 24 '19

I will try vscode-spotify, great article!

Luís Fernando Guedes • Jan 25 '19 • Edited

#productivity?

Geoff Stevens • Jan 25 '19

Ok, you caught me. Playing snake in VS Code might not be the best for productivity... Maybe it needs a time limit!

Ibrohim Hanafi • Jan 25 '19 • Edited

vscode spotify look interesting

Mihail Malo • Jan 26 '19

It's valuable, you don't always have debugger setup on quick jobs.