2019-12-15 Weekend Learnings

I’ve been using VSCode as my principal editor for a while now, and it keeps improving in every release with things that I cannot believe. Last was remote containers. Today is….(drums)… Live Share!

Okay, it has been a short weekend for me because I’m planning a move to Bilbao for the next month and this took almost all of my brain and time. Nevertheless, I still had time to read news as usual and investigate a little bit about useful VSCode extensions. I was looking for a test viewer for Ginkgo or something to integrate it. I found “Test Explorer UI” which is exactly what I was looking for. Then I read in the description of the extension that it is compatible with “VS live share”. so what’s VS live share? It is something that you don’t know that you need until you know that it exists.

VS live share allows you to share your VS code window with other people in a way that they can, not only see, but actually edit the code in real time with you. It reminds me to Google Docs where you can edit a Word document with several people connected at the same time. I couldn’t try it in a real scenario but I’m hopping to try it out this week with my team mates. I will let you know if we find issues or if there is any gotcha.

VS Code essential extensions

I think it is a good moment to list what are my VS Code essential extensions. Get Ready! I will omit specific ones like Python extension or Go extension.

Code Spell Checker

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Name: Code Spell Checker
Id: streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker
Description: Spelling checker for source code
Version: 1.7.20
Publisher: Street Side Software
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker

Provides useful warnings about typos. My code spelling will be horrible without this help :)

Git Graph && GitLens

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Name: Git Graph
Id: mhutchie.git-graph
Description: View a Git Graph of your repository, and perform Git actions from the graph.
Version: 1.19.1
Publisher: mhutchie
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mhutchie.git-graph

Name: GitLens — Git supercharged
Id: eamodio.gitlens
Description: Supercharge the Git capabilities built into Visual Studio Code — Visualize code authorship at a glance via Git blame annotations and code lens, seamlessly navigate and explore Git repositories, gain valuable insights via powerful comparison commands, and so much more
Version: 10.2.0
Publisher: Eric Amodio
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=eamodio.gitlens

These two extensions together with the default VSCode capabilities, turn VSCode in the F*** best git UI that you can find. I’m not going to enter in the details of how to use GitLens. Just read the docs.

Paste JSON as Code

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Name: Paste JSON as Code
Id: quicktype.quicktype
Description: Copy JSON, paste as Go, TypeScript, C#, C++ and more.
Version: 12.0.46
Publisher: quicktype
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=quicktype.quicktype

Another thing that you don’t need until you know that it exist. This allows you to paste a JSON object and generate the corresponding code structure. Essential if you work with docstore databases like Dynamo or you are parsing different JSON data.

Settings Sync

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Name: Settings Sync
Id: shan.code-settings-sync
Description: Synchronize Settings, Snippets, Themes, File Icons, Launch, Keybindings, Workspaces and Extensions Across Multiple Machines Using GitHub Gist.
Version: 3.4.3
Publisher: Shan Khan
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Shan.code-settings-sync

This extension makes possible to work with VSCode in different computers without wanting to kill yourself. I recommend you to turn on the automatic upload/download to avoid conflicts.

Vim

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Name: Vim
Id: vscodevim.vim
Description: Vim emulation for Visual Studio Code
Version: 1.12.2
Publisher: vscodevim
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim

Well, this is only if you know Vim. And if you don’t know Vim. You should learn.

VS live share

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Name: Live Share
Id: ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare
Description: Real-time collaborative development from the comfort of your favorite tools.
Version: 1.0.1377
Publisher: Microsoft
VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MS-vsliveshare.vsliveshare

If it works as promised, I will use it every day to work with my team mates.