How to Code Efficiently: Best Visual Studio Code Extensions for JavaScript Developers

Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code or VS Code is an inevitable part of a JavaScript developer’s coding journey. The lightweight code editor,  known for its performance and stability, has a marketplace full of quality extensions that boosts developer productivity and speeds up product development.

Let’s check out 8 such powerful VS Code extensions that JavaScript programmers can try out for a better coding experience.

1.ESLint

A popular linter extension, ESLint ensures code quality by recognizing and reporting problematic code patterns (both programming as well as styling errors). It allows developers to specify their own linting rules to check and refine the code.

Downloads: 11.3 million

2. JavaScript (ES6) Code Snippets

In this snippet extension, ES6 syntax is used and it supports JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, Vue and React. Snippets have a final semicolon and a particular trigger is available for each snippet. Thus, programmers can write repetitive codes efficiently.

Downloads: 4.2 million

3. Debugger for Chrome

With the Chrome debugger extension, developers can perform JavaScript code debugging in the Google Chrome browser without exiting the VS Code environment. Hence, they don’t have to continuously switch context to view changes.

Downloads: 6.6 million

4. Prettier

Prettier is a code formatting extension for JavaScript, TypeScript and CSS code. It also supports YAML, Markdown, GraphQL and HTML languages. Prettier makes the code neat and readable, and relieves developers from manually formatting the code. It integrates well with linters.

Downloads: 8.9 million

5. Bracket Pair Colorizer

With Bracket Pair Colorizer, a visual enhancement extension, matching brackets can be spotted with the help of colors. This is very useful for React, Angular and Vue codes due to the presence of lots of brackets. The user can define the brackets to be matched and the colors to be applied.

Downloads: 3.8 million

6. Path Intellisense

Remembering file names and their respective locations is indeed a challenge for developers, especially for those working in big projects. Path Intellisense is the answer to this predicament; it automatically completes the path of a file that a developer is trying to import and the file automatically shows up while typing.

Downloads: 3.6 million

7. REST Client

The REST Client extension enables developers to send HTTP requests and receive and view responses within the VS code editor itself. With this plugin, testing REST API endpoints is much easier, as there is no need to query the API via a terminal’s command line or utilize a third-party GUI for the same.

Downloads: 1.2 million

8. Gitlens

A highly customizable open-source extension having a host of features, Gitlens is very useful for developers working together on a particular repository. It enhances code understandability and gives an overview into who, when or why a code line was altered or blocked, besides other functionalities. 

Downloads: 6.8 million

Wrapping Up

All the extensions discussed above and many more like Live Server, npm Intellisense, Beautify, to name a few, have the potential to set new benchmarks in coding. As a leading app development company, we are proud to say that our JavaScript developers are reaping the benefits of these VS Code extensions.