My Primary Coding Tools
Background
Now that VS 2019 is available it seems like a good time to review the extensions that I make use of. When the extensions that are most important to me are updated I will start to use VS 2019 regularly.
I’ve made a list of my VS 2017 extensions in the hope that it may be of interest to others. I’ve also added my VS Code extensions for comparison
VISUAL STUDIO 2017
.NET Portability Analyzer — I’m converting old projects to .NET Core and .NET Standard so this is quite useful at times
BuildVision — I like the simplicity of this and that it gives me a summary of the build results, particularly useful on solutions that contain a number of projects
EditorConfig language service — I’m currently dabbling with editorconfig.
GitFlow for Visual Studio 2017 — When I’m using Git this saves me time setting up GitFlow
Github extension for Visual Studio — I use Bitbucket more than Github but this
HGSCC package — I primarily use Mercurial not least because it’s simpler to learn for occasional users.
Jetbrains Resharper — I think the few people who don’t use this use an alternative.
Layouts O Rama — I develop on a laptop and have to move around, this is useful for when I don’ t know how many screens I will have available and what their resolution is.
LiveShare — Not used this yet but it looks like a good idea
MarkDown Editor — Another gem from Mads Kristenson
NCrunch for Visual Studio — fantastic continuous testing tool
Paket for Visual Studio — I’ve moved to this and never looked back. Before I moved I got a lot of issues that seemed to be related to Nuget somehow, since using this most of these issues have gone away.
SCC Auto Switcher — As I use Mercurial primarily, with some Git this is invaluable as it just works.
ServiceStackVS — Templates for ServiceStack, don’t create a web service without it.
Solution Error Visualiser — makes it easier to spot where issues are in the Solution Explorer
Visual Studio Bitbucket extension — I use this in preference to Github
VSRestart 2017 — makes it easy to change to admin mode when you forgot to on startup
Finally the font I use is Fira code which is a great font that I use everywhere I can, it’s readable and the ligatures are great.
VS CODE (and insiders)
icons — simple icons — does what it says on the tin
theme — Dark+ Pro For a long time this was my favorite theme however I’ve now decided to try a light theme again and have gone with Winter is Coming (light) — I particularly like the colouring on the left hand bar
EXTENSIONS
.NET Core test explorer — If you write code without tests you may be doing it wrong
Auto Close tag — makes xml/html editing a lot easier
Auto Rename Tag — as per Auto Close Tag
Auto-open Markdown Preview — I use Markdown for each of my projects, and I find it very useful to have a preview
Better PHPUnit — The best unit testing framework that I have discovered so far for PHP, though I am still just scratching the surface
Bookmarks — Similar to VS bookmarks
Bracket Pair Colorizer — This is a great add on when you aren’t sure where you are in some code, the colouring makes it much easier to figure out
C# — What can I say, I write C#
C# Extensions — Some nice features which makes VS Code feel more like it has resharper installed
C# XML Documentation Comments — what do you mean you don’t document your code
Camel Case Navigation — I have this in VS and love that I can now do it in VS Code too
Code Runner — Runs most of the languages that I use
Coverage Gutters — What do you mean you don’t write tests
Dark+ Pro (One dark pro) — see above
Debugger for Chrome
Docker
EditorConfig for VS Code —
Excel Viewer
Git Graph — I like graphs, I find them much easier to read than a wall of text
Git Lens — phenomenal add on for the times I have to use Git
Hg — my goto version control system
Intellisense for CSS class names in HTML
Ionide-Paket — Paket is simple and effective for what I need
Live Share — Looks like a useful tool for the future
markdownlint — I have a love hate relationship with linters but this is a decent one
Nord — awesome theme
Nord Dark — I really like this theme, I just wish the good dark themes would make the comments a bit more readable
Paste JSON as code
PHP Debug
PHP DocBlocker
PHP files — allows file creation
PHP Intellisense
PHP TDD — for unit testing purposes
phpfmt — PHP formatter, seems to work when there are no syntax issues which isn’t always helpful
Prettify JSON
Rainbow CSV — highlight csv files in different colours
Settings Sync — I have at least six instances of VSCode and it’s variants so this is invaluable.
Simple Icons
Slack — send messages directly to slack
SQL Server(mssql)
SQL Tools — Database tools
Super Sharp (C# Extension)
T4 Support — I really like T4 when I get a chance to use it
Team Chat for Slack, Discord, Live Share
Time Converter — converts Unix times
Todo Tree
Upsource for VS Code — lets you manage your upsource reviews
Version Lens
View in Browser
VS Live Share
VS Live Share Audio
VS Live Share Extension Pack
VS Live Share Whiteboard
Winter is coming theme (light)
XML to JSON
XML Tools — formatting and XPath tools