Visual Studio Code is powerful out of the box, but the right extensions can supercharge your development workflow. Here are the extensions I install on every new machine.
Code Quality
- ESLint - Catch errors and enforce code style automatically
- Prettier - Format code consistently across your team
- Error Lens - See errors inline, right where they occur
- SonarLint - Advanced code quality and security analysis
Productivity Boosters
- GitLens - Git supercharged with blame annotations and history
- Path Intellisense - Autocomplete filenames and paths
- Auto Rename Tag - Automatically rename paired HTML/JSX tags
- Bracket Pair Colorizer - Match brackets with colors at a glance
Collaboration
- Live Share - Real-time collaborative editing
- Thunder Client - REST API testing without leaving VS Code
Don't install every extension you find. Each extension adds overhead. Curate your toolkit based on what you actually use daily.