Essential VS Code Libraries for 2020

OS X has been fortunate to have always been blessed with great development tools, from the ubiquitous Xcode IDE - still arguably the best pound for pound IDE through to Coda, Sublime and now Visual Studio Code.

Now there are all the general things like an integrated terminal, and support from all the languages I certainly use, but there are still a few other things I needed to bring it fully up to speed.

So in no particular order, here is my list of essential settings and plugins for Visual Code;

Settings

These are just some important settings for Visual Studio I wish I knew of sooner.

Path Intellisense

Visual Studio Code plugin that auto-completes filenames.

More Info: Path Intellisense Plugin

Auto Rename Tag

Automatically rename paired HTML/XML tags – especially useful when renaming a component.

More Info: Auto Rename Tag Plugin

Import Cost Estimator

Importing packages is now standard practice, and this handy plugin displays the imported package's size inside the editor.

More Info: Import Cost Plugin

Formatting JSON

Beautify/Uglify/Escape/Unescape JSON.

More Info: vscode-json

React-Native Dev Tools

An essential for the React-Native developer - and a great tool that lets you debug in real-time on the device - firebug style. Only needs some minimal configuration too.

More Info: React-Native Dev Tools

Spell Checker

Especially useful for those of us using Gatsby as otherwise - it requires a LOT of proofreading. This plugin is by no means perfect and please note it uses US English not British English - or as some might say - proper English! That said, the plugin does a good job of flagging up possible errors, but it won't suggest the correct spelling (Don't be so lazy!).

More Info: Code Spell Checker