What is Visual Studio Code? What are the advantages of Visual Studio Code.
Visual Studio Code is a source code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS. It is a super fast and lightweight Source Code Editor which can be used to view, edit, run and debug source code for applications. It is mainly used by front-end developers.
Visual Studio Code is a completely different product when compared to Visual Studio.
It is cross platform – works on windows, linux and mac while Visual Studio only works on windows operating system and Mac operating system.
Advantages:-
1) IntelliSense for programming language:- IntelliSense is a general term used for variety of code editing features: code completion, parameter info, quick info, “code completion”, “content assist”, and “code hinting.”
VS Code IntelliSense is provided for JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, HTML, CSS, Less, and Sass out of the box. We can also add IntelliSense extension for other languages as well which are not supported by default.
2) Command Palette:-
Visual studio supports inbuilt Integrated terminal, initially starting at the root of your opened project. This feature makes its very convenient as we don’t have to switch windows or alter the state of an existing terminal to perform a quick command line task. Simply hit Command/Control+Shift+P to bring it up. This is PowerShell inside our IDE, ready to serve up commonly used tasks with a shortcut. When we start typing any of these recognizable commands, the Command Palette provides IntelliSense help and even fires up the Command Prompt to execute tasks as shown in the following screenshot.
3) Integrated Version Control (Built-in Git):-
Visual Studio Code has Git integration built-in, which makes it really easy to instantly see the changes you’re making in your project. On the left of the sidebar, we can find the Git icon where we can initialize Git as well as perform several Git commands such as commit, pull, push, rebase, publish, and look into the changes within the file. VS Code works with any Git repository local or remote, and offers visual symbol to resolve conflicts before code commits.
4) Debugging:-
One of the key features of Visual Studio Code is its great debugging support. VS Code’s built-in debugger helps accelerate your edit, compile and debug loop.
By default, it comes with support for NodeJS and can debug anything that is transpiled to JavaScript but other runtimes like C++ or Python will require an extension to be installed.
We can set breakpoints, look into call stack or variables at run time, and pause or step through code execution.
5) Side by Side Editing on different files:-
Sometimes, we need to refer one file’s code for another file. VS Code makes this easy by allowing us to open side by side editor either for the same file or different files. Simply right click on the file and choose the option “Open to the slide”.
6) Some Code management features:-
Vs code provides us language service features such as Peek Definition, Go to Definition, Find all References, and Rename Symbol. These features are very useful for every developer. In Vs code, we can format javascript code as well as code of other languages. We can find these features by right clicking in the code file.
