Issue #2  (VS Code Insiders Edition)05/04/22

If you're a VS Code power user that wants to be the first to test out new features being released in VS Code, there's a build of VS Code called the Insiders Edition that you can use on your preferred platform. This would be similar to something like Chrome Canary which includes experimental features that developers can try out.

By way of example, the current stable release of VS Code is 1.66. You can view the latest features in that version on the VS Code blog. The Insiders Edition, on the other hand, is currently at version 1.67. So this gives you a preview of what will come. But this comes with a warning as stated on the Insiders page:

"Insiders has the most recent code pushes and may lead to the occasional broken build."

But notably the page also mentions:

"Insiders installs next to the Stable build, allowing you to use either independently."

So it's good to have that option, which again is similar to how most nightly build release software works (at least from my experience). But as the warning above implies, it's always best to stay with the stable build for important stuff and only use the Insiders Edition for checking out what's shiny and new.

Now on to this week's hand-picked links!

VS Code Tools

edamagit — VS Code extension that integrates Magit, a complete text-based user interface to Git.

vscode-dev-containers — A Microsoft repository of development container definitions for the "VS Code Remote - Containers" extension and GitHub Codespaces.

Monad — Now in open beta, a platform that lets you easily share code snippets, with plans for VS Code and other integrations later.

P42 JavaScript Assistant — VS Code extension that adds 74 automated refactorings and actions for JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and Vue. It analyzes the impact of the refactorings on the program behavior and shows refactoring safety evaluations that help prevent accidentally breaking your code.

VS Code Articles

Visual Studio Code - Tips & Tricks - Command Palette and its Friends — Part one of a multi-part series, this one covering a few tips on searching using VS Code's command palette.

7 Promising VS Code Extensions Introduced in 2021 — This was an end-of-year post that looks at some popular extensions from the previous year. Most of these were new to me.

What Do You Really Get From IDE-Driven Development? — A discussion of the flaws of IDEs and how GitHub Copilot factors in, with the perspective coming from a developer who uses these on VS Code.

10 VS Code Extensions to Look Out For in 2022 — Here's another year-end post, but with a different twist. Interestingly, GitHub Copilot appears on both this list and the one I linked above but the rest are unique.

Bytes — A JavaScript newsletter that's entertaining and informative with lots of coding tidbits, news, and tools.  Sponsor

The Alternatives

tmux.nvim — Still in early development but this plugin provides a framework that turns Neovim into a terminal multiplexer (heavily based on tmux).

vimcolorschemes — A nice interactive repository of Vim themes. You can view by top themes, trending, recently updated, or use keywords search (e.g. "dark", "low contrast", etc).

Lite XL — A lightweight, simple, fast, feature-filled, and extremely extensible text editor written in C and Lua, adapted from lite, an older project based on Lua.

Suggestions?

If you have any link suggestions, including a tool, article, or other resources related to VS Code or another IDE, send it via DM on X: @LouisLazaris or just hit reply on this email.

That's it for this issue.

Happy VS Coding!
Louis
VSCode.Email
@LouisLazaris