Visual Studio Code Extensions for Backend Development in 2024

In this video, I’ll show you some of the Visual Studio Code extensions I’ve been using lately for backend development. These are must-haves in 2024!

🎓 Courses:

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👀 Code reviewers:
- Yoriz
- Ryan Laursen
- Dale Hagglund
- Kit Hygh
- Alexander Milden
- Bean

🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:51 Introduction to Advanced VSCode Features
1:21 Postman
4:10 GitLens
5:21 Database extensions
6:39 Autoformatters and linters
8:36 Other extensions
10:40 Final thoughts

#arjancodes #softwaredesign #python

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[SiLiDNB]

"Bookmarks" is a good one, which lets you make bookmarks inside the code and jump between them.
Also "Bracket Select" which helps to easily select content inside brackets.

[PhunkyBob]

I like "RainbowCSV" : when you open a CSV file, it gives a different color to each column, so it's easier to read a specific value.

[devilslide]

I actually started to use dev containers and must say that it works very well. It eliminated a problem “it works on my machine” :)

[ivanmclennon]

Not much new here for me from the video, but I picked up some good ones in the comments!
Here are my personal suggestions:
*Line Width Indicator* - useful if you're not using an automatic formatter and want to keep an eye at the number of symbols per line yourself;
*PyPi Assistant* - lets you see how old your versions of pip packages are in requirements.txt;
*Sync Scroll* - VERY useful when comparing 2 large JSON files e.g. when you have large API responses you need to double check.

[ewerybody]

Ruff is awesome!!! Finally I can have ultra fast formatting with 'single' quotes without using hacks 🥰
I already had a LOONG list of things that Pylance took care of that I didn't want Pylint to ALSO highlight. Now I just have to do that again with Ruff. But I guess it's gonna be more sustainable anyway :)

[Dennis-hbtw]

Hi Arjan!
Loving your videos and your content is great! Just a very minor thing: I'm getting really confused by the music overlay when you talk (gladly, only in the beginning).
Nevertheless, keep it up and cheers!

[investingfinance]

Tabnine, autoDocstring, Alignment, Auto-Align, Marp, Prettier, Peacock, Todo Tree, TODO Highlight, Trailing Spaces, Python Indent, Indent-rainbow, Code Spell Checker,

[Hacker-at-Large]

I use “platform-settings” so I can do LaTeX development (and previewing) using LaTeX-Workshop. It lets me have platform specific settings so that I can use different previewers between a linux workstation and a macOS laptop. The usage leaves a bit to be desired, but it allows me to use the same settings.json on differing platforms or hostnames . This way I don’t have to switch configs every time I sync my repository.

[JeremyLangdon]

You mention not writing Jupyter Notebooks much but one huge benefit of the extension is the ability to, while debugging, right-clicking a dataframe in the debug variables and “view in data viewer”. I use that feature ALL THE TIME even with standard python files. Also, Microsoft’s new extension “Data Wrangler” is also interesting… I’m still learning what all it can do.

[varkenvarken]

postman is quite versatile but for FastAPI the Testclient that is part of it, is is a good option too, and doesn't require an extensiom

[malteplath]

The Testing extension is very nice. It shows a tree of the tests discovered in the left panel and test-run buttons at each test class and function, for starters. I found that it doesn't always work for test discovery, though, when you have your tests in a separate directory from the Python source code. (Even when pytest is running fine from the command line.

[oshosirene]

I am waiting for you to Drop an AysncIO Series

[michaelmcmanus]

I think there is an issue with the thumbnail with this video. The thumbnail shows a 'Fast API Backend' which says it was posted 12 hours ago as of 11pm EST but I'm watching a video from earlier this year that I watched about VSCode extensions. So confused haha.

[markokraljevic]

you can go over features of git lens in more detail in separate video, if you know it well, it has a lot of features, almost like complete gui for git

[seb_is_class]

Question: Would you recommend VS Code vs. PyCharm? Any thoughts on that? Thank you for all your good content and advice.

[ButchCassidyAndSundanceKid]

Could you do a video on Google IDX please ?
There's an AI coding assistant called Cody which is highly recommended as well.

[sachinsarathe]

All the extensions are good. But adding some good themes to your VS Code will definitely help.

I use the Rainbow CSV extension. It displays CSV files with different colors for each column.

[kslader]

Can you add the list of the extensions in the comments?

[alexjenkins]

CodeSnap - pretty photos of code (i bound it to alt+c)
VS Code Speech (talk to github copilot with voice)
Error Lens - line highlighting for errors so I never miss them