I’ve recently started to use VS code as my code editor. Here’s why …

Built in node debugger

I still prefer to debug client side code in the browser but it’s great to debug server side code in a code editor. My previous post describes how to do this using VS code. VS code debugging gives you the key stuff that an IDE gives - breakpoints, stepping, watches, call stack, …

Built in Git support

It’s great to have git support inside the code editor. VS code automatically picks up that you are using Git. You can commit, pull and push changes to Git right from within the VS Code editor.

Built in emmet support

Emmet allows you to write html super fast and it’s great that it’s built right into VS code. Just type some emmet syntax, hit the tab key and boom!

Built in task runner

VS code can leverage existing task runners like gulp and grunt to run things like babel compilation or maybe some JSHint checks. You can also add watcher tasks so that this stuff can be run automatically as you save code changes.

Fast!

Last, it’s very fast - much faster than the full blown Visual Studio IDE.