I confess I’m really a Notepad++ guy. But all the cool kids nowadays are using Visual Studio Code from Microsoft so I will be too.

I’ve actually been using it for a while at work. I still open Notepad++ more often but it has become really just a notepad/scratchpad nowadays. VSCode is where I do any hacking coding I need to do, especially in projects that are stored in a git repository somewhere. As a *nix and Oracle DBA the irony is not lost on me that a Microsoft product has become so popular. It’s even good enough to warrant a mention on twitter by Oracle Product Manager Dominic Giles so it must be good!

I’ll use this post to describe some of the features I learn about and use. I’ll try to update it as I learn more things.

Workspaces

Firstly, when I started documenting this journey to learn cloudy technologies and wanted to use VSCode like a developer I spent ages trying to work out if I needed separate Workspaces or not. I tried reading the documentation and searching online for any advice. Eventually I came across this site that helped me understand a little better the benefit of workspaces but I still don’t know enough about using VSCode to know if it’s something that I needed. However it included the following line:

You can just work with folders until you have a specific reason for wanting a workspace.

So I’m not using workspaces…

Terminal

There’s an integrated terminal within the editor. You can open from the Terminal menu (I think, mine is always open now and I’m scared to close it!). I use this more than I would have thought. When I run this blog locally for testing, I just do it in that terminal. I can see it updating when I save a file. I’m also using it to run my git commands when commiting and pushing the blog to GitHub. I’m hoping to learn a bit more about doing that within the Source Control area of VSCode though.

Source Control

The Source Control tab shows me the status of my local git repo (used for this blog only at the moment). I’ve just come across this page from James Quick describing using this tab and it’s very good. I’ve started to view his VSCode playlist on YouTube too and am learning even more.

Extensions

I haven’t really played with this much. I have a few at work that a colleague recommended. One of them must be git related as it shows me the user that made changes in files from git repos.