Why I use Visual Studio Code editor on Mac

If you’re working on data science projects, there’s a chance you’re working with Jupyter notebooks. I used to start them by typing ‘jupyter notebook’ in the terminal, later using ‘jupyter lab’ — to view the file directory along with the notebook. I’ve been using Microsoft’s VS Code for sometime now, and there are some features that are keeping me from leaving editors. I hope to shed light on some cool features I found in VS Code (many of which are available in other editors) helping me ultimately be a better coder.

I think a lot of my attachment with this code editor has to do with this ‘Panda Theme’. It’s a superminimal, dark syntax theme that you can install directly inside the editor’s ‘marketplace’ feature. The subtle colors are easy on the eyes and i’m a big fan of the aqua teal text color used anytime single quotations are made.

Having a file directory you can use to, for example, quickly locate, create files and, rearrange folder structures on the fly, has allowed me to be more efficient when organizing and understanding code.

When writing code, you can have the output of your code display directly underneath a cell you’re working on (ie. jupyter notebooks), or you could have the output displayed in a different area of the window. This helps me focus on the code more than the output. The app has an option where you can edit the layout of your workspace and add grids where each grid can be the output of your code or a different notebook. The ability to separate your code from the output results shouldn’t go unnoticed.

I love using tables in markdown but I found it cumbersome the way I was generating them. There’s an extension called Markdown Table that allows you to go full markdown table mode where the editor will autofill and align the formatting and everything lines up.

There’s some neat and helpful git features exclusive to Visual Code that deserves it’s own post. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments.