What are my favourite functionalities in a Code Editor or IDE?

Nowadays I’m using Visual Studio Code as my main editor because my Jetbrains’ license has expired. Since I’m involved with mostly Front End Code Development, VSCode is enough for me as I‌ have extensions that makes me more productive. Most of them are defaults in WebStorm.

Automatic Copy and Paste

One excellent feature I‌ miss from WebStorm though is the automatic code formatting when paste from other codes. I find VSCode struggle for consistency. By default, it uses the whitespace on the current line as guide when you paste codes. As a result, the indentation for the first line is usually messed up.

I try using formatters and autoformat on paste but my experience is that the editor will also format the file completed especially if it was created and/or used in another editor. This introduces unnecessary whitespace changes which will be committed in Git. Therefore, I turn this feature off.

When time permits, I shall investigate a better solution.

Italic Syntax Highlighting

Having italic part of code highlighting makes writing and reading codes far more interesting. Jetbrains’ IDE has a recently added One Dark Plugin that also contains the italic version.

In VSCode, you have plenty of such themes catering for most common programming language. Night Owl and Winter is Coming are the first that come to mind.

SpellCheck

Sometimes as we are humans, we leave typos when coding. For example, instead of typing checkThisValue, we write checkThisValeu and commit this code. These typos can eventually hamper code understanding and present additional work if someone wants to refactor it everywhere throughout the project.

A spellchecker extension can prevent these typos to a degree.