I recently shifted from IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate to Visual Studio Code (VS Code) and I have no regrets! VS Code is highly customizable and fast. It stores your settings in the cloud so you don’t have to worry about configurations when you move to a different machine. As expected, it has support for Java, Git, SQL, Spring Boot, and many other languages, frameworks, and tools. In this article, I’ll show you the extensions and configurations that I use with my new favorite IDE. Java extension pack VS Code has tons of extensions that add support for programming languages, frameworks, and tools. An extension pack groups related extensions that work well together. So the first thing to do is install the : Java Extension Pack Spring Boot, Microprofile, and Quarkus extensions There are extensions for , , and if you are using any of these frameworks. These extensions make it easy to create new projects, deploy and run applications, as well as configure them. Spring Boot Microprofile Quarkus Creating a new Java project To create a new Java project, in the tab on the sidebar, click : Explorer Create Java Project You can select from a variety of frameworks depending on the extensions you installed. Here are some of the ones that I see in my IDE: Each option will prompt further information to generate the new project. Importing a project The Java Extension Pack includes the extension (there’s a as well). VS Code recognizes Maven projects when you open a directory with a file in it. Simply go to in the menu and select the directory that contains the file. Maven for Java Gradle extension pom.xml File | Open… pom.xml Code command Although you don’t have to, you can also use the command line to open projects. VS Code makes it extremely easy to enable this. Press and type to include the command in your environment variable: F1 shell code PATH After this, make sure to restart the terminal (if you have any opened), and type to launch VS Code. You can specify a directory to open: code To open the current directory, specify a dot: code . Running an application Once you have a new or an existing project opened in VS Code, you can run it by pressing . Select and the class that contains the standard Java entry point method that you want to run: F5 Java main Database client Most applications connect to databases like MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc. The best extension for this is . You can try it out with for example. Make sure to enable the option, download the CA file from SkySQL, and specify the path to the file in the field in VS Code. After that, you can run SQL queries without having to leave your IDE. Check this video: Database Client SkySQL Use SSL Client Cert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJYUTxD-2-M Git VS Code includes Git support out-of-the-box. However, I suggest installing the extension to add useful views to the sidebar panel: GitLens Source Control In my case, I disabled the current line blame annotations since I find it a bit intrusive, but try it out and decide for yourself. Keyboard shortcuts If there’s one shortcut you should learn, that is the sequence , (or , ). It shows all the keyboard shortcuts with the option to search and edit the key combinations as you wish: Ctrl K Ctrl S Cmd K Cmd S Here are a few keyboard shortcuts that I use frequently: / - Toggle sidebar Ctrl B Cmd B / - Show/focus explorer Ctrl Shift E Cmd Shift E / - Toggle panel (terminal, output, debug console, etc.) Ctrl J Cmd J / - Toggle terminal Ctrl ` Ctrl Shift ` - Run the application F5 / - Settings Ctrl ; Cmd ; / / - Show all available commands Ctrl Shift P Cmd Shift P F1 / - Open a project file Ctrl P Cmd P / - Outline (to show for example class members) Ctrl Shift O Cmd Shift O I recommend going through the guide inside VS Code (available in the menu) especially the walkthrough which teaches you how to edit code with a bunch of shortcuts that will improve your productivity. Get Started Help Learn the Fundamentals Presentation mode If you are presenting your code to an audience, it’s always useful to increase the font size of the code. Most IDEs allow you to do this, but the size of all other things in the UI remains the same, which is not ideal in my opinion. VS Code is the best at this since you can simply hit (or on macOS) and the whole UI is zoomed in, just like in a web browser. Use (or on macOS) to zoom out. Ctrl + Cmd + Ctrl - Cmd - You might want to go full screen ( and search for ) or even better activate the ( and ). I do this in presentations and videos like this: F1 Toggle Full Screen Zen mode F1 Toggle Zen Mode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHGQxMkpCMM Other resources Like almost always the official is the best source of knowledge. It includes resources for multiple programming languages like JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Python, and C++. Check the as well and visit the . VS is open source! documentation official YouTube channel GitHub repository

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