Introduction with VSCode & Extensions

After a few weeks of familiarity with Open Source Development topics, as well as some experience handling my own project through Open Source Development tools, we are now being introduced to VSCode, a platform tailored for Open Source Development in general. Here's a few comments and observations made after fiddling around with VSCode for the first time;

1- Which extensions did you install? Why did you choose them? What do they do?

I installed C/C++ and Java language support through two extensions (one for each), because those are my two most familiar languages and therefore the extensions I see myself using the most. So far, I know they can debug Java and C++ projects I have, which is what I expected.

Secondly, I installed two additional extensions that help towards developing in less direct ways. One of them is the "One Dark Pro" dark theme for VSCode, and the other one is VSCode Great Icons. Both of these extensions help me visualize files and projects in general more accurately, either by not breaking my eyes from a white theme or by being able to notice certain files by icon rather than trying to read names.

Lastly, I installed Shader Languages Support for VSCode since I am currently enrolled in a Game Engine Techniques class in which I started coding shader programs, therefore justifying the addition of this functionality. 

2- Which settings did you change? Why?

I looked through the commonly used settings, as well as Editor settings as I thought these would be the ones that impact my programming the most. I found out that a lot of settings are already turned on that allow "faster" programming. I like indenting my code clearly and I feel like these settings will help that. I've also learned that I can change font size through those settings, allowing me to use it if I am programming in a group setting where my code would be hooked up to a big screen. These kinds of small functionalities are good to know about, and generally make you feel more familiar with environments, so I am glad to have scrolled through them.

3- Did you have any issues trying to get VSCode built from source?

Building and testing the application generated a lot of minor issues that took a bit of time to fix and a couple of major ones that took longer to fix. Among those, a problem with line-endings prevented the script command from running VSCode from within my cloned repository. With the help of Git though, I was able to fix it using a couple of commands. Additionally, among smaller problems, I followed installation instructions for yarn and created an environment variable for Python that wasn't in the right location which caused more errors, but that was fixed when I moved it to the correct location. I also had a couple of errors where VSCode tried to find some installations that were not placed on the C drive by default, therefore it couldn't find those. I had to modify some paths in settings files to fix these kinds of problems. 

4- What did you find out about the related technologies used by VSCode? For example, what are TypeScript and Electron?

TypeScript is a set of libraries that complement javascript, mostly used for application development. This can include tools for browser applications, on any host, or any OS. 

Electron is a supporting framework for desktop application development that use tools like JavaScript, HTML and/or CSS. It also incorporates utilities based on JavaScript that take care of compatibility issues, effectively making developing for multiple platforms much easier.