We use Visual Studio Code, a text editor that gives us tools to help us develop for the web.

In recent years, Visual Studio Code has become an extremely popular (if not the most popular) code editor. You need not use Visual Studio Code, but I highly recommended it. I’m of the philosophy, which is borrowed from Theo Browne, that using a popular editor (like Visual Studio Code) is preferable when working on a team. Me, your manager, or your teammate may struggle to understand how to navigate or help you when they look at your vim or emacs editor. Visual Studio Code is fairly easy to navigate, even with custom themes and plugins.

<aside> 🎒 Install Visual Studio Code from the official website. You should also set up Visual Studio Code such that you can open it from the command line. There may be additional steps to set up Visual Studio Code for Windows or Windows Subsystem for Linux.

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This is not to discourage you from using your preferred code editor. If you really enjoy your current setup, you should continue to use it! Our recommendation for Visual Studio Code is primarily for people who might not have an already developed preference.

For a quick start to getting your bearings if you haven’t used Visual Studio Code before, you may want to watch a few of these introductory videos from the official website.