VS Code

The dark mode versus light mode debate is a false dichotomy. Picking one theme and sticking with it forever ignores how your eyes, environment, and tasks actually work. The real answer is adaptive theming: an editor design system that shifts its contrast, saturation, and color palette based on context.

A 2023 survey by JetBrains found that 82% of developers prefer dark themes, but 93% of those same developers admitted they occasionally switch to a light theme depending on lighting conditions. That is not indecision. It is a signal that one theme cannot cover every scenario.

Eye comfort is very important, especially to programmers, who spend most of their day looking at code in their favorite editor. This programming productivity tip can significantly improve your coding experience and reduce eye strain during long development sessions.

I’ve already mentioned a few themes I like, and today I am going to teach you how to set your editor up in such away that the theme changes automatically depending on what time of day it is. This developer tools automation can greatly enhance your coding comfort throughout different lighting conditions.

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is revolutionizing technology and software development at the moment, and to no surprise. AI can help humanity in many different areas, such as diagnosing an illness at an early stage with machine learning, or assisting a driver with direction through GPS navigation, or driving you to a desired destination with autonomous vehicles. The integration of AI tools in programming workflows has transformed how developers approach coding and software engineering challenges.

While it is debatable whether or not we should trust AI to take over crucial areas of our lives (have you seen “Terminator?”), one area I found Artificial Intelligence to be particularly useful in is programming and software development workflows. Using the right AI development tools and code completion extensions, you can save yourself a lot of time while coding with AI enabled. These modern developer tools are becoming essential for programming productivity and efficient software development.

For a long time I have been a big fan of Sarah Drasner’s theme for Visual Studio Code, and even used a port of it in Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition.

Ever since I’ve started learning .Net Framework on both Linux and Windows, I ’ve also started using the default Visual Studio 2019 theme in both the IDE, and the editor. Simply because I like unity across the developer tools I use.

Visual Studio Code (or simply vscode, or even code) is an editor developed by Microsoft. The editor was released back in 2015 and by now is considered one of the best if not the best code editors for web development and software engineering out there. I admit, I used Vim for a bit, but switched back to vscode+vim plugin for better .NET development experience and modern IDE features, since I work with .Net nowadays. This powerful code editor has become essential for programming productivity and developer workflows. I am going to tell you about my favorite set of plugins in one of my next posts.

To be honest with you, as a long time Linux user and open source enthusiast, at first I was hesitant to use a free code editor developed by a company that makes proprietary software. But I gave it a try when a Linux version of it was released, and I have no regrets now. VSCode has become the go-to development environment for programmers across different platforms.