I’ve been a front end developer for some time now, and I’ve seen our world go from “you have to configure a thousand things if you want it to work” to “click here and everything will just work”.

Recently, I started playing around with React, because my work involves a React Single Page Application. I was amazed at how easy it was to setup a new app using a tool developed by Facebook, the create-react-app boilerplate.

Basically what it does is hide all the boring config files, and gives you an opinionated config, that is supposed to work in most cases.

You don’t need to install or configure tools like Webpack or Babel.

They are preconfigured and hidden so that you can focus on the code. Just create a project, and you’re good to go.

They even provide hot-reload, and a default configuration for ESLint! But is it actually enough to code?

I use VS Code as a text editor. Well, text editor, I should probably stop using these words to describe it, since nowadays it is closer to a complete IDE than a simple text editor. Maybe a smart code editor?

Anyway, what would you expect of a smart code editor? That’s right, wavy red lines when you make a mistake, auto-completion, and auto-formatting.

Let’s see how we can achieve this with VS Code.