Obviously, the creators of Visual Studio understood this, which is why it comes with so many hotkeys and snippets out of the box (so many, in fact, that you'd need to be a savant to memorize them all!) along with the capability to customize them to your liking.
I call it the "Hotkey Hypothesis," and it basically states that the more you can keep your hands on the keyboard rather than switching back and forth between keystrokes and mouse gestures, the more productive you will be, especially if you are minimizing the number of repetitive keystrokes through hotkeys and code snippets. To this end, I'm going to introduce a concept that you probably intuitively understand is true but maybe never put into words before. The bottom line is this: fewer keystrokes = greater career longevity. The idea is to reduce unnecessary wear-and-tear on your hands and body, and hopefully also prevent the mental burnout that can result from doing repetitive work. As stated in my previous blog post, Visual Studio is your primary tool when working on the Microsoft stack, and the better you understand that tool, the more productive you will be and the more time you will save.
The purpose of this blog entry is to give you guidance on some of the new features of Visual Studio 2019, as well as existing features that you may have overlooked, such as hotkeys and snippets, so that you can work more efficiently and effectively as a Microsoft (.NET) stack software developer. You are a software samurai, and your sword is Visual Studio.
The keybindings.json file is watched by VS Code so editing it while VS Code is running will update the rules at runtime.Efficient (adj.): performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort having and using requisite knowledge, skill, and industry competent capable.Įffective (adj.): adequate to accomplish a purpose producing the intended or expected result. The additional keybindings.json rules are appended at runtime to the bottom of the default rules, thus allowing them to overwrite the default rules.
Most importantly, you can see keybindings according to your keyboard layout. ( Code > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts on macOS). You can open this editor by going to the menu under File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.
It also has a search box on the top that helps you in finding commands or keybindings. It lists all available commands with and without keybindings and you can easily change / remove / reset their keybindings using the available actions. Visual Studio Code provides a rich and easy keyboard shortcuts editing experience using Keyboard Shortcuts editor. This page lists out the default bindings (keyboard shortcuts) and describes how you can update them. Visual Studio Code lets you perform most tasks directly from the keyboard.