What Is a VS Code Extension?
Before we jump into coding, we should clear up what a VS Code extension is on a technical level. Extensions are basically programs, written in JavaScript or TypeScript, which hook into various parts of VS Code. They provide functions for VS Code to call when certain events happen, and can programmatically interact with (some parts of) VS Code in those functions.
Extensions are distributed as ZIP files with a specific file and folder structure inside. The files contained in this structure are usually very verbose and not friendly for humans to read or write so there’s an official build tool to generate such ZIP files from source code: vsce. Its usage will be explained later on in this post.