The Atlassian VS Code extension makes me hate Jira a little less

My relationship with Jira has always been a bit complicated.. that's a nice way of saying "thanks, I hate it". But, I get why our team is using it and the value it brings to the product team. Still, I frequently find myself wishing we could just use Github Issues instead.

I think one of the things that rubs me wrong about Jira is the separation between the code base and the issue tracker. When I switch contexts between my code editor and the browser, I lose focus. I find it easier to lose track of what exactly I'm working on, and have to remind myself to provide updates in the associated Jira ticket. This disconnect makes it harder to stay in the flow of my work and can lead to frustration, missed memos, and worse output.

So, I was excited to learn that the "Atlassian: Jira & Bitbucket" extension for VS Code is actually quite good. It allows me to manage my tickets directly from my code editor. I can create, update, and transition work without the context switching, and I've found it's helping me to stay more focused on my work and improve the quality of my communications with the team.

The feature of the extension I've found the most helpful is the ticket creation suggestions that it surfaces as I work in the editor. I've noticed that adding a #todo comment in a docblock or entering the string issue will prompt the extension to suggest creating a ticket for it, and accepting that suggestion allows me to complete the process without leaving the editor.

Recently, I've been refactoring a React component to use TypeScript. It's a sizable job so I've been using the TypeScript @ts-expect-error directive to suppress type errors while the refactoring is ongoing. It's likely that I will not have time in the current sprint to finish all of these refactors and that some of the @ts-expect-error directives will need to persist for the time being.

Using the extension, I can easily go through my work and create tickets for each of the areas that require additional attention to achieve type safety. Leveraging this tool, I feel a lot more confident that nothing will fall through the cracks, and that the technical debt of the component will ultimately be addressed.

It's not perfect. I wish I could set a parent issue for tickets I'm creating in this way, as an example. But it goes a long way toward making Jira feel like a more integrated part of my development process.