When Atom first came out, it was novel in that it was built on web technologies and therefore pretty flexible and exciting for folks who worked in those technologies. It's called "A hackable text editor for the 21st Century".
But then VSCode came along and took a lot of similar ideas and executed them really well. It took off. Despite the occasional performance drawbacks of these kinds of editors, I was always a believer.
I wrote about my switch from Atom to VSCode about 18 months ago. The post has received almost 150,000 reads so it seems like a lot of people were curious about making the same switch.
A little competition is rarely enough to sew the demise of a software productivity tool, but Atom was created by GitHub, which has since been acquired by Microsoft, creators of VSCode. I'm just wondering if that would lead to the eventual slide into obscurity of their "other" code editor which is trying to fit the same niche.
I have not followed Atom very closely, so I don't know the answer to this question. I'm curious what is going on from those who still use Atom or have followed any discussions around the project.
And how does this whole saga make you feel? Has Atom been a success?
Latest comments (72)
Circling back around: it seems like a lot of people still use ATOM in 2019. We use Sublime, or mabye VScode if using typescript.
Didn't Microsoft buy / or acquire ATOM at some point? We figured the whole point was to get the code - and the userbase - so that they could build VScode / as part of a larger play to get a stronger hold on the eco-system. GitHub + NPM - now too.
I had to stop using Atom because of the errors and bugs; just a constant background noise of errors and bugs, always changing, growing evolving.
PERMISSION DENIED errors that would ruin complicated rebases and required constant restarts was the worst of them all.
I recently migrated to use VSCode when coding in Rust, but just because the Language Service for Rust the client side is implemented for VSCode since it has the LSP specification more updated compared from other editors out there.
For other languages that I use more frequently (Python, C, Janet, Carp and Zig), I still use Atom, because it has support for native support tree-sitter highlighting. Tree-sitter is a technology that allows to have more powerful parser, commonly used, but no limited, to highlight code, it has a more performance than regex based highlight engines and can do partial update of the code Abstract Tree, so it can update fast enough to update the code highlight as the user insert more code, it also has the advantage that is easier to maintain a highlighter for a given language than a using textMate grammar
Because the the devs for the tree-sitter support for languages try to get as much close as possible on what would be the high level parser of a language, it can tokenize more stuff easily than textMate highlighters. It gets much more close to a Semantic Highlighting because of that.
My hope is that VSCode natively implements tree-sitter for highlight code, since Github uses a lot tree-sitter and now that Github belongs to Microsoft. When it happens (if it happens) I can fully migrate to VSCode like I want to.
The fact that they bought GitHub does not affect the license nor team of any project on GitHub, generally. Though Atom is by GitHub itself, they have their own team. Atom won't "slide into obscurity" for any reasons other than why any other program would, such as if its maintainers do not keep up with the community (pull requests, issues, and feature requests). The core audience for Atom will probably use it even if it doesn't get every feature, if the trustworthy maintainers and license remain in place.
I downloaded Atom & PlatformIO to do custom builds of Marlin 2.x for 3D printers.
Every time I start Atom my computer becomes unusable for about 10 minutes.
It's probably re-indexing files that it has indexed many times before but didn't bother to cache the data.
Basically, I consider it to be unusable.
I'll switch to something more suitable to professional development.
I tried Sublime but switched to Atom because, Sublime failed horribly in proper code block folding, which they must fix asap.
Atom has similar functionalities as Sublime. One major drawback which I'm seeing is that it runs on top of Chromium (the same code that runs Google Chrome), which is a performance hit. (Or perhaps being Chromium-based is what makes it a hackable IDE.)
Honestly I am still yet to try VSCode.
I would love to see Atom evolve into a beginner-friendly code editor. Its UI is already super welcoming. Imagine new developers having a code editor that explains code for you, can help you look up documentation etc etc.
Really funny, Atom is way better than VS code. Atom has been a huge success.
This year it actually ranks higher than VS code, try googling text editors for linux or something similar, atom will be the first option on all recent articles.
But seriously, both are now microsoft's so what is the point?
I'm more than a little peeved that Atom is pestering me to try VSCode. I've gone to great lengths to divest myself of Microsoft products, and now my open source editor of choice is bothering me to try their product. I've read that VSCode is open source, but the binary version everyone downloads has telemetry that phones Microsoft's mothership. Anyone remember "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."?? Don't delude yourself that this dog has changed it's spots. I'm not interested in being their product.
VS Code definitely feels less bloated and seems easier to navigate. That's the main reason I switched. However, (and this may sound peculiar) I love the name Atom for an editor as well as the Atom logo and much prefer both over VS Code. Let's face it, the name "VS Code" along with its logo are kinda lame.
So, what if MS ditched the Atom editor but migrated its name and logo over to VS Code? Huh? Huh?
I'm sure it will never happen, but man, the Atom name and logo are sooo much cooler IMHO!
I can switch back to atom if it becomes as performant as vscode :)
Going to add my 2 cents and personal experience.
TL;DR, I did switch from Atom to VS Code, and GitHub has mentioned multiple times that Atom isn't going anywhere.
Long version
I started using Atom in alpha. I did quickly fall in love with it and was a user even after a lot of people jumped ship after MS bought GitHub. I still like a handful of things about it better than VS Code (the find and replace layout, being able to search installed packages instead of either listing installed or searching), and running it on Linux (which I use on my own machine now) is far faster and less resource-intensive than running it on Windows.
It does still lag in some areas a little bit though, like when you do
ctrl-pto find a project file. Takes forever to index a project (or it did last time I used it).My reasons for switching were ultimately performance, simple/clean UI, integrated terminal, personal performance/consistency (I was using it at work already), and (yes, sue me) the available themes were alright enough to satisfy my ridiculous need to switch color schemes occasionally.
As for whether it's going anywhere, Lee Dohm has said multiple times that Atom is sticking around. And there are a number of users who settled on Atom even after messing around with Code, Sublime and other alternatives. They like that they can get Atom to do what they need it to do, especially when Code's API restricts them.
The discussion does come up occasionally though still with the users. I joined Atom's Slack group a while ago and haven't left yet despite the switch to Code. Heck I may yet give Atom a try now and again just to see what's changed.
I started seriously using Atom about 2 years ago (was using Vim before that and still do from time to time) and I'm pretty satisfied with it. Sure it's not lightning fast but it's usually not an issue.
I tried a few times switching to VSCode but I just can't stick with it, I just prefer the "look & feel" of Atom. I'm also too lazy to change my habits without a good reason and I don't have a good reason to switch for now.
Also a lot of people are trying to pressure me into changing it so that's a motivation to stay with Atom, I don't like giving in to peer pressure.
That being said I think there is a future for this editor because it still has a solid user base and a lot of people use it as their main editor/IDE, I don't really see it going away soon.
Atom was definitely the less intimidating editor for me when I was first starting out in front end and I think that means it still has some kind of future. I actually had no real interest in switching until I landed my first professional role where most of my colleagues use VSCode. I can't really see myself switching back.
I still use Atom occasionally for personal projects or small static websites. Its UI (imo) is a little nicer, so I'm unwilling to let go completely.
I still love vim, it's useful and powerful. I have tried Atom.But I think it's a little different to use for me