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?
Oldest comments (72)
After Microsoft took over Github I stopped using Atom, but not because of the possibility of being "ignored" by Microsoft: I had a problem with Atom and a plugin and VS Code didn't.
I used Atom briefly and Sublime, but for the most part, I was on VS Code since the very early days. Even before you could add extensions to VS Code! The main reason being was we were working with TypeScript (TS) all the way back in Fall 2014 and at the time, VS Code was the editor with the best support for TS.
Having said that, VS Code implemented a lot of similar functionality as Sublime/Atom and it's just gotten better and better each release.
I would deem Atom a success pre-MS GitHub acquisition. I imagine they could keep two competing products, but it'd probably make sense to put all their efforts into one editor, and that would probably be VS Code.
To be honest I've been using Sublime over Atom and once I found out about VSC I rarely even open Sublime. The only time I do open it is if I need to modify one file on a fly vs using vi.
Future for any of editors? I think it comes to user preference. Some use git, some use bitbucket and some still use SVN :)
I just want to point out that Bitbucket is no VCS. You can host your code on Bitbucket from Git and Mercurial.
Bitbucket is git/mercurial
All my juniors use Atom. I introduced them to VSCode but it could not replace Atom because of ease of use and familiarity. An added bonus for us is we useCloud9 which is Atom.
Is there are future for Atom? Yes absolutely. Do I like Atom? No, not really.
I prefer VSCode over Atom, though I prefer MacVim overall.
I don't see them retiring one editor over the other. Microsoft owns Github but Github still runs like its own company. We aren't going to see Atom axed.
I tried using Atom. It was bloated, hard to configure, and still didn't do what I want. Did lots, but all of it poorly.
I tried using VSCode. It didn't feel bloated, was easier to configure, and came closer to doing what I want.
That said, I use Kate on Linux, and Sublime on Mac. I like watching text editors come and go. My list of requirements is small, but surprising few products meet them.
Strangely, my experience with Atom vs. VSCode was the same. Atom was cool in theory, but hard to configure, bloated, and slow. VSCode just hummed along.
So, unless Atom can be refactored to be as sleek and performant as VSCode, I think it's bound to lose the editor war indefinitely.
Definitely. And my thought is that of "is it even worth bothering to do?", speaking in terms of both being Microsoft projects. It just doesn't seem like they'll want to bother. I know there are some other IDEs built on top of Atom and maybe there is a purpose to the ecosystem.
Sublime still has a place in the ecosystem, so do VIM, Emacs, Jetbrain stuff, etc. I just don't know that Atom fits in anywhere that VSCode doesn't.
Strangely enough I had the exact opposite experience.
I find Atom very clear and simple, on the one hand I have this very powerful editor that I can extend almost indefinitely, but at the same time it does exactly what I need it to do and nothing more.
I personally found VSCode very bloated - lot's of icons everywhere, for a person who get's easily distracted, it was a horrible experience.
I have to say that if Atom ever goes away, then I am going back to vim.
Same experience. I prefer Atom.
I think my experience is probably skewed since I had spent a fair amount of time customizing Atom to my liking before exploring VSCode, but I found VSCode and it's extensions fairly difficult to configure compared to Atom.
I liked Atom, but actually ended up switching to Vim. When I finally tried VS Code, I was hooked and dropped Vim.
I love VS Code, I never felt that about Atom.
I switched from Notepad++ to Kate to TextMate to Sublime to Atom. I tried switching to VSCode, but found it harder to use and the plug-in selection inferior (because it displays 100s without any guidance).
So for now I am stuck (and mostly happy) with Atom. I have so many plug-ins for so many languages configured and so many keyboard shortcuts setup, that I can live with its slowness, most times.
And while VSCode might be a good next step, Sublime is still so much faster.
I was an Atom user for the most of the time, and at some point with certain amount of plugins installed it started to become very laggy and slow. Switched to VSCode, installed same amount of plugins if not more, no speed decrease at all, plus it offers quite a few additional benefits over other editors by default.
VSC is one hell of an edior. right? Never looked back. Sublime is my rebound text editor.
I really loved Atom. It was my favourite editor for a while, beautiful and fast. But it didn't stay that way. It became a bloated mess, which made me switch over to VSCode as it was light and fast.
I'm seeing the same pattern developing with VSCode now. New features are being crammed in every other day.
The first signs of that bloated feeling has emerged in VSCode, much like those signs I saw in Atom just before the switch.
So has the time come to start looking for a new again?...
The thing is, even as more features are added, it is still zippier than, say, WebStorm (at least for me).
Oh yes, definitely.
Personally I don't really like full blown IDEs, I prefer middle weight editors with "just enough" features and super snappy responsiveness.
VSCode(or VSCodium, the actual free and open source version) is leagues ahead in terms of speed. While MS promised not to discontinue Atom, development has slowed down. I expect it'll be kicked soon enough in a couple of years.
On the other hand atom-shell or electron is the biggest thing that came out of Atom and it'll still be used in the foreseeable future.
So, I’ve been using Atom for a long time, and I never considered switching because I’m lazy. However, it is unbearably slow, so I decided to download VSCode just now.
Let’s just say, I like it a lot. RIP Atom.
Side note: VSCode automatically offered to install an Atom shortcuts extension, so the transition has been incredibly smooth.
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What I missed the most after switching from Atom to VS Code was the Atom really good default theme.
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I used Atom for a couple of years, but it seemed to get slower and slower--even small files were making it chug after a while. I finally gave VS Code a try, and haven't looked back.
I think Sublime Text could've still been a real contender, but their release cycle was way too slow and the add-on process wasn't user friendly at all. I think it still has better performance than the other two, but it's just not as extensible.
I am still so newbie in this world I cannot give a very reasoned answer. However, I went through the same change as you did.
I first started with Atom because the course I was doing recommended it. Af first it looked cool. But of course, I didn't have anything to compare with.
In the meantime I also started learning C#, so I had to used Visual Studio. I was so happy about the performance of Visual Studio (the contextual help, the way the things display on screen, etc.) that I decided it to change to Visual Studio Code.
I am not able to put it down into words, but for me Visual Studio Code feels more "solid" than Atom.
I tried so hard to get along with Atom. For me, the configuration difficulty was not the biggest issue but it certainly was one, for me the biggest problem was speed. It just never felt fast enough.
If I remember it correctly, Atom and VS Code are both built atop Electron?
Yes, both are built on Electron.
Every time somebody on Reddit brings up how "Electron apps are slow and bloated", I like to think about how well-implemented software (VSCode) can work despite its constrained environment.
I feel that Microsoft has done an outstanding job of showing how well an Electron-based app can run by way of VS Code when done right.
When I was a student, I used atom for my projects and coding stuff. And it was 🔥. But frequently ran into performance issue, slow startup etc.
Now, I just use VS Code for every language I work with or wanna try. Its configuration and extensions are limitless. It just feels like that it belongs to you.
Honourable Mention: VIM
I also use vim for quick file edits as terminal always stays open so why don't just use it.