This is the exact reason I don't use Atom.

It makes sense within the context of the Atom dream: to make a completely customizable editor, down to the pixel.

But Emacs has almost the exact same dream: to make a completely customizable editor, down to the character-grid cell.

This one small difference gives it way more performance, without much loss in my opinion.

Atom is extremely bloated in every sense of the term. It's bloated in CPU, in memory usage, in files, in libraries, in dependencies, in overall performance, in everything.

All because it wants to be customizable on the pixel level, rather than the character level.

I wish a new editor would arise to actually complete with Emacs. I hate this piece of junk editor, but it works, and it gets the job done.