Atom 1.36
blog.atom.io
blog.atom.io
GitHub and Atom have a very linked future, with GitHub planning to become more involved with the actual code-writing process. Atom will be the conduit though which they achieve that.
[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=Gi...
Atom may have started the move towards lightweight (relatively) IDEs, but VS Code is undoubtedly the more popular one. Honestly, when I saw this post on HN I was quite surprised to see that Atom is still actively developed - if there's anyone reading this that prefers Atom over VS Code, I'd really like to find out why?
I've been wanting to add multi-cursor modal focused features to an editor for a while and I've been debating which editor would be the best one to write for. Thoughts?
I don't agree. Last time I've checked vscode fails un some rather basic requirements, as for example vscode's file renaming functionality is entirely oblivious to Git which causes unnecessary problems to the user.
VS Code is one of the finest examples of open source Done Right™, and while it owes something to Atom and Electron, this is pure open source darwinism.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18507817
Take what you will from it. I'm not sure they will kill it, but I don't know why they need to maintain two editors either, then again they already maintain Visual Studio as well. I think it would be nice to see how both teams push their editors, but I feel like over the long haul it will be some VIM vs Neovim type of this. Additionally, VS Code will focus on strongly supporting Microsofts tech (via plugins), while Atom will focus on GitHub to some extent.
I wish Visual Studio Code replaced Visual Studio, but unfortunately, it still holds value if working against Microsoft's stack. I like having them both and will occasionally use Code for .NET edits, but you definitely feel like it is missing some comforts at the very least when using it.
Since the GitHub acquisition, it makes no sense for MS to maintain both and I agree 100% with the parent comment that this will be killed soon.
Also, I'm using a ton of Atom plugin that didn't exist on VSCode at the time I tried (this may have changed, but since I disliked the UI, I'm not going to try VSCode again).
Atom is the only editor I've seen that has it unfortunately.
Atom's find/replace interface was the favorite version of the feature I've used in any editor -- would be cool to see how that design evolved to support other kinds of automated edits (like refactorings).
I also have a massive personal bias against Microsoft, so take this with a grain of salt.
I keep going back now and then to VS Code especially when I need to use the debugger to step through some code. But otherwise, my workflow since has evolved around the little niggles of Atom(like having to open separate terminal windows) so I don't feel the need to switch.
It's very possible for VSC to improve in these areas. In fact, I'd love to see an "Atom mode" that changes the UI/UX to more closely resemble Atom (and, somewhat by extension, Sublime). You laugh, but there's a reason that every editor takes a swing at a "vim mode". People get comfortable with the aesthetics of their tools.
https://flight-manual.atom.io/using-atom/sections/basic-cust... https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/keybindings#_k...
With VSCode, I haven't had any trouble moving my keybindings file between installations, even between my Windows and Mac environments (I do the same with my theme, and it works great as well).
What functional difference between the configuration styles did you run in to?
To be fair, vim is radically different in terms of navigation, keybindings, capability, etc. than your average gui-based text editor. I am not saying that your point is wrong, but vim is sort of an extreme example of a. the difference between vim vs. other editors, and b. the zeal with which vim users tend to cling to it (as a vim user).
While VSC sounds like a better editor, I want to write a multi-cursor, modal based editor with some UI tweaks. Ideally I'll use Xi long term, but I'd like a prototype working first. By your description, it sounds like I should stick to Atom for plugin development then?
Maybe try getting started on both, and see which one is easier or more comfortable?
The extensions in atom seem to have quite a few more permissions to change the ui than they do in vscode.
At least for clojure development.
Now I wish I did that 20 years ago!
This time when I tried it I started to realised that Emacs is a text editor like a saucepan is a popcorn maker: it can do it, but that's not the point.
Once you commit the stupid keybinds to memory, it works the same in most "modes" - git mode, JS mode, file management mode, ftp/remote file mode, hackernews mode... Now I rarely leave Emacs - my entire workflow is inside it and everything starts to feel like "one". It's replaced a dozen third-party apps and websites I'd normally use. I'm annoyed when I have to leave.
It's crap by default, you have to make it your own. Then it's lisp all the way down. You can ask "what is the command bound to the down arrow key?" and it says "next-line". Then you can ask "what is 'next-line"? and it tells you all the function, including a hyperlink to the actual executable source code that you can inspect, or change in place, or use in your higher level scripts.
It's simultaneously living in the past and way in the future. I wouldn't outright recommend it to anyone trying to choose between VSCode and Atom though... you'll just have to discover it for yourself in 20 years time ;)
The thing that made me switch back was that there was some combination of plugins I was using in VS Code (I think it was the VIM plugin and something else maybe) started freezing periodically and the whole editor would become unresponsive and I'd have to restart. After that became normal I decided to switch back.
In the end I preferred to spend my time coding rather than hunt down the problem.
Also Atom's VIM plugin is strictly better for my use case. The highlighting effect to show you what you just `yw` for example is great!
VS Code is not as hackable of an editor, but it comes with great sensible defaults out of the box. I gave up trying to fully customize it, settled with a few tweaks, and have been very satisfied with it as a daily driver. At least for my use case, it's been more reliable and performant than Atom.
The type hinting and "IntelliSense" is one of my favorite features (I'm sure Atom has a plugin for it). I think VS Code hits the sweet spot between an editor and a full-on IDE.
EDIT: Oh, I didn't see this in the article, but it seems Atom is addressing the exact issue I was having:
> The fuzzy finder’s project crawling performance has been improved dramatically by switching to a ripgrep-powered backend. This is most noticeable in projects with large numbers of files - for example, we measured a 14x speed boost in a project with 270K files.
Its even better than vim itself... multi-cursors Vim Mode in Atom is insanely good.
i know you can basically do the same thing with native vim, but having instant feedback like in atom makes it just so easy
Atom is fun. It's easy to configure in weird personal ways, get rid of parts you don't use, add your own plugins, change CSS as you like. There's an insane number of plugins and themes. It's like emacs but organized and nice.
So far the statements from project owners in public and on Slack have been that Atom 1 & 2 development continues full speed.
If it is "killed" we'll just fork it and run up a black flag.
Not a problem, https://vscodium.com/
It's easy to do OSS right when your a major cloud OSS vendor who are able to use your billions of profits from hosting OSS to fund a 30+ strong dev team in creating a free "OSS" product.
If that's the definition of doing OSS right, then the only sustainable "free" products that will be done right will come from multi-billion dollar cloud vendors. I do love VS Code tho, just not a fan of seeing most of the generated wealth from OSS being collected by the major cloud vendors, this trend is going to hurt the diversity of the OSS ecosystem as we know it.
Irrespective of the funding model that made it possible, I will say the VS Code team is doing a fantastic work iteratively shipping new features with each release at a super high velocity.
IMO it's a poster child for why most future Desktop Apps will be built using a Hybrid or WebView dev model like Electron where its productivity is unmatched.
Thanks, Atom team!
1. What happened to Xray? The Next Generation of Atom that was suppose to fix all the performance problem of Atom.
2. Is Atom as fast as VS Code now?
2. No, and it's not trying to be, as "speed" isn't their top priority, extensibility is.
That being said, the days of opening a 5mb file and the editor getting brought to its knees are largely over (unless you have poorly written extensions which can still take everything down, because again in Atom extensions are EVERYTHING and can do ANYTHING).
So Atom is the emacs of Webstack-World?
But obviously if you value "time to open" and if you don't want to customize things, neither of them is going to be a good choice for you!
The primary reason VS Code took over Atom was because of Speed. It shows what is possible with Electron. Not that it is anywhere near the speed of Sublime Text, but it was good enough for most and at least bearable to me. Compared to Atom, all the feedback ( on most Internet forum at least ) are performance related.
The ability to literally customize everything, the ability to replace the built-in plugin that enables tabs with a different one with different features, or the ability to create and use plugins like git-time-machine, or the ability to have full offline documentation with popular libraries baked into the editor, or the ability to write a plugin that turns the editor into an SQL ide allowing me to highlight and ctrl+enter a statement and have it run in a local DB while developing to test some stuff and show the results in a new pane in the UI, or a browser plugin (and editor plugin) that allows me to type this comment in my Atom instance and have it mirror to the web textbox so I have all my normal shortcuts and keybindings, or even just tweak a plugin yourself locally in a few minutes.
For example I run a somewhat unique setup for a current project where I'm running an IDE tool in WSL (the linux subsystem) in windows. The IDE tool runs in the linux layer, but my editor (atom) runs in the windows layer. The editor kicks off the tool and tells it which files to run on, but the paths are different on the 2 sides. So I quick pulled down the plugin, modified it to convert the paths back and forth correctly, and linked it locally and i'm up and running in literally half an hour. that kind of thing isn't nearly as easy in other editors like Sublime or even VSCode in many cases where those tools are either built-in to the editor, or need to use a specified interface which would make this kind of thing much harder to accomplish.
The fact that it takes 5 seconds to startup doesn't bother me at all, and in usage it's more than fast enough for just about everything I can throw at it (again, excluding poorly written plugins that can ruin things sometimes). At most I open my editor a dozen times a day (normally once or twice), but switching to VSCode where plugins are more limited in what they can do (for performance reasons mostly) would cost me significantly more time each day in just switching windows to do things that I used to be able to integrate into my editor.
And at the end of the day, it doesn't need to be perfect for everyone. I get that most people don't want to spend the amount of time that I did and still do customizing and building my editor from plugins, and for them VSCode is great! And still others like yourself value startup time significantly (whether you just enjoy it more or you have a workflow which requires it doesn't matter), and in those cases something like Sublime or even others might be better! It's not a zero sum game, we can all coexist happily!
Another leaf out of VS Code's book?
I open a file, there's still this "clunky" lag of 2-3 seconds to open. I hope they work on optimizing this at some point.
It's too little, too late now.
What do you mean? Atom has always been available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Again, I like Atom's hackability, and mainly avoid it because the ecosystem of plugins is so full of halfly owkring abandonware