Atom.io: Multi-Folder Projects

Yeah, I wish people would stop dismissing all the effort the Atom contributors are making by bringing up the 2MB file limit all the time. I've not seen a 2MB source code file (thankfully!) in a long time so it doesn't impact me. If I need to edit or search through a >2MB e.g. log or CSV file, I usually do that from the terminal anyways. The file size limit is a bit weird I'll admit but not a showstopper for me.

sourcegraph-atom looks pretty awesome, I tried to get Jump to Definition to work but gave up after an hour of messing with it. If Atom had that, it would be definitely better than Sublime for my use case.

I've tried making the switch last week but Atom is still missing some very essential basics for me, such as the ability to quit the app, reopen it, and have it automatically restore the same views, layout, files, and cursor location it had when it closed. I tried a couple add-ons that claimed to add this feature of Sublime Text to Atom but I just got a lot of plugin errors and they didn't actually work.

I also miss some basic things like the ability in Sublime Text to start up in fullscreen automatically (not a maximized window, but true distraction free fullscreen with no system UI or menubar visible).

Additionally for some reason the fuzzy search is extremely slow and seems to reindex from scratch regularly, blocking me for about 10 seconds every single time I restart the app, compared with Sublime Text where I have never had to wait on a blocking indexing operation to use the fuzzy search.

I think Atom will be great some day but it still isn't there for me yet.

Atom is now my primary text editor for miscellaneous tasks, quick fixes and languages that are not supported by Jetbrains IDE plugin ecosystem. It can't match the refactoring and autocompletion capabilities but it is a very useful addition to a toolbox.

Its strongest selling point is extensibility. I've never thought of developing text editor modules but to my surprise I've made a few Atom packages. They are strongly dependent on my personal workflow and have measurably contributed to my productivity. I've not experienced such benefits neither using sublime nor using notepad++. And it was quite enjoyable. Just opened the docs(admittedly somewhat lacking) and started hacking away.

I am well aware that it is heresy, but I like that it is built on DOM. I don't care much about startup time or editing files with thousands of lines. Atom works great for my use cases.

It's painful sometimes, like the wait the first time I want to jump to a file in a project while 50k files get re-indexed, or the slow regex replace. Or the cludgy add ons that spew errors out onto the screen and console windows.

In spite of all the flaws I think it's only a matter of time until Atom is better than sublime and continues to improve beyond that, while being open source.

I've been using Atom for a few months now for projects in various languages. I like the UI and haven't had any issues with it. Performance has been fine for me although I am using a high-end MacBook. The limit on opening files over 2MB is a little annoying but it's rare I need to edit files that large.

I use it for Go exclusively because of go-plus but I would never use it for anything else. Those extra 20ms when scrolling, typing, etc are very distracting to me.

I've been using it for the last 1.5 years or about a month after it came out full-time.

I used to use Emacs for most of my development, and while I lost speed moving to Atom, I gained a little bit of sanity, and I like the UI of Atom more.

I also use LightTable for a few things (namely WebGL), but don't do it as much as I like. I like LightTable's UI more than Atom, but Atom does most of what I like.

My main dev work in Atom is JS / Ruby / HTML. I also use it for Git sometimes (diff, adding, committing, pulling, etc), though I use the command line more often for Git.

I don't find speed to be a problem, and I can get around pretty quickly. I don't see a reason why I'd still use Sublime TBH.

I'm primarily a haskell developer and most haskell source files are relatively small so I don't have too many issues with speed or lag. I just love atom, the look and feel, package installations, extensibility ...

Using it on and off, but that's mostly because I'm hopelessly addicted to vim. In fact it says a lot that this is the first editor that can replace vim for several days in a row.

Coworkers otherwise completely replaced Sublime with Atom.

That said, atom can do stuff that is simply impossible to do in vim†, such as https://atom.io/packages/svg-preview (shameless plug).

† used to use vim+fswatch+open(1) on OS X, but that's incredibly hackish in comparison to what amounts to instantaneous native support by design.

I use it regularly but there still seems to be a lot of stability/GUI issues, especially when using a lot of packages. I feel a lot is missing natively but I'm comparing to Notepad++ which has a lot of utility functions by default. I still haven't reached parity with NPP but I'm fairly close for my most used functionality.

I've used it for a while. I think the ecosystem is great. I don't have too much of a gripe for the things that most do (slow startup, can't handle large files). However, there's a bug with full screen on OSX that is a deal-breaker and keeps sending me back to Sublime: if you swipe between full-screen instances of Atom, sometimes modals end up in the wrong place, but you can't get to that instance. So you have to hard-kill, and imagine if that modal is a Save As. (the other day it did something differently strange and annoying: Have 2 projects, A and B open. Swiping between full screens, it only showed A.. only way to get B was to select from Window menu, and this behavior kept persisting whenever I'd swipe away)

I've been using it full time since their windows release, and I'm very happy with it.

Takes a while to start-up, but otherwise I find it's very snappy.

I'd love to hear a testimonial from a python dev. I'd like to make the switch, but I can't without basic tools like autocomplete

I still prefer a full IDE like IntelliJ for my day to day work. If I do use a pure editor it is going to be Sublime (and sometimes vim).

I still use sublime for all of my projects. I don't see any reason to change over

I still find it a bit slow and a bit of a memory hog. But its very nice and getting better.

Shameless plug, as I scratched that itch: https://atom.io/packages/ex-mode

Does much more than `:w` now, but contributions are very welcome.

I just mapped ":" to the command palette then added a few commands to my init...

    atom.commands.add 'atom-text-editor', 'w', ->
	atom.commands.dispatch(this, 'core:save')

Repeat for wq, q! etc ...then it works as expected thanks to the shortest commands showing up first in the palette.

> skunk works project with no revenue potential

You just don't know about that. Github is a code hosting and project management (somewhat) company. They're building a tool that help teams write code that is then hosted on their product and it's based on web technologies. At some point, Github could pull a very pleasing workflow integration (in-browser or otherwise) and suddenly Atom would be very valuable to the company. If they could create the same sort of adoration we see for other editors (vim, emacs, sublime) it could also become an important reputation asset for the company. There are just so many ways this makes sense for them although, I agree, in terms of short term accounting there's nothing to see.

Github was bootstrapped from 2008 until finally taking $100M in 2012. I don't think they needed the money, so they probably got it on really good terms. I don't think the investors have much sway in daily affairs nor control of the board.

Projects like this can have marketing or brand value far beyond the cost of two engineers. Also, it seems like parts of atom.io could eventually be integrated right into the github website.

> I'm surprised a company of GitHub's size can pull off what is essentially a skunk works project with no revenue potential

Since when do extensible editors around which IDEs can be built have no revenue potential?

And that's before even considering synergies that an editor integrating workflows for other GitHub services might have.

They raised at least $100m. An editor is probably the most important developer tool. Their basic service is free. I would imagine their investors (mainly a16z) would be delighted if they delivered a highly used programming editor.

What if you never had to push to github? What if you could boot up your Chromebook and head over to your repo, work on it, do the push-to-deploy dance, and never edit a local copy?

I'd hate it. But 2 full-time engineers? Yeah, that's eminently justifiable.

I reminds me of Google building Chrome... and that turned out okay :)

That screenshot uses the new default UI and syntax themes. Both are called `One Dark`. I think the UI theme is quite amazing; it adapts to complement whatever syntax theme you're using. See simurai's blog post: http://blog.atom.io/2015/02/18/one-themes.html.

A fix is currently in progress: https://github.com/atom/text-document