Atom vs. Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Atom
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.N/A
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, a text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.
$0
Pricing
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
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Considered Both Products
Atom
Chose Atom
Atom is incredibly lighter than Dreamweaver, of course it doesn't have the tools DW provides in terms of preview and clicking an element to be taken to the code... but for small web pages this is not necessary.
Atom is more similar to Notepad++ and the very popular vs code... …
Chose Atom
For the cost, there isn't another text editor or IDE that has more features, more supports, and better integration with packages than Atom. It may take a bit to get used to it, but once familiar, it's very efficient and feature-packed. I find that developers who put in the time …
Chose Atom
Our company likes to keep things open, and we don't want to prevent developers from customizing their environment the way they want. Atom seemed to be a lot more open than our existing tools and has good community support on pretty much any programming language. This can create …
Chose Atom
In beginning stage of project, Atom wins the race against them all. I selected Atom because of its support for many plugins, simplicity, formatting tools, open source control . But for large scale projects, atom is not suitable editor because of its unexpected behaviour in case …
Chose Atom
Atom supports multiple programming languages with debugging options. Other IDEs also have these features but speed matters. I sometimes feel negative about plugins in Atom but all else is good. PyCharm is very heavy as compared to others. VSCode and Sublime are good.
Chose Atom
As I've explained earlier, I genuinely believe that VSCode is a superior editor in most ways (stability, feature development, the vibrancy of the community, wealth of plugins, performance).
There is, however, one more editor to consider, and that is Sublime Text. Sublime Text I …
Chose Atom
NetBeans was a big application in terms of size, so it usually takes more time when starting development.
Chose Atom
Atom and Visual Studio Code are so similar it's hard to not compare them. But for new users, Atom is the clear winner. If you are looking for a clean interface, Atom is the winner. There aren't as many buttons and distractions in Atom which makes it very easy to just pick up …
Chose Atom
We needed an opensource program to tailor it to our needs. It was also stable enough to handle small to medium projects. It had one of the best built-in GIT integration. It has a clean UI. The simplicity of Atom is why we use it to train new members.
Chose Atom
Atom was a program I was familiar with when starting at the company. VSCode, however, has grown in popularity since I've started, and I might switch over in a bit. At this point, it's honestly personal preference. Both platforms have a large user base and accomplish the same …
Chose Atom
Atom is made by the GitHub Team and has a Git native integration. I've found it more complete and easy to cusomize than the others.
Chose Atom
Previously we used Sublime Text but we have changed to Atom because it is open source and has more packages that can be installed. In this way, we saved the money we were paying in licenses and we have invested in improving the hardware of each of the computers in our office.
Chose Atom
Atom is more up to date with features than Sublime is. VS Code is also a really great code editor, but I find Atom more enjoyable overall. The UI and theming is a little nicer, and some of the shortcuts are more similar to Sublime which I was previously used to using.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
VS Code and Atom are very similar, but VSC has clearly won out. The extension library is even bigger, and the community only continues to grow. VSC has some nice layout features, like the icons bar to get to common features and a really nice settings/customization editor. I …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
I used Atom before using Visual Studio Code. Atom is slow, has higher memory usage and crashes sometimes.
Also, Visual Studio Code has thousands of extensions in comparison to Atom. Atom is not suitable for slow or old computers.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
It's faster than Sublime Text and Atom. I used to use Atom and shifted to Microsoft Visual Studio Code one to two years back. I've never used any other editor after using Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
Atom's installation is long and painful compared to Studio Code's. The …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
I used Sublime Text in my introductory years for its syntax highlighting and some customization support. Atom quickly grew to a more powerful IDE with their ability for extensions so that was an easy change. I found that Atom didn't run as reliably as I had hoped, and had …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
I like VS Code a lot more than Atom. VS Code is a little more intuitive.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
For our software dev teams, they still use the products from JetBrains (PhpStorm, RubyMine, etc) when they are laser-focused on one technology. For our less experienced, less code specific web dev team, Microsoft Visual Studio Code knocks it out of the park. I'd recommend …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
We evaluated both Sublime and Atom, and while they are both great tools, they did fall short of the one-stop shop that is Visual Studio Code. The integrations with Docker, Live Share, Azure app services all add to making this a single tool for all our needs. Without having to …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
There are many IDEs available but I don't think anyone is better than Visual Studio Code. Most others are language dependent softwares while VS Code supports all the languages. There are others popular available like Atom, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, and WebStorm but none of them …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code has turned out to be far more powerful than the original promises of the Atom editor. Microsoft Visual Studio Code supports large files much better than Atom, and more extensions are available for language support. NetBeans has been a slower …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
We had better luck with VS Code than Atom. We tried to like Atom pretty hard, but it just had some clunkiness and some unintuitive things that caused us to give up on it. Webstorm seems to be a much more capable competitor. The main pro of VS Code over Webstorm is that VS …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
It has [the] right balance of solutions for [a] wide range of problems. Atom or Notepad++ are lighter but [have fewer] features, [Microsoft] Visual Studio [Code] is full of features but [a] tad heavier.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
VS Code is much more lightweight than IntelliJ and Eclipse and is certainly comparable to Atom. I find that for most of my projects, VS Code is the most stable option, and is generally the quickest to boot. Generally, trying out all four can't hurt, but VS Code has been the …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
[Microsoft] Visual Studio Code beats the competition due to its extensibility. Their robust extensions architecture combined with the plethora of mostly free extensions written by the community can't be beaten. The fact that this tool itself is provided by a world-recognized …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is one of the peak engineering tools you can use today on the market. It's one of the most advanced IDE, and, currently, a de-facto top-used IDE. This alone should be proof to use it.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Every IDE has almost the same features but being lightweight is a plus point for the IDE so that you can run on any hardware with good speed. VS Code has ultimate features.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
The main plus for me was the speed, sleek UI, and the memorable shortcuts for VS Code. Also the smart auto-complete as well as version management (Git), Chrome debugging, and the possibility of plugging in multiple language-specific linters for a better code.
The auto-complete …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
I selected this software because it had enormously useful features, which weren't available in any other similar products in the market.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code does everything better than the previously mentioned software; it improves visual code and overall application visualization. It is easy to use as everything is at hand with shortcuts allowing to improve development time. It is so lightweight that …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
As I explained above, definitely switch to VSCode unless you are heavily invested/comfortable with the alternatives, in which case it may not be worth it for now. Vim users may differ, but did I mention VSCode also has a highly integrated and mature Vim plugin? I used to be a Vi…
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft provides regular update patches to the Visual Studio Code IDE making sure to prevent vulnerabilities. As compared to other editors as mentioned, it is not open source but free to use, which means only certified update patches can be applied to the IDE, whereas in open …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Purely on the fact that support and having the app frequently updated alone makes this worthwhile over the others. Some of them also do share the ease of installation, but Microsoft Visual Studio Code has all the common pro points and more, making it a natural selection.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is easy to install, always updated, free, and ultra-customizable with extensions. All other alternatives either don't have these features or are not as great as VS Code in terms of implementing them. I have been using Microsoft VS Code for a year …
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
In my opinion, VS Code is the best option for coding. It works on Windows, GNU/Linux, and macOS. Moreover, there's a great team/community behind the scene to maintain this program.
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code has the advantage of being free to use, open source, and very customizable and lightweight. Some of the other text editors/IDE's lack some of these key features that I consider to be of extreme importance, and Visual Studio Code can be tailored to …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Small Businesses
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 8.2 out of 10
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 8.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Vim
Vim
Score 9.7 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Vim
Vim
Score 9.7 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(31 ratings)
8.7
(89 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(13 ratings)
9.7
(24 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio Code
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
Atom is great for simple HTML coding. It's fast, has intuitive shortcuts and several options. I particularly love the "convert spaces to tabs" function that I haven't seen in other editors.
I'm not sure how it would fair in more serious web development today, if there are plugins for live updates of the page you are working on...
But the problem is that it has been discontinued so you know there are no new features or fixes coming through.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is highly recommended for the development of systems and / or complex applications entrusted to work teams under a specific methodology, and its use is also recommended for the maintenance of previously developed applications.
It is not recommended as a learning environment for developers with little experience as the learning curve would be too high
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Pros
Open Source
  • Atom is highly customizable and allows for various themes and extensions that can make your code easier to read.
  • Atom has many code hinting features that allow users to write faster and integrate with services likeLINT that can clean up your code once your done to meet your internal teams style choices.
  • It's very fast and manages projects well - Accessing other files within a related folder(s) is very easy and intuitive.
  • It's free!
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Microsoft
  • Very accessible -- it's compatible with all platforms and environments, free to install, and fast to open
  • Strong native support for many languages, and very strong extensibility to provide advanced language features
  • Git integration is top-notch, often displaying a better history, diff, and merge interface that is otherwise available in version control systems
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Cons
Open Source
  • There should be a better user tips manual page to learn keyboard shortcuts
  • It would also be beneficial if mathematical and data analytic tools were added
  • it has quite high start-up timing when you open large projects to work on it
  • Sometimes, atom closed suddenly and do not open again
  • It still lacks better options with the previews even though there are already some by users adding plugins
  • It doesn't have self-correct features for lint errors, unlike IntelliJ
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Microsoft
  • Lack of button bar like ones found in Visual Studio.
  • Lack of integrated help that could link to YouTube, Channel 9, or other Microsoft videos on how to learn about features.
  • Integration with Team Foundation Server.
  • Would like to see it having some sort of integration into a Web API testing harness.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
Well Atom is open source so the re-new is a no brainer. The only way I would stop using Atom is if the developers somehow made it not function well. Or, if the project got forked to a commercial version or something. Or, there could be the case that development stops or that it was not updated on this or that platform
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Microsoft
Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
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Usability
Open Source
I give Atom a 9 because it is one of the most modern text editors built with JavaScript intentionally to allow the editor to be changed and modified with custom functionality that a team may need. I think I would otherwise give atom an 8 due to support, but it gets a 9/10 because of the extensibility/plugin capability.
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Microsoft
This is a tool for programmers and it works like many others. If you are in the development world already then you will be sailing in no time with Microsoft Visual Studio Code. It is also great for new developers and it is very easy to use and you can get all the tools you need in one place as you begin to learn.
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Support Rating
Open Source
Atom has an active forum and a Slack group where you can ask technical questions. Occasionally, the authors will pop in to answer a few questions here and there, but most of the time, its other helpful users who will assist you. Though they aren't the most knowledgeable, they are at least timely.
As for plugin support, that differs with each plugin, but as I mentioned before, many plugins are no longer maintained.
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Microsoft
Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
Just download and install
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source
Our company likes to keep things open, and we don't want to prevent developers from customizing their environment the way they want. Atom seemed to be a lot more open than our existing tools and has good community support on pretty much any programming language. This can create some confusion since adding too many extensions or customizing can make the tool slower than it is supposed to be.
Read full review
Microsoft
[Microsoft] Visual Studio Code beats the competition due to its extensibility. Their robust extensions architecture combined with the plethora of mostly free extensions written by the community can't be beaten. The fact that this tool itself is provided by a world-recognized company, Microsoft, free of charge is phenomenal. The goodwill garnered by them is immeasurable. Other tools I've used were missing features or were just too rigid, too complicated, or too unsophisticated for my liking. The fact that VS Code is easy to mold to my will with the right extensions seals the deal.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • The tool we use when we need quick fixes. Allows fast, reliable scripting to fix urgent problems in our applications.
  • When applications grow from 5-10 files to 100's, they need to be migrated to a heavier-duty IDE. This can be cumbersome and quite annoying, but is necessary to maintain code integrity on such a large scale (since it cannot be done with the limited default toolset of Atom).
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Microsoft
  • Positive impact on minimizing time wasted by employees with software installation and setup
  • Positive impact on reducing spend on software licensing
  • Positive impact on minimizing time used to manage different applications for different purposes - this performs all of the functions we need in basic coding
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