I like Atom because it is simple and not too complicated. Configurable, full-featured, yet remains nimble. You can not beat the cost of Open Source, so this leaves software like BBEdit out in the cold. Atom is not as hardcore as Vim or Emacs. Less complicated than full IDEs …
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.
PhpStorm is well suited for any project that utilizes PHP. I have used it on Windows, Ubuntu, and Mac OS and it works great on all those platforms. Having a solution that keeps the developer from having to constantly switch tools to do their job is invaluable. Whether you're a junior developer, front end engineer or a senior developer, PhpStorm is a great product that will help you get your work done.
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.
Database browsing, Remote host browsing, and all the deep seated customizations for both the UI and Technical feasability are the result of an amazing integrity and compatibility with most components and technologies.
The built-in shell is insanely helpful for traversing code in order to debug scripts with ease, and the plug-in system makes this software quite extensible.
Not to mention the variety of options and settings (divided into global settings and per-project settings) are both intuitive & easy to use, especially the fact that I can export and import them across my workstations while maintaining my spacing & indentation, highlighting, inspection patterns and syntax styling.
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
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.
The UI is very easy to understand. From common to less common, with the search feature, you can find anything you are looking for within the software. For me, that makes it tremendously easy to use.
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.
The JetBrains community is all about helping others succeed, even in the most obscure setups. I have never had a question go unanswered, or I have never been able to come up with empty results in searching for the answer. My questions or concerns are typically address from other users in the community, so timing is pretty quick for a response
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.
Two things were decisive for choosing PhpStorm, and the first was the Education version since we were a university we were able to license for free, and the other was that we just had to use a single tool to develop our activities (coding, versioning), and operations in the DB). Another point was that the application is cross-platform.
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).
PhpStorm decreased the time to market of new features - we are following the Agile SCRUM methodology with 2 weeks sprints. Using PhpStorm helped with releasing UI features even faster than 2 weeks.
Considering the price of the license and the cost of the server where we run it, the ROI is still high due to less time spent by developers with writing code, debugging, refactoring etc. Especially when you have highly paid developers.
Increased people's happiness - by using a modern tool with lots of features which has made their work easier.
