Atom vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Atom
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.N/A
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.
$45
per month
Pricing
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AtomVisual Studio
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
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
They are both pretty good; however, Sublime is free to use but on a trial basis. Atom is free open source. Sublime doesn't have the Github integration or a project file browser. Sublime does have a workspace view option but haven't really used it as much as Atom.
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
Compared to its major competitors, Atom is an IDE that does not run code but on the other hand it is also the one which allows multiple programming languages to exist at the same time, which make certain types of coding such as object-oriented programming much easier than any …
Chose Atom
Atom is the tool that does not run any code but at the same time, it is also the tool that allows you to write different codes. Even though you cannot use Atom on the cloud, but since it is using pure python, it is still preferred.
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 is way more user-friendly than other text editors. However, I am not sure if this affects other aspects as compatibility with some languages or other features as having to save a file with a particular extension for autofill to be enabled for the current work. Still, …
Chose Atom
Compared to coding programs, I've found brackets to be more robust. Some aspects of Atom I've found to be somewhat cumbersome (JSON customization when GUI should be an option), but ultimately Atom is a better experience. Other programs like Dreamweaver tend to be clunky and …
Chose Atom
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 …
Chose Atom
Adobe Dreamweaver is really meant more for designers who don't understand the underlying code/CSS principles etc. While it's improved heaving over the years it's still rights a lot of extra junk/redundant code and isn't taken seriously among true web developers.
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
Both sublime text and notepad++ have a long history for being good code editors. However, it's important to realize the changes and growth in the field of text editors, and Atom is simply a lot better now in terms of community and support.
Chose Atom
Easy to use. doesn't require registration or activation, you can use right after installation. has the option of packages to give the IDE more dynamics in terms of development and debugging. Its flexibility just gives it that edge over other IDE's.
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 better than Notepad++ in that it can be used on a Mac. I much prefer Notepad++'s integration of macros for text manipulation, though. It also handily defeats TextEdit.

MS Visual Studio Code is better for developers, and may just require rethinking where notes go by …
Chose Atom
Atom is not as great for Android development as Android Studio, as great for iOS development as Xcode, C# for Visual Studio, or even Java with Eclipse. Atom is less-preferred for any of those platforms for me. However, it is my preferred IDE for just about every other …
Chose Atom
Atom has many open source competitors in Sublime Text, Notepad++, etc. When we consider the presence of time tested players like Notepad++, the fact that Atom has been able to carve a niche market of its own says a lot about its capabilities. The user interface is very rich and …
Chose Atom
Atom is simpler to install and maintain, does not generate unwanted files, does not add folders or other hidden objects to your project.
Chose Atom
Not listed is Vim, which is another free-form editor that is in the same product category. Vim and Emacs are both supported on more platforms and with lower systems requirements and similar versatility, but don't offer the ease of use (both being primarily keyboard-only …
Visual Studio
Chose Visual Studio
It has free community version which make it to use vastly and no budget needed. Good UI to work on and Add-on we can use add and use what ever we need. The extensions that helps to use it.
Chose Visual Studio
For performance and community reach, Microsoft Visual Studio is by far the best. It's the most used and allows us to be efficient and productive without being guinea pigs and having to test new, potentially breaking features.
Chose Visual Studio
A few years ago, Microsoft Visual Studio felt behind Rider in many features, these days, I'd say they go hand in hand.
Chose Visual Studio
I like that you don't have to install a heap of plugins before you can start coding as I am never sure which plugins are ok/safe/standard. We have had issues with painful licensing in some other products.
Chose Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio works well with the Windows operating system an there is less need to install other third party packages to work with the above IDE's. You don't need to install a separate C compiler.
Chose Visual Studio
VS is intuitive and easy to understand. The compiling, notes, debugging, and testing make it easy to build your app. With the integrated repository, it makes it a breeze to stage and commit/update your files. You don't have to go to the OS folders to do it.
Chose Visual Studio
Eclipse is primarily used for Java development, and Android Studio is used for Android app development. Since our work is mainly focused on .NET applications, we use Microsoft Visual Studio to develop our software solutions. Microsoft Visual Studio IDE is way above the rest of …
Chose Visual Studio
Compared with Delphi it is night and day, but that is perhaps because my experience was coming from a Microsoft coding environment to having to setup a development machine for Delphi coding.

What made the alternative such a difficult process was having to download and install …
Chose Visual Studio
I have not developed with other products since a lot of years because this is the official development application in our company. I think other applications could be similar as I was developing in other but this was a lot of years ago, so it is not a good question to answer.
Chose Visual Studio
Much superior integrations, better UI, and overall development experience. Debugging and testing in other tools was a frustrating experience, but proved much more satisfying in Visual Studio.
Chose Visual Studio
Eclipse is also very good but it's more suitable for Java development. Our requirement is more towards .Net, C# and hence Microsoft Visual Studio works well for us. If your primary requirement is Java and cross platform, Eclipse works well. But our specific requirement makes …
Chose Visual Studio
For beginners, the other tools are easier to set up and run. It is also entirely customizable, but Visual Studio Code has more plugins that allow you to streamline your work.
Chose Visual Studio
MATLAB and QT are way more different than Visual Studio. Despite of being famous as per their IDE environment, they would not stand much comparison with VS Visual Studio IDEs. because, MATLAB and QT are limited edition and feature related Visual Studio IDEs, and they stick to …
Chose Visual Studio
We choose Visual Studio IDE because it is easier to set up with C# and more stable. Each time we use Eclipse to make a program, we had bad behavior. Maybe that was our computer setup but we finally go with something more stable and more useful for our company.
Chose Visual Studio
Visual Studio is somewhat different from LiveCode. LiveCode is a coding platform that is unique and implemented most often by colleges, universities, and other academic institutions. It is more of a coding language than a team-collaboration resource. However, the LiveCode …
Chose Visual Studio
It contains everything a developers wants--starting from a basic terminal to millions of extensions. It's the best solution for developers.
Chose Visual Studio
I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, …
Chose Visual Studio
It's a well [maintained], mature IDE, which has the benefit of being a [software] which only the most skilled developers works on, instead of being open source. It has a lot of very useful features, which most free IDE-s don't. Also, it has many options from commercial …
Chose Visual Studio
Some of the editors are suitable for a particular programming language . For example pyCharm is suited for Python .
Visual Studio has support for many languages and Visual Studio is comparatively light weight from most of the IDE . The ability to get extensions and use them is …
Chose Visual Studio
Eclipse, PyCharm, Netbeans I have used during my internship for smaller applications but to have a full end-to-end application with ease to connect to database and deployment I believe Visual Studio is way better than other available IDE in this space.
Although your options get …
Chose Visual Studio
I can't compare the NetBeans or PhpStorm with Visual Studio IDE due to entirely different use. All software development IDEs holds their importance, but Visual Studio IDE is the best among its competitors--the IntelliSense and standardization of development, in particular,are …
Chose Visual Studio
Visual Studio IDE is on par with Rider. There are some code insights and package management that Rider does better, but it's the debugger and profiling I find more powerful in Visual Studio IDE. I also consider the UI in Visual Studio IDE to be more appealing and intuitive to …
Best Alternatives
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio
Small Businesses
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 10.0 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Vim
Vim
Score 9.7 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Vim
Vim
Score 9.7 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AtomMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Atom is great for developers looking for a completely hackable experience. There is a ton of plugins available to you, and you can really build an editor that matches your own personal taste. The performance is also pretty neat and does not impact your CPU as much as the competition.
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When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
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Pros
  • 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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  • Since Microsoft offers a free Community Edition of the IDE many of our new developers have used it at home or school and are very familiar with the user interface, requiring little training to move up to the paid, enterprise-friendly editions we use.
  • The online community support for Visual Studio is outstanding, as solid or better than any other commercial or open-source project software.
  • Microsoft continuously keeps the product up to date and has maintained a history of doing so. They use it internally for their own development so there is little chance it will ever fall out of favor and become unsupported.
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Cons
  • Due to some default settings, when I opened the file in Atom and commit it on Git it shows almost every line is changed so my PR is looking too big/ugly.
  • I think omitting the empty spaces should not be the default setting.
  • Performance needs some attention.
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  • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
  • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
  • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
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Usability
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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Using the Microsoft Visual Studio environment is very easy. You have many options to find what you need in the moment, or you can ask a question in the community and find an answer there to solve your problem. It is very interesting to learn about the community, as many people are developing with MS Visual Studio around the world.
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Support Rating
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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There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
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Implementation Rating
Just download and install
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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... but I prefer it to vs code because of the themes (although i found recently some new additions that are similar to my favourite) and just the feeling when navigating/typing is not the same, it's very hard to describe... but it just doesn't feel "right"
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Eclipse is primarily used for Java development, and Android Studio is used for Android app development. Since our work is mainly focused on .NET applications, we use Microsoft Visual Studio to develop our software solutions. Microsoft Visual Studio IDE is way above the rest of the development tools by miles due to its ease of use and ease of software development.
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Return on Investment
  • ROI can be said as neutral because eventually, we have to switch to another text editor because of many limitations of Atom for large code.
  • In starting stage of the project, everything was fine and things were happening as expected
  • Overall it has been a great experience using Atom in my organization but many challenges were faced so that's something Atom should work on.
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  • One of the most important components of Visual Studio IDE is team collaboration, which improves team productivity.
  • It supports a wide range of languages. It's simple to add a library and have the IDE display autocomplete, suggestions, and errors while you code.
  • Visual Studio has a lot of shortcuts, which helps me a lot by saving a lot of time. Its dark theme appeals to me. Intellisense has been quite beneficial.
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ScreenShots