Joyful coding
I use Atom for coding emails. I was having a weird problem with Dreamweaver (the licensed software my team uses) for which the program …
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What is Atom?
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.
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What is Atom?
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.
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What is Sublime Text?
Sublime Text is a highly customizable text editing solution featuring advanced API, Goto functions, and other features, from Sublime HQ in Sydney.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.6.
The most common users of Atom are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Atom is a versatile and widely-used text and code editor that offers numerous features and benefits to its users. It is favored by developers across various organizations and industries for a range of use cases. Users appreciate Atom's clean and simple user interface, making it easy to navigate and use without any issues. With support for multiple programming languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, C++, and more, Atom is suitable for diverse coding projects.
One key use case of Atom is as a powerful tool for web development. It enables developers to efficiently write code for websites using languages like PHP, CSS, JS, and HTML. Its features, such as syntax highlighting and autocompletion, make coding in these languages more efficient. Additionally, Atom's integration with Git provides version control capabilities, allowing teams to collaborate on website development projects seamlessly.
Another notable use case of Atom is its popularity among data scientists and analytics professionals. With support for programming languages like Python, R, and Unix, Atom serves as an effective code editor for editing multiple codes in analytics workflows. Its customizable nature allows users to tailor the editor to their specific needs, making it a valuable tool for data analytics and machine learning projects.
Furthermore, Atom is recommended by developers as an alternative to Visual Studio Code due to its relatively basic interface and extensive selection of plugins contributed by the community. This attributes to its widespread usage within organizations as a preferred IDE text editor.
Overall, Atom's versatility, ease of use, extensive plugin ecosystem, and compatibility with various programming languages make it a go-to choice for developers seeking a customizable and efficient coding environment.
Highly Customizable: Many users have praised Atom for its high level of customization. They appreciate the ability to tailor their coding environment to their preferences, with various themes and extensions available. This feature allows them to make their code easier to read and navigate, enhancing their overall coding experience.
Code Hinting Features: Several reviewers have been impressed with Atom's code hinting capabilities. This feature helps them write code faster and integrates well with services like LINT, allowing them to clean up their code according to their team's style choices. Users find this functionality particularly useful in speeding up their coding process.
Free Software: The fact that Atom is free has been seen as a major advantage by many users. They appreciate not having to invest in expensive software while still being able to access a robust coding environment. This affordability makes it accessible to a wide range of developers.
Limited API Requests: Some users have experienced the issue of receiving an error message stating "Error: Request failed with status code 429." Several reviewers have expressed frustration with this limitation, as it hinders their ability to make API requests effectively.
Performance Issues: A number of users have reported performance issues while using Atom. They have noticed sluggishness and lag in the software, particularly when dealing with larger files or projects. This has led to delays and inefficiencies in their workflow.
Lack of Intuitive UI/UX: Several reviewers have mentioned that they find the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of Atom to be less intuitive compared to other text editors. Users have struggled with finding certain features, customizing their workspace, and navigating through the application smoothly.
Users recommend using the self-hosted version of Atom instead of the cloud version and taking advantage of Atom's package manager. They suggest that Atom is suitable for both beginners and professionals, as well as for web development, Ruby on Rails development, and front-end development. Atom is also considered a lightweight and visually appealing text editor. Users often suggest it as an alternative to Sublime Text and for languages without a dedicated IDE. They encourage exploring the wide range of packages available in the Atom community and customizing Atom to personal preferences. Atom is frequently recommended for learning to code and simple web development projects. However, users caution that it may not be suitable for large projects and advise learning the keyboard shortcuts for improved efficiency. Additionally, they recommend using Atom on a PC with higher RAM capacity and exploring Atom's plugins for added functionality.
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October 27, 2021
Atom for all your text editing needs
My organization allows us to choose what IDE/text editor we would like to use, and Atom is a popular choice among developers. One of the biggest business problems that Atom addresses is how to efficiently collaborate with other developers while working remotely. Some of its features make it the best possible option for effective and efficient remote collaboration.
- Remote collaboration
- Customization
- Source code integration
- Ease of use
- Documentation
Atom is a powerful editor that is being used by development teams for coding in any given programming language. We were looking to unify the developer's experience and work on a single platform, as opposed to everyone having their own editor. Although it is not made mandatory, we had a pretty good and quick adoption of the product throughout the years. Atom is very customizable, which helps tremendously.
- Lightweight, intuitive interface that is almost self-explanatory
- Highly customizable (themes, plugins, language support)
- Great community support with open-source extensions
- Some stability issues such as intermittent crashes
- Developers with advanced needs will not find equivalents to VS Studio
- Managing plugins at the corporate level can be cumbersome
Atom is my favourite free, open-source editor. We have use Atom in our development projects. We have used it as a collaboration tool by integrating with Git hub - it was easy to set it up so that the team can work on the same project at the same time from different computers. The code syntax is coloured by language type - which is helpful to see your code. We use it for HTML, JS, CSS, Sass, and PHP editing.
- HTML, CSS, PHP and other code or text editing
- Project collaboration with team and developers
- Free and Open Source
- Good looking interface
- Colour coded syntax
- High start-up time
September 28, 2021
Atom - A simplest, finest , open-source text editor
Atom is used by only the development team in my organization. Atom has a simple UI that makes users use it without any issues. It has support for GitHub and has a lot of plugins. Along with this, a user can write its own plugin. Support code formating for different languages and its minimap feature also helps sometimes. It is being used to develop clean, well-structured code for our product. It is simply perfect because of everything it provides. The next best thing about Atom is that you have git control over it which helps to make things super easy in terms of open sourcing.
- Adding packages in preferable language
- Formatting of code making it easy to read for all users
- Support for GitHub and plugins and plugin development
- It is able to handle large amounts of data without slowing down
- 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
November 23, 2020
Atom editor - multi-cursor mode for the win!
I am the only user of Atom at my organization, but it was the editor of choice at my previous job. It is used for quick-and-dirty text manipulation, as well as for C# and Javascript coding.
- Atom has an amazing plugin library that is easy to use and integrates seamlessly.
- Specifically, Atom's multi-cursor plug-in functionality provides a powerful method for manipulating text in bulk.
- Atom provides good syntax highlighting and other interactive support for a number of programming languages through its available plug-ins.
- Some of Atom's default UX could be improved. Depending on your previous workspace, it can open with two panes and a welcome tab in each, requiring you to close lots of cruft on startup.
- Atom's documentation and plugin marketplace could be a little more discoverable.
I use Atom for C++ development because I enjoy its user interface and I like how extensible it is. I first discovered Atom when a mentor of mine introduced me to the Beta. I was immediately drawn to the fact that it has support for plugins written in Node.js, which I am a big fan of. I also like its Git integration. The fact that the whole app is written in what are essentially web development technologies also appeals to me, given my history in web development. Since I do a lot of Android development, I use Android Studio. However, for the JNI layer and native code (written in C++, in my case) I prefer using Atom over Android Studio.
- Git integration
- Plugin ecosystem
- C++ development
- Sometimes things do not work as expected. Atom has improved a lot over the last couple of years, but it still could use some polish.
- Atom needs plugins for quality-of-life improvements. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows you to customize Atom to suit your needs.
- It would be nice if Atom had some recommended starter packages that come with popular plugins for highlighting, soft-wrapping and so on.
- There are some plugins that could be turned into core Atom features, like Linter and Beautify.
February 15, 2020
Solid editor but since eclipsed by VSCode
We used to use Atom as our code editor of choice for our dynamically typed language. Atom comes with fantastic syntax highlighting and other plugins out of the box that make writing code a breeze. Whenever we have to write HTML, CSS, Javascript, or Python, we used to use Atom. Some engineers also use Atom with some extra plugins for quick text manipulation, such as when they need to format strips, strip out lots of whitespaces, or prefix an unnumbered list with numbers. We have since switched over to VSCode (more on that later), but I would say that Atom is still a good choice if you are already using it.
- Cross platform support for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- Helpful community of people on the forums to ask for help.
- Development on the Atom source code has greatly stalled since Microsoft purchased GitHub.
- Many plugin developers moved their plugins onto VSCode and stopped maintaining their Atom version.
January 30, 2020
Used Atom about 1 year
In our organization (software house), it is totally developers' choice in the engineering department to choose the IDE of their own choice. I was impressed by the shortcuts of Atom like Toggle Comment, Column Selection, Select Same Words, etc. and to install the Packages for ease of development. So that's why I migrated to it.
- Built-in package manager.
- Smart auto completion feature was great.
- 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.
January 18, 2020
WordPress developers get ready for the ATOM bomb...!
We use Atom for coding in different software projects. All developers use Atom, but we also have other editors available. The GIT integration of Atom makes our workflow more manageable. The FTP plugin also helps to connect and edit files on the server directly.
- Git integration
- FTP integration
- Git integration is very complicated to set up.
- In general Atom offers complex features that require time to get familiarized with.
January 16, 2020
Atom is a solid editor for the long run
We use Atom to edit code on the Mac and Windows platform. As a technologist, I do recommend this editor to both faculty and students because it is free and open-source. It is a good text editor and code editor with lots of functionality. It is modern and seems rather stable. I think it will be around for quite a while.
- Edit code in multiple windows.
- Atom is available on many computing platforms.
- Atom seems to be a bit aggressive with the "help" and "tip" system. You have to turn that stuff off or it is annoying.
- On occasion, sometimes a package does not work, they need to pull those.
November 23, 2019
A solid editor that will not disappoint
As an open-source editor, several people within my organization are currently using the power of Atom as their code editor of choice. Because Atom is relatively basic in interface with the added benefit of countless plugins contributed by the larger community, Atom is generally the most recommended editor in my organization outside of Visual Studio Code.
- Usability: Atom is very user-friendly. Its interface is clean and the entire application is incredibly simple to navigate even for users new to editors
- Cross-Platform Experience: No matter your system, Atom works the same which makes providing demos and examples pretty seamless
- Community Driven Plugin Development: Because the community is able to contribute plugins, Atom is extremely useful regardless of what you are trying to do. Working on the Go? There's a plugin for that. Working with infrastructure as code using Terraform? Plugin for that. Editing chef code? There's also a plugin for that.
- Memory Hog: Using Atom, Slack, and Chrome on a laptop that isn't completely specked out is a recipe for disaster. Try opening Spotify, I dare you.
November 21, 2019
A 'hackable' editor by GitHub
My team uses it to develop and maintain our websites using HTML, JavaScript and Django, a python based framework. It is also used as a general purpose text editor. It's light weight too. It also gave us functions comparable to that of a IDE without all the memory usage. It's open source and easily customizable. We also found it to have one of the best GIT integrations among its competitors.
- Opensource : While Sublime is a good editor which is comparable to Atom, it's not opensource. Atom is opensource. Which makes it easier to tailor it to suit your needs.
- Autocomplete: Atom automatically variable names, functions and constructs, it also closes the brackets as soon as you open one. Which helps me avoid syntax errors.
- Simplicity : It maintains simplicity without sacrificing important features.
- GIT Integration : Considering that it's built by GitHub, it's no surprise that Atom has a very good GIT integration.
- Startup is a bit slow. Memory management can be improved.
- Support for syntax highlighting for some languages are missing.
- Some plugins randomly crash and Atom stops responding. Uninstalling the plugin that crashed usually solves this.
- Search engine does not work as you would expect it to work.
August 04, 2019
A text editor for general analytics workflows made easy
Atom is being used by my team as one of the primary text editors for data analytics and machine learning workflows when it comes to making modifications to code and writing analytic SQL queries. The primary business problem it addresses is a cross-platform analytics tool that all our team members can use to make changes to code. It also allows for plugin extensibility, and thereby reduces the amount of friction when sharing text and code that needs highlighting.
- Extensibility via plugins.
- Code highlighting in various languages.
- Cross-platform support.
- User-support.
- Bug and crash handling.
- Lagging when connected to a server.
June 12, 2019
Atom- A freelancers review
Since I am a semi-professional freelancer, Atom is very useful in my exploits in interactive web development. The packages that can be added onto the IDE are very useful, they save time, assist in code structure and development. packages such as HTML Preview help save time between tests as it capture whatever changes I make to the code and displays it in real time, Text Select is another that identifies text of the same name when clicked upon so I can debug my code much more efficiently if need be, Emmit is another that enable short-hand coding which also saves time in terms of tag creations. These a but o few of packages that Atom has to offer to make web development much more efficient and flexible for developers.
- Real-time code previewing.
- Word selection highlights.
- Shorthand coding.
- In terms of processing, if too many packages installed it tends to slow the PC.
- Should also branch out to other languages in terms of ease of use and flexibility.
February 28, 2019
Atom: You have to build it bit by bit.
Atom is being used by select individuals at the University of Kansas, and not by the organization as a whole. Its used primarily as a simple text editor, but can be configured to be used as a full IDE. It is highly configurable to domain-specific problems, but its core competency is text editing.
- Highly configurable. Atom has packages that can be managed through the application or via command line. This gives it incredible power for advanced users.
- Blank Start. Atom opens up by default to a blank note page which can be saved anywhere. It can also be used to open projects, but sometimes notes aren't attached to specific projects. This is useful for quick notes.
- Run anywhere. Due to it being an electron application, Atom can run on Windows/Mac and Linux. This is incredibly powerful, and a surprising differentiator for a desktop application.
- Lack of sync. Atom doesn't have sync built in. I know this can be configured to work with Dropbox or Git, but web applications that sync have a clear advantage.
- Lack of mobile. Not all notes are taken on a computer, and several other note taking apps have an option to take and review notes on a phone.
- Lack of built-in IDE features. Atom can be configured to be an IDE, but other applications are IDEs by default. It takes a good amount of configuration to bring atom up to that level.
February 10, 2019
Atom: an editor for the 21st century
Atom is mostly used by developers across my current organizations. It is a highly customizable editor with many new developer-friendly features. It can also be custom built to suit individual needs. These customizations have quickly made it a favorite with many developers using Atom. In otherways, Atom brings the best of Sublime Text and Notepad++ together.
- Customizations
- Active community for package support
- Rich user interface
- Performance: it's resource hungry
- Stability across OS
- Issue loading and manipulating big files
December 19, 2018
Excellent open source editor
We are using this software throughout the systems department of our organization. It is totally free software so it means a significant saving of money when it comes to paying software licenses. Atom is very versatile and adapts to everything since it has a number of downloadable packages that increase the functions that come by default.
- Supports a large number of programming languages.
- It has a large number of packages that increase functionality.
- Has integration with Git. Projects are automatically synchronized with the Git repository.
- It is very customizable. You can change all styles of editor jobs.
- It's heavy. The initial load of the software can take a long time.
- When you open a file or navigate between the different tabs, the reaction time may be a bit longer than expected.
- If you have a computer with few resources then I would not recommend it.
December 18, 2018
Beautiful code editor
Atom is being used by some software engineers and designers across the tech organization. It's a code editor, so it solves the business problem of needing to write code.
- Really nice UI
- Allows plugins
- Open source
- Doesn't handle huge commits/merges very well
- Rectangle select (though there is a plugin)
- Slightly different shortcuts to Sublime
Atom is my IDE of choice for any web development work I assist with. It is not used department-wide-- solely within the IT section of our company. Atom provides a clean, highly configurable, highly organized, and highly functional environment for coding in all languages--though my experience with it consists only of Javascript, HTML, and CSS.
- Automatic syntax coloring and formatting. Code is so, so much easier to read and write when related keywords are automatically color-coordinated and indentation happens automatically.
- Community-driven plugins. Because Atom is open-source, anyone can write a plugin to add functionality and features to the software--this means, as a user, you have hundreds of valuable tools at your fingertips, for free.
- Aesthetics. As long as you're staring at your computer for 8+ hours per day, you may as well be looking at something aesthetically pleasing, right? Not only is Atom's interface clean and well-polished, you can download custom themes, shift between light/dark mode, and so much more. Having control over the look and feel of your IDE makes long hours of coding so much more enjoyable.
- The tabs that automatically open upon launching the app can be a little cluttered and annoying--they can almost certainly be toggled off in Settings, but their default behavior is slightly irksome.