Atom 1.36

https://blog.atom.io/2019/04/09/atom-1-36.html

by beardicus • 7 years ago

90 72 7 years ago

blog.atom.io

Prediction: I believe eventually MS will kill Atom or let development languish. People will complain that "MS is evil" and "look who they were in the past" and so on, but devs will go where the features are.

VS Code is one of the finest examples of open source Done Right™, and while it owes something to Atom and Electron, this is pure open source darwinism.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

There's been previous discussion over this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18507817

Take what you will from it. I'm not sure they will kill it, but I don't know why they need to maintain two editors either, then again they already maintain Visual Studio as well. I think it would be nice to see how both teams push their editors, but I feel like over the long haul it will be some VIM vs Neovim type of this. Additionally, VS Code will focus on strongly supporting Microsofts tech (via plugins), while Atom will focus on GitHub to some extent.

jsgo• 7 years ago

My guess is that if anything, they'd turn Atom over to an external body to maintain and let it sink/swim on its own. Currently they seem to be fine with having both, which is cool. Maybe it is to have two separate teams work on different ideas and see which ones work and mainline it into Visual Studio Code? Not sure.

I wish Visual Studio Code replaced Visual Studio, but unfortunately, it still holds value if working against Microsoft's stack. I like having them both and will occasionally use Code for .NET edits, but you definitely feel like it is missing some comforts at the very least when using it.

paulcarroty2• 7 years ago

15-20 commits per week says they just support it and don't implement any major features. Hope I'm not right here.

denisw• 7 years ago

Looking only at the commit numbers of the `atom/atom` repo is a bit misleading as the Atom source code as the core plugin packages (e.g., the language modes, but also fundamental features like the tree and the fuzzer) are each in their own repo. For instance, the fuzzy-finder repo alone had 15+ commits in the last three weeks.

youeseh• 7 years ago

And then we'll all go back to Vim and the cycle of life will once again complete itself.

xrd3• 7 years ago

Can anyone who has stayed with Atom after evaluating VSCode comment on why to stay with Atom? I switched to VSCode and would never consider going back to Atom at this point.

Since the GitHub acquisition, it makes no sense for MS to maintain both and I agree 100% with the parent comment that this will be killed soon.

dessant• 7 years ago

Atom's user interface feels more ergonomic. Atom can show panels on the left and right at the same time, so you can set it up to have the file explorer on the left, and Git on the right, enabling you to work without having to switch between views. The small buttons for quickly folding panels are also a nice touch.

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/26777

strzibny• 7 years ago

I, for one, couldn't get used to VS Code look and feel for some reason. I mostly do Sublime Text, but I combined it with Atom a lot in the past. So yeah, not about features or anything.

littlestymaar• 7 years ago

I personally never liked VSCode's UI. That's 100% subjective, I'm not claiming Atom's UI is better, I just like it a lot and it was kind of a “love at first sight moment”, and VSCode just didn't gave me that feeling.

Also, I'm using a ton of Atom plugin that didn't exist on VSCode at the time I tried (this may have changed, but since I disliked the UI, I'm not going to try VSCode again).

IshKebab• 7 years ago

I don't use Atom, but one feature it has that I wish VSCode has is "atomic tabstops". It means if you are forced to work against your will on code that inexplicably uses spaces for indentation, it will act as if they really used tabs.

Atom is the only editor I've seen that has it unfortunately.

xd1936• 7 years ago

I stayed with Atom for a long while because my main use case at work is editing single text files on remote servers... There's not a great plugin for this in VSCode. Atom makes it easy to quickly open, edit, save, and close over FTP/SFTP.

breatheoften• 7 years ago

I switched from Atom to VSCode (rather enthusiastically). My biggest loss is the find/replace interface from atom -- it was _such_ a nice interface -- so fast to browse over all the matching contexts and replace piece by piece or all at once.

Atom's find/replace interface was the favorite version of the feature I've used in any editor -- would be cool to see how that design evolved to support other kinds of automated edits (like refactorings).

PascLeRasc• 7 years ago

Personally I strongly prefer the UI of Atom, especially the iconography, settings menu, and visual layout. VS Code has a lot of extra features it shows by default that for me are just distracting. I love zen mode in Atom and the package ecosystem has been fantastic for me. Teletype is a killer feature, it's such a joy to use and makes me feel like I'm in the future. I've seen a lot of complaints about typing latency but I haven't noticed a difference between Atom and Sublime on either my OS X laptop or my work PC.

I also have a massive personal bias against Microsoft, so take this with a grain of salt.

aashcan2• 7 years ago

Still stick with Atom as my main text/code editor here. I started out with it mainly to write LaTeX, but since do most of my code editing also in Atom. I looked at VSCode back in '17 but found it quite clunky and not as intuitive as Atom. Things like changing key-binding based on a profile for example needs a quick Google - or maybe I am just slow!

I keep going back now and then to VS Code especially when I need to use the debugger to step through some code. But otherwise, my workflow since has evolved around the little niggles of Atom(like having to open separate terminal windows) so I don't feel the need to switch.

citrusx2• 7 years ago

Two things about VSC, in comparison to Atom, that are Done Wrong: 1) Extensibility. There's like a dozen times more friction involved in creating a plugin for VSC than for Atom. Atom was built to be as easy to change as a web app. They also created apm, which is sort of a clone of npm, for installing plugins. 2) Configurability. I can set personal keyboard shortcuts very easily, and in a way that's easily transportable between installations. I can create a new theme in minutes. Also, the way it handles the config for individual packages is well thought out. Plus, I can tarball my packages directory, extract it to a new machine, and it's basically ready to go with everything.

It's very possible for VSC to improve in these areas. In fact, I'd love to see an "Atom mode" that changes the UI/UX to more closely resemble Atom (and, somewhat by extension, Sublime). You laugh, but there's a reason that every editor takes a swing at a "vim mode". People get comfortable with the aesthetics of their tools.

swlkr• 7 years ago

I still use atom over VSCode because of the UI and the extensions.

The extensions in atom seem to have quite a few more permissions to change the ui than they do in vscode.

At least for clojure development.

mrspeaker3• 7 years ago

I followed the crowd on the switch from Hot Dog Pro to Notepad++, then followed the crowd again to TextMate. Then again to Sublime Text. Then again to Atom. I installed VSCode and it took over my file extensions without asking me and I got annoyed and was going to go back to Atom, but then wondered why I was still playing this game. So I switched to Emacs.

Now I wish I did that 20 years ago!

dbbk• 7 years ago

Atom has always 'Just Worked' for me. For my projects (which are mostly Ember and Laravel) VSCode always had some issue, something to do with import maps. It also feels more sluggish to me than Atom.

yuchi• 7 years ago

Tree Sitter. Being able to do Alt+Up/Down and have syntax blocks selected with such a confidence has really changed the way I write code.

bwha• 7 years ago

I was with Atom for years, switched to VS Code and feel in love (save for the find and replace as cited above, I still felt/feel Atom's is better than VS Code's) and stuck with it (VS Code) for months.

The thing that made me switch back was that there was some combination of plugins I was using in VS Code (I think it was the VIM plugin and something else maybe) started freezing periodically and the whole editor would become unresponsive and I'd have to restart. After that became normal I decided to switch back.

In the end I preferred to spend my time coding rather than hunt down the problem.

Also Atom's VIM plugin is strictly better for my use case. The highlighting effect to show you what you just `yw` for example is great!

nobleach• 7 years ago

Atom's Vim-Mode-Plus is amazing. VSC's vim plugin still has a way to go. (It's buggy, sometimes things just don't work) VSC is just not as extensible. If I want to change that bottom bar color, I have to set it in a config file, there's no hook to change it on the fly. If I want to navigate around the interface only via keyboard, it's not a pleasure. If I want to simply open a file in the file explorer on MacOS, I can't just hit <enter>... and I don't think anyone's figured out a way around that yet.

mdhughes• 7 years ago

Strongly disagree. VS Code is a corporate tool IDE, which is dull and awkward to use as just an editor, and binary spyware in it "phones home" to its users' masters in Redmond. It's exactly what an MSDN subscriber would like, but dire for anyone else.

Atom is fun. It's easy to configure in weird personal ways, get rid of parts you don't use, add your own plugins, change CSS as you like. There's an insane number of plugins and themes. It's like emacs but organized and nice.

So far the statements from project owners in public and on Slack have been that Atom 1 & 2 development continues full speed.

If it is "killed" we'll just fork it and run up a black flag.

equasar• 7 years ago

I think you missed the /s in your comment.

paulcarroty2• 7 years ago

and binary spyware in it "phones home" to its users' masters in Redmond

Not a problem, https://vscodium.com/

mythz• 7 years ago

VS Code is one of the finest examples of open source Done Right™

It's easy to do OSS right when your a major cloud OSS vendor who are able to use your billions of profits from hosting OSS to fund a 30+ strong dev team in creating a free "OSS" product.

If that's the definition of doing OSS right, then the only sustainable "free" products that will be done right will come from multi-billion dollar cloud vendors. I do love VS Code tho, just not a fan of seeing most of the generated wealth from OSS being collected by the major cloud vendors, this trend is going to hurt the diversity of the OSS ecosystem as we know it.

Irrespective of the funding model that made it possible, I will say the VS Code team is doing a fantastic work iteratively shipping new features with each release at a super high velocity.

IMO it's a poster child for why most future Desktop Apps will be built using a Hybrid or WebView dev model like Electron where its productivity is unmatched.

Hamuko• 7 years ago

Does Atom still eat any resources your computer has to offer?

olliepop• 7 years ago

Yes, and it's worse than ever before.

taylorlapeyre• 7 years ago

Prediction: If VS Code is the general do-it-all editor, Atom will become the GitHub editor. Atom is quickly ramping up feature integration with GitHub — seen here with integrating review comments inline with the code and the deep GitHub PR integration in general.

GitHub and Atom have a very linked future, with GitHub planning to become more involved with the actual code-writing process. Atom will be the conduit though which they achieve that.

outside12342• 7 years ago

I think you forgot who owns GitHub.

arjun27• 7 years ago

fyi, the GitHub PR extension[1] for VS Code has review comments in the editor.

[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=Gi...

GordonS• 7 years ago

VS Code has had excellent git integration for a long time, as well as GitHub-specific integrations through an extension.

Atom may have started the move towards lightweight (relatively) IDEs, but VS Code is undoubtedly the more popular one. Honestly, when I saw this post on HN I was quite surprised to see that Atom is still actively developed - if there's anyone reading this that prefers Atom over VS Code, I'd really like to find out why?

galfarragem• 7 years ago

VS Code, like Python, seems to be the second best tool on everything: it looks good but not as much as Atom, it's fast but not like Sublime or Vim, it's a lightweight IDE but not a full IDE.

asdkhadsj2• 7 years ago

Any thoughts on which is more friendly for (complex) plugin writing?

I've been wanting to add multi-cursor modal focused features to an editor for a while and I've been debating which editor would be the best one to write for. Thoughts?

geezerjay• 7 years ago

VS Code has had excellent git integration for a long time

I don't agree. Last time I've checked vscode fails un some rather basic requirements, as for example vscode's file renaming functionality is entirely oblivious to Git which causes unnecessary problems to the user.

elbrian• 7 years ago

While Atom was Mac-only, VSCode was eating their lunch.

It's too little, too late now.

guessmyname• 7 years ago

While Atom was Mac-only, VSCode was eating their lunch. It's too little, too late now.

What do you mean? Atom has always been available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

nnq• 7 years ago

...ever tried actually using it on Windows? Like a year ago it got to ok-ish usable. A bit before that even on most Linuxes it had crappy performance.

Again, I like Atom's hackability, and mainly avoid it because the ecosystem of plugins is so full of halfly owkring abandonware

aashcan2• 7 years ago

The fuzzy finder’s project crawling performance has been improved dramatically by switching to a ripgrep-powered backend. This is most noticeable in projects with large numbers of files - for example, we measured a 14x speed boost in a project with 270K files.

Another leaf out of VS Code's book?

graphememes• 7 years ago

Atom lost the HTML Editor race.

ksec2• 7 years ago

To anyone who is following Atom closely,

1. What happened to Xray? The Next Generation of Atom that was suppose to fix all the performance problem of Atom.

2. Is Atom as fast as VS Code now?

Klathmon3• 7 years ago

1. I haven't heard anything about it recently but that doesn't mean work isn't continuing on it. Xray wasn't supposed to "fix" anything really, it was a fairly extreme experiment to see if it would be worth going down that path.

2. No, and it's not trying to be, as "speed" isn't their top priority, extensibility is.

That being said, the days of opening a 5mb file and the editor getting brought to its knees are largely over (unless you have poorly written extensions which can still take everything down, because again in Atom extensions are EVERYTHING and can do ANYTHING).

PurpleRamen3• 7 years ago

in Atom extensions are EVERYTHING and can do ANYTHING).

So Atom is the emacs of Webstack-World?

ksec2• 7 years ago

Strange they are not focusing on Speed.

The primary reason VS Code took over Atom was because of Speed. It shows what is possible with Electron. Not that it is anywhere near the speed of Sublime Text, but it was good enough for most and at least bearable to me. Compared to Atom, all the feedback ( on most Internet forum at least ) are performance related.

PurpleRamen3• 7 years ago

1. https://github.com/atom/xray/graphs/contributors Seems it's been not much done since february.

dbg31415• 7 years ago

I get that it's got a bit more going on, but Atom's startup time is still so much slower than Sublime Text.

I open a file, there's still this "clunky" lag of 2-3 seconds to open. I hope they work on optimizing this at some point.

dmnd• 7 years ago

I do a lot of code review, so I'm excited to be able to do that from my editor where all of my other tooling is set up instead of in a web browser. Suggested code changes will be much easier if I write them in a context where I can compile/run them. And no more clicking that "expand" thing 20 times to see something earlier in the file.

Thanks, Atom team!

JHonaker• 7 years ago

I don’t understand why Microsoft hasn’t pulled the GitHub integration into VS Code. It seems like it would be in their best interest given that they own both now.

outside12342• 7 years ago

Atom is still being developed?

Atom 1.36

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