Atom was archived today

by Bondi_Blue • 4 years ago

826 591 4 years ago

saikatsg• 4 years ago

Dear Atom, thanks for everything!

paxys2• 4 years ago

Pour one out. While Atom itself was overtaken by a better editor, its legacy lives on in the form of "Atom Shell" aka Electron (for better or worse).

p-e-w14• 4 years ago

For better, certainly. Electron has in particular been an enormous boon for Linux users, because it's so easy to make cross-platform applications now that even companies who wouldn't have bothered otherwise now have a Linux download. No way that apps like Slack would have a Linux desktop version if it wasn't for Electron.

skyfaller• 4 years ago

Or another way to phrase it is that the experience sucks equally on all platforms, so you might as well switch to Linux.

paxys2• 4 years ago

The 1% Linux users may have benefited, but it came at the expense of the other 99% on Windows & Mac who had to give up native performance and UI on all their applications.

bandrami• 4 years ago

"Atom Shell" aka Electron

I'm horribly embarrassed that I only just "got" that joke now

Semaphor3• 4 years ago

Oh wow, and for me, it required your comment. Luckily, I’m not easily embarrassed ;)

fractalf• 4 years ago

Haha thanks for making me look twice at that

samtho2• 4 years ago

Just an aside that had nothing to do with Atom itself, but I didn’t get into Electron while it was still called “Atom Shell” because the name was doing it a bit of a disservice. For some reason, by brain put it into a category of software more akin to bash/zsh and never questioned it again.

Did anyone else experience the something similar?

azhenley• 4 years ago

I had a lot of fun whipping up plug-ins within minutes for Atom! It let me try out ideas very quickly.

anyfoo3• 4 years ago

emacs may probably let you do this too, and better. The big problem is: You need to know emacs beforehand, which is seriously a lot, and likely bizarre to any modern person. I do, and I will likely never give it up, but I've been at it since the 90s.

In my mind, emacs suffers the same problem as TeX/LaTeX. Some parts of it are very antiquated and just don't fit into the modern world anymore. They'd need an overhaul.

But, that overhaul is hard to impossible to do without losing compatibility. And that compatibility is why you simply cannot replace emacs or LaTeX: There is many decades of features, packages, and whole ecosystems in there. Throwing that away would be a giant loss, people will always continue using it. Other editors can't catch up. Maybe if they survive for ~50 years, too?

Just to drive home how old emacs is: At one point, the popular joke was that emacs stands for "eight megabytes and constantly swapping". Yep, 8MB large software was so bloated that it was funny and debilitating.

deafpolygon3• 4 years ago

Then the joke evolved to that it couldn't open files 8MB or larger without hanging, at one point.

dima55• 4 years ago

They (whoever they are) would be well-served to move to emacs, and stay there forever. I don't know which "antiquated" thing you're referring to, specifically, but it all works quite well. Both back in the day and today.

imbnwa2• 4 years ago

Atom and XUL were the children of 00s pre-occupation with complete extensability in a package. Think Foobar2000 might be the last app standing.

deafpolygon3• 4 years ago

It can still be revived, they're still solid platforms - just too hard for people to work with.

p-e-w14• 4 years ago

Sad to see this go. I was an early adopter of Atom, and I wrote two extensions for it, one of which while it was still in beta.

The Atom developers made some technology choices that in retrospect were ill-advised, CoffeeScript being the worst of them and splitting everything into dozens of packages a close second. They tried to backpedal on both of these later on, but by that time VSCode, with its far superior engineering built around TypeScript, was rapidly taking over.

Of course, the GitHub acquisition was the last straw, but to be fair Atom was already pretty dead by then.

While the Atom project ultimately failed, it did give us Electron and Tree-Sitter, two technologies that will certainly outlive it.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

I started a job in 2018 and someone commented “what are you still on Atom for? Everyone has moved to vs code”. So yeah it’s been kinda dead for a long time now.

dylan6043• 4 years ago

whoa, a whole 4 years ago!! ;-) i want to make a "kids today" joke/comment, but it's more of just the pace of trends/fads not the people per se. you show up at a new job and the people make comments, of course you change. i've never used Atom, so maybe it was a better thing to change, but i've been introduced to some very ingrained workflows that just no longer made sense on so many levels. you can come in guns blazing and try to change everything now, or slowly acclimate to the workflow and then start suggesting changes/updates from inside. if you're hired as a 10x dev, then maybe guns blazing works, but if you're not, i'd suggest the latter.

herbst6• 4 years ago

I haven't worked for someone in years and that totally passed on me. I've tried code several times because of specific platforms it has plugins for but I never seen it as even comparable, at least not more than sublime.

No idea what problems people had with Atom, but I really hope some fork let it live on.

umvi• 4 years ago

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me. I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort which is nice because browsers change over time and electron helps you get a working offline snapshot of something you created.

dijit• 4 years ago

But what value is that, over the website?

p-e-w14• 4 years ago

Electron is essentially an operating system that runs on every operating system, so you can target just a single OS and your application works everywhere.

philliphaydon2• 4 years ago

People hate on electron, but it's a pretty amazing piece of tech if you ask me.

It really does come down to how people build on top of it.

I tried opening a 2gb log file in Atom and it took like 10 minutes before crashing.

VSCode on the other hand, while a bit slow, opened it and I could search quickly and scroll it without any issue at all.

That was what caused me to switch.

seba_dos12• 4 years ago

I can turn a browser game into a steam game with basically no effort

There's actually quite a lot of effort required if you want Steam overlay to work and/or not crash with Electron, or to interact with Steamworks APIs.

pdntspa• 4 years ago

The people that hate on Electron aren't amused by cute browser tricks.

pjmlp4• 4 years ago

Microsoft and Mozilla did it first, nothing great about Electron, other than shipping Chrome even into more computers.

innocenat• 4 years ago

There was node-webkit (nowadays called nw.js) that predate electron by quite some times. I remember know about it precisely because I was playing games that was developed with it.

herbst6• 4 years ago

I don't think that people actually hate on electron. It's more that we hate on tiny tools written in electron.

A small usb stick copy tool? here take 300mb and more to get the 1 minute job done. A bash one liner.

esprehn• 4 years ago

Atom predated the LSP and leaned heavily into customizations with all the plugins running inside the UI thread (more like a traditional web page and 3p scripts). At the time they viewed the extreme customization support as a feature, and there was a thriving ecosystem of folks making plugins.

That architecture has a major flaw though. A default install was fast, but a real configuration with all the plugins ended up quite slow.

VSCode's architecture worked much better in real world configurations, and it turns out better performance wins in the editor space, even if it meant losing certain customizations (up to a limit). The architecture also allowed seamless remote editing, something Atom never could have done.

The interesting thing has always been that both were built on Electron. Atom's developers had built all the tools and primitives needed, they just didn't have the understanding of the long term ecosystem effects of their design.

brundolf2• 4 years ago

And VSCode is still pretty customizable/extensible- in most of the ways that people really cared about. It found a really solid balance

augusto-moura• 4 years ago

LSP was a HUGE step forward, all editors benefit from it nowadays. Having multiple communities contributing back to the same language server makes maintaining those plugins a lot more comfortable.

p-e-w14• 4 years ago

VSCode is one of the greatest pieces of engineering of our time. It's really only when you compare it with Atom that you realize how great it is. Atom was built by incredibly smart people, who had full control over the platform and several years of head start, and they were still out-engineered by the VSCode team at every turn.

VSCode did almost everything right: The choice of TypeScript as the base language (with which VSCode has a symbiotic relationship), the limited, slowly expanding extension API, LSP, the monorepo, the monthly release cadence, the built-in terminal, and the list goes on and on. They turned Electron's strengths into super-strengths, and deftly engineered around Electron's weaknesses. VSCode is the greatest productivity tool in the history of software engineering, and it fully deserves the dominant status it has today.

pjmlp4• 4 years ago

Predated VSCode version of LSP, the idea is at least as old as Lucid Emacs.

A central server uses an Objectstore database to tightly integrate compiler(Lucid C++ Compiler), editor(emacs), debugger(gdb), and browsers

https://www.desy.de/user/projects/C++/products/lucid.html

gpvos• 4 years ago

LSP = Language Server Protocol

3p = third-party

ngoilapites• 4 years ago

Slow means more than just lack of speed here, for the average folk it means tedious.

madeofpalk• 4 years ago

The interesting thing has always been that both were built on Electron.

Atom wasn't just "built on" Electron, they made Electron.

Electron was made from Atom, literally. Electron was originally called Atom Shell https://www.electronjs.org/blog/electron

sgtnoodle2• 4 years ago

I tried Atom for a while in Windows, but a file watching bug made it quite inconvenient. Every time I edited and saved a file in another IDE (at the time, I was stuck using it to compile and debug an embedded system), that IDE would rename the original to a temporary file in a temporary directory before writing the new version. Atom would follow the rename rather than re-load the new file at the original path. It would make the open tab useless.

I tried making an issue for it, but someone ranted on about moving files around on a Mac and then closed the issue.

I tried trying to solve the bug myself, but I got about 4 layers deep into callbacks across at least three different repos, and gave up.

prox• 4 years ago

What editor did you go for after that? I still use Atom (I don’t need an IDE that much)

Existenceblinks• 4 years ago

Typescript makes VSCode very slow though. I remember the feeling when switched from Atom to VSCode it's wicked fast. And then Typescript happens, my macbook's fan keeps spinning from time to time.

scambier• 4 years ago

Typescript is compiled away. There are certainly issues with VSCode, but TS isn't one of them.

catfishx2• 4 years ago

AFAIK Typescript has no runtime impact on performance, the transpiled JS should be equally fast as the handwritten code

kaichanvong• 4 years ago

we had the conversation at University back in 2002; it went, "Atom is a dumb name" (for a beta package for editing, building in). What is this, the year of Marvel Comics taking over the Galaxy or something?

herbst6• 4 years ago

I really missed all of that. Atom is still the editor installed on all my systems. The one single thing I work with every day since many many years.

RektBoy• 4 years ago

VScode is also crap. It doesn't even support multi screen multi-window, heh no thank you. I can't comprehend, how anybody can use VScode for any real work.

aembleton2• 4 years ago

What do you recommend over VSCode for real work?

daemond• 4 years ago

Yes, the star number of VSCode surpassed Atom in April 2018, 2 months before GitHub was acquired. https://ossinsight.io/analyze/atom/atom?vs=microsoft%2Fvscod...

vertis• 4 years ago

I'm not sure it's fair to say it failed. Not everything is forever. It served very important purposes, helped push technology forward and paved the way for editors like VSCode.

I'd call that success.

wink• 4 years ago

I also was an early tester (not adopter) of Atom and I kinda hated it right from the start, but it's been a while and I could never really put my finger on it. I think it always somehow felt sluggish (I'm talking trying out several builds over several months, not just a one-off). But I've also never warmed up to Sublime (which was fast but also felt off).

Interestingly the moment I tried out VS Code (many years later) I instantly liked it and have been using it sporadically ever since, and as people always liken the two, I am confused to this day why one felt wrong and one felt right.

_fat_santa• 4 years ago

My journey went Sublime > Atom > VSCode.

I started with Sublime in college and then went to Atom when it came out because it was "Free Sublime". Granted I liked it back then but I was still a college student (had I picked it up now I would have different opinions). Almost as quickly VSCode came out and was a "Better Atom" (I thought VSCode was based on Atom for the longest time).

I wonder what will eventually replace VSCode. Lex Friedman said on his podcast that he sees VSCode as a modern Emacs which I think is a good way of thinking about VSCode.

martini333• 4 years ago

Don't be sad it's gone; be glad it happened.

kingboss2• 4 years ago

Electron shouldn't exist. It's an insult to the engineering discipline. :barf:

nigamanth2• 4 years ago

VSCode is owned by Microsoft, ever since Microsoft bought GitHub in 2018 it was bound to happen. The two text-editors had the same audience therefore Atom was bound to get shut.

scarface74• 4 years ago

While the Atom project ultimately failed, it did give us Electron

That’s not the positive thing that you think it is.

haolez• 4 years ago

Personally, I prefer CoffeeScript. The code gets more concise, it stimulates a coding style that's more objective and less "enterprisy" than TypeScript with all the excessive OO stuff. A simpler and more concise language attracts more contributors overtime.

However, TypeScript has clearly won and static typing can help a lot with autocomplete stuff, so there is no point fighting back.

topherPedersen• 4 years ago

Are they killing off Atom because Microsoft bought GitHub and they already have VSCode?

codegeek• 4 years ago

I know people shit on VSCode but in my humble opinion, VSCode single handedly destroyed Atom. Far superior tool, 100% free and adoption growth was crazy.

danjoredd• 4 years ago

There is a solid alternative, though. Pulsar. Atom was kind of dead, but it still had a small, dedicated fanbase including myself. Hopefully Pulsar will be able to keep the project alive as long as us Atom fans use it

denysvitali• 4 years ago

Reference: https://github.com/pulsar-edit/pulsar

lopkeny12ko• 4 years ago

I guess I'm old school, but I'm genuinely surprised by how Microsoft drove such widespread adoption of Visual Studio which, as I remember, was an expensive, basically enterprise-only IDE for very Microsoft-specific proprietary technologies like C# and .NET.

bananapub• 4 years ago

eh? VS Code is unrelated to Visual Studio except by the name.

ComplexSystems• 4 years ago

For those looking for a good substitute, I've switched to Sublime Text and so far I've gotten it to pretty much a near-perfect replica of the original. Kind of surprising to me how much of the Atom UI was built to mimic the Sublime interface.

I also tried VSCode, but was never really quite able to get into the interface the same way. For a while I tried customizing the interface with plugins like CustomizeUI, but Microsoft broke those recently, and I've been happier with Sublime.

DDayMace• 4 years ago

Sublime is great! Ultra fast. I feel like VSCode will be as sluggish as Visual Studio eventually.

dopu2• 4 years ago

It is so noticeable how different they are in speed. I’ve worked in Sublime for many years now (and continue to for most projects) but will switch to VSCode whenever I want to hack on some Go, since the LSP stuff works so well there. I constantly find myself messing things up due to input latency.

rodw12• 4 years ago

was never really quite able to get the [VS Code] interface the same way

You're at least the 3rd person I've seen make that observation in this thread. I don't get how VS Code made this so hard, isn't it fundamentally built on a fork of Atom's core? The CSS and JS customization seemed more capable and accessible in Atom somehow.

I've heard only good things about the Sublime Text UX for literally a decade or more, but is it "hackable" in the way that Atom and VS Code are? Emacs-like hack-ability with less esoteric scripting (and a better UX out-of-the-box) is exactly what attracted me to Atom in the first place.

ben-schaaf2• 4 years ago

I've heard only good things about the Sublime Text UX for literally a decade or more, but is it "hackable" in the way that Atom and VS Code are?

The vast majority of the UI uses a custom GUI toolkit and doesn't have any API, though you can theme it. There's a few things that are extensible in limited ways: the command palette, text phantoms, input boxes, html sheets, etc. So no it's not generally hackable.

lozenge2• 4 years ago

Atom extensions are like script tags added to the page, while VS Code runs all extensions in a single separate process and gives them a limited API.

That means that in VS Code actions like "right click to open context menu" or "type in Command Palette to filter commands" are instantaneous regardless of your extensions, as no extension code gets run. But extensions can't change the layout of the editor, or really do anything not exposed by the API.

If you want hack-ability there is an extension - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=betterth...

oldgradstudent• 4 years ago

isn't it fundamentally built on a fork of Atom's core?

No. AFAIK the only thing common to them is Electron.

emadabdulrahim• 4 years ago

I was a noob when Atom was new and I remember thinking it was unusably slow. Took a minute to realize that I had loaded my entire computer's directory, not just the project I was working on.

Sad90sNerd3• 4 years ago

That's because it was (and is) slow compared to true compiled applications. Just because VSCode has about 1000 tortured dev's making it usable doesn't mean its not fundamentally flawed on its face using a scripting language for text editing.

https://medium.com/commitlog/electron-is-cancer-b066108e6c32

Spread the TRUTH - praise be compiled programs...

satvikpendem21• 4 years ago

Indeed. I wonder if someone will write a text editor in Flutter so that we have cross platform support but also natively compiled code.

fastball3• 4 years ago

You can compile web tech to V8 bytecode and run it in Electron – how do you feel about compiled programs now?

herbst6• 4 years ago

It's been a while when I've used VS code in production but on Linux the issues with Atom have been less from the very start and VS Code simply never delivered the performance increase everyone was talking about. Maybe because I never made it an IDE but used it as editor.

On Linux Atom simply was the "better" choice for a long time.

brundolf2• 4 years ago

To add to everything else people are reminiscing about, here's Atom's very fun announcement trailer from 7 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7aEiVwBAdk

dcchambers2• 4 years ago

In general the marketing and branding of Atom was awesome. The retro-futuristic design worked well with the idea of bringing a text editor into the 21st century. I love that they call their docs the 'flight manual.' It will be missed.

Sad90sNerd3• 4 years ago

On its announcement it made my 2014 netbook overheat and lag like an ssh terminal in south Peru.

RIP

locofocos• 4 years ago

I'm a happy user of Atom as my daily driver for basic note taking and scratch pads. Even though it's being sunset, I look forward to using it for years to come.

Perhaps it will have a good fork one day, but honestly it works great as-is. Sometimes software reaches a point where it just works, and you appreciate not having a team that wants to change everything.

manbart• 4 years ago

There’s already an attempt to keep it going

https://pulsar-edit.dev/

krunck2• 4 years ago

Today they just announced V1.0 of their backend: "This Backend Server supports all documented and undocumented endpoints that were originally available on Atom, and should support all interactions with APM, PPM the Atom application, the Pulsar application, and any other unknown 3rd party services that integrated with the backend. Essentially it should look like nothing has changed."

https://github.com/pulsar-edit/package-backend/releases/tag/...

So that's progress.

p-e-w14• 4 years ago

Even though it's being sunset, I look forward to using it for years to come.

I'd be very, very careful with that. My understanding is that Atom will no longer receive any updates, including security updates. Atom has had a remote code execution vulnerability in the past that could be triggered by simply opening a package readme IIRC.

Atom is deeply integrated with the browser/Node.js ecosystem, and as such using a stale version sounds potentially very dangerous. I sincerely wish it was different, and that we could just continue using unmaintained applications as long as they "work", but that is sadly not the state of software today.

gnramires• 4 years ago

If you're on Linux, I recommend Geany as an alternative (also has autosave, etc.). Also my favorite IDE at the moment.

sergiotapia• 4 years ago

Huge thank you to Atom for birthing VS Code!

To this day Atom is the only editor I've written an extension for, because they made it so easy and accessible.

ddhhyy• 4 years ago

I think the Atom editor + Hydrogen plugin for running interactive Python sessions inline with the code is still unmatched by anything available in VS Code. This setup is what I migrated to when I ditched Matlab for the "scientific Python" stack, and I'm still here.

Multiple concurrent kernels, the ability to connect any .py file to any running kernel, sharing variables and imports across multple .py files, inline matplotlib output that persists on-screen and inline with the code even when running other code cells... the list goes on. I'm really fond of this setup. I use it daily--it's an essential component of my day job--and intend to do so for the foreseeable future. VS Code does seem to be the way of the future but there have just been too many friction points for me to leave Atom.

__ryan__2• 4 years ago

What’s preventing this from being done in VSCode? Other than it hasn’t yet?

I don’t think it ticks every box for you, but have you tried Jupyter Notebooks in VSCode[0]?

[0] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/datascience/jupyter-noteb...

kylebarron5• 4 years ago

VSCode doesn't support an API to put outputs inline in the text editor. IIRC there have been longstanding feature requests for it but it would probably have a performance hit. The closest thing is having a separate output window on the right side

kylebarron5• 4 years ago

I completely agree. For the last couple years I've used VSCode for everything _except_ interactive Python development because Atom + Hydrogen is just too good.

I'm giving VS Code + its Jupyter extension a shot for now. It's significantly worse than Hydrogen, but I tried to make it a little less bad with a quick extension to auto-infer code blocks [0].

[0] https://github.com/kylebarron/vscode-jupyter-python

wnolens• 4 years ago

Same! I live in this ecosystem (Atom + Hydrogen python sessions) on a daily basis. But rather than for "science", i use it for devops productivity (scrape logs, query dbs, automate mitigations) and some low-key data analysis.

It's breathed life into my love for programming, given how easy it is to just start executing code (sometimes I just use it as a calculator app since it's that easy and accessible)

I tried VSCode's equivalent plugin, but the UX was nowhere near as nice.

notpushkin• 4 years ago

I've moved to VS Code (or rather Codium, the OSS build of Code) long time ago, but still keep the Atom keybindings and icons (both available in the extension gallery). RIP.

dcchambers2• 4 years ago

I resisted switching to VS Code for a long time because I far preferred the UX and design of Atom, but I eventually caved not because of performance gains I wanted in VS Code (honestly I found Atom plenty fast for the work I was doing), but because many Atom extensions were left to rot and slowly broke over time as most maintainers moved to VSCode extensions.

Farewell friend, you will be missed.

rodw12• 4 years ago

I far preferred the UX and design of Atom, but I eventually caved

That's my experience exactly. I still haven't been able to configure VS Code to fully match the experience I want with respect to keybindings and subtle look-and-feel and functionality details.

Aside from the infrequent case of hanging when opening very large files I had no real issues with Atom and could have happily kept using it.

For what it's worth Pulsar (https://pulsar-edit.dev/) appears to be a community-maintained fork of Atom. (For that matter one of the primary Atom creators is working on https://zed.dev/.) But personally I got tired of swimming upstream and just caved to VS Code.

(I am a little tempted to go back to emacs, which was my editor of choice before Atom, but that's ends up being an enormous time-sink for me anyway.)

danwee2• 4 years ago

I cannot stand VSCode UX/UI. Not sure how this is not an issue for everyone. Maybe I'm just too picky. For this kind of things I don't use VSCode:

- The right side bar is "dynamic". Most of the time it's the Explorer showing the directories and files, but when I try to search for something, though, it becomes the Search sidebar. Same for all the potential sidebars (Source Control, Run and Debug, etc.)

- Everything is a plugin. That means I need to carefully check who's the author of the plugin, probably check as well the source code to avoid using malware, etc.

- Everything is a plugin. That means I need to craft a set of plugins in order to work in certain projects. I prefer JetBrain's approach

- No floating windows. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I prefer that, for instance, Settings to be opened in its own window, instead of opening a new tab in my editor. Also all the Settings in VSCode are on the same "page" (sure, whenever you scroll, the left-side grouping of Settings is updated accordingly, but imho it's difficult for me to focus on the section I need to work on)

plonk2• 4 years ago

- The right side bar is "dynamic". Most of the time it's the Explorer showing the directories and files, but when I try to search for something, though, it becomes the Search sidebar. Same for all the potential sidebars (Source Control, Run and Debug, etc.)

Yeah it's just a tabbed view. I like it, saves space while staying useful. Maybe because most software I use has tabs already.

- Everything is a plugin. That means I need to carefully check who's the author of the plugin, probably check as well the source code to avoid using malware, etc.

True, but most popular languages have plugins authored by Microsoft. Some are from Red Hat. You'll miss out on GitLens and LaTeX Workshop, but VSCode with only trusted plugins is more than good enough.

- Everything is a plugin. That means I need to craft a set of plugins in order to work in certain projects. I prefer JetBrain's approach

For Python, web dev, C++, etc., there's a "plugin pack" that depends on what you need to work.

No floating windows. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I prefer that, for instance, Settings to be opened in its own window, instead of opening a new tab in my editor. Also all the Settings in VSCode are on the same "page" (sure, whenever you scroll, the left-side grouping of Settings is updated accordingly, but imho it's difficult for me to focus on the section I need to work on)

Sounds like you just don't like tabs? I find that the window list gets way too crowded and messy when I'm working on multiple projects with multiple tools. Tabs (in browser, explorer and editors) are a lifesaver.

tristan9572• 4 years ago

For your first point, you can drag views to other parts of the window.

bena2• 4 years ago

On "No floating windows". I'm with you.

I've gotten used to Visual Studio, where I can grab a tab and pull it out of the window to make it its own window. If you try that in VSCode, it'll just drop the file on the Desktop.

To get something similar in VSCode, I have to open a new window, drag the file over, then close it in the original window.

deafpolygon3• 4 years ago

Moment of silence.

quickthrower23• 4 years ago

For the laptop fans…

ilyt2• 4 years ago

Oh, no, those won't be silent when using anything electron

ilyt2• 4 years ago

It lived as it died, in mediocrity

bearon• 4 years ago

Make no mistake... This project, Atom. Provided the runway that others copied, then improved upon (and on and on... with plenty of funding).

Atom provided the seed, excitement and vision for what is possible on this platform, and should be proud of that fact.

oaiey• 4 years ago

That is how we all will remember Atom.

Moxdi• 4 years ago

I love this take, this is software in escence, build something, influence is something every developer should strive for

devjab• 4 years ago

I wonder if it played a part in Microsofts purchase of Github. When you look at things like code spaces, co-pilot and how VSC can now work directly on Github/Azure repositories without moving the code to "your machine", it seems like they found a good way to make Github (and Azure DevOps) more profitable through Atoms successor.

rajeshp1986• 4 years ago

People started focussing on text editors again after Atom came out.

_cenw2• 4 years ago

I'd credit Sublime Text with that.

m000• 4 years ago

Atom provided the seed, excitement and vision for what is possible on this platform, and should be proud of that fact.

Atom provided the seed, excitement and vision for bloated Electron apps, and shouldn't be very proud of that fact.

BudaDude• 4 years ago

I believe it was the first electron app and to be fair, there are some great electron apps out there (VSCode, Obsidian, Discord, Slack).

Doorstep2077• 4 years ago

I remember using Atom back in high school, sad to see it go. It was fun while it lasted. Now primarily using VSCode, I'm curious what the next best IDE will be.

seba_dos12• 4 years ago

Took me some good few seconds to realize that it's not about the slightly better RSS - and I have used Atom-the-editor in the past.

robto• 4 years ago

Tree-sitter[0] came out of Atom performance optimization, I think, and that's a legacy that will live on a long time. Atom was in my view the closest thing to emacs out there, and it's sad to see that sort of user-empowerment not live on.

[0]https://tree-sitter.github.io/tree-sitter/

justaregulardev• 4 years ago

The emacs comparison definitely feels apt. Being able to simply use JavaScript and CSS to make changes to the editor made it feel so powerful. Maybe I just need to get around to learning elisp (or find an elisp-JavaScript binding…)

capableweb2• 4 years ago

Lots of things came from Atom and it's development, so much I'd still consider it a success although the editor itself didn't live on. Tree-sitter, Electron, "text-editor as a browser app" all became popular ideas thanks to Atom. Is there more things coming from Atom that I'm missing?

Bondi_Blue• 4 years ago

Here's a few ways to make VSCode (or VSCodium) look and feel a little like Atom:

https://medium.com/@samuells/how-i-moved-from-atom-to-vs-cod...

dym_sh3• 4 years ago

cant wait for react.js to be archived

satvikpendem21• 4 years ago

Why? And what's better?

nelsonic• 4 years ago

https://kit.svelte.dev/

dym_sh3• 4 years ago

VirtualDOM is why.

vanilla.js is better

joemama3131• 4 years ago

Damn! It's been a while since I heard about Atom. Sad this is happening!

jamesfinlayson• 4 years ago

Yes the last I heard was people wishing GitHub would do more with it (though I think those sorts of comments meant that the writing was on the wall).

monetus• 4 years ago

Atom was the slippery slope, the shiny new thing, the tailwind that pushed thousands of us into deeper and more varied programming passions. The amity and enmity of using the thing will be spoken of with some fondness for decades, I think.

mechanical_bear• 4 years ago

I’m still using Atom, Postman, and PuTTY. Does that mean I’m old?

speedgoose3• 4 years ago

No, these are fairly recent tools.

treelanko• 4 years ago

Wow! Been a while since I heard that name. Atom was the cool kids editor back when I was a teenager, surprised to see it go!

diebeforei485• 4 years ago

I just uninstalled the app. I'll miss it.

What's the most popular replacement for a text editor with code support? VS Code? I was looking into Nova, but I'd assume an open-source editor would be updated more frequently and have more themes etc.

headwayoldest• 4 years ago

I've been living with VS Code for the last year at work and it's nice, it feels less like an Electron app than Atom did. I still use Sublime Text at home (and for pesky column edit and other tricks I know in Sublime).

Nova is a nice update from Coda 2, but it lacks the plugin community to really shine unless it does everything you want today. I kept opening it up because I wanted to like it, but after a year I let my license lapse.

EamonnMR• 4 years ago

I loved Atom. Before that it was, oof, Notepad++ or Bloodshed Dev C++ or Code::Blocks. I can't remember what editor I used at work in 2014...

pfoof• 4 years ago

Heh, just a month ago Adobe Brackets (another Atom clone) did the same https://github.com/adobe/brackets

maegul• 4 years ago

Huh, I’d forgotten about this. Makes me think of Onivim 2 running out of steam. Have we just gone through an era-ending moment with text editors with VS-code coming out on top along with a few old survivors (vim, eMacs and sublime come to mind)?

skilled• 4 years ago

Atom was a success on all fronts. I'd be willing to wager than if you search for code editors for any kind of a front-end language, in the top 100 results (listicles, whatever) you'll find Atom mentioned in more than 50% of them.

Maarius• 4 years ago

Sad to see, Atom has been my go to editor for the last years. What would you recommend as alternative for the average Ruby / Rails developer? I am looking at Panic Nova, VSCode, Sublime Text and others.

9dev• 4 years ago

Take a look at Jetbrains‘ RubyMine. It takes development to a new level; You won’t want to go back. It understands your code so well, it’s magical. It can rename stuff anywhere it’s referenced, for example, which is way superior to search/replace in a directory (because you won’t replace unrelated items). It has a Sequelace built in, but with support for practically any database. It can perform debugging inside the editor. It has support for all relevant tooling. It handles deployment. And more.

Not related, just a fan :)

satvikpendem21• 4 years ago

Definitely VSCode, with some Ruby and Rails extensions and a hefty usage of Copilot too.

dang• 4 years ago

Atom editor is not dead, but is now Pulsar (viva OSS) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33465854 - Nov 2022 (9 comments)

To Favor Microsoft VS Code, Microsoft's GitHub Is Killing GitHub's Atom Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31717196 - June 2022 (19 comments)

Ask HN: Why did Atom Text Editor failed? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30733674 - March 2022 (8 comments)

Atom: Editor window startup is slow - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21740568 - Dec 2019 (11 comments)

Atom editor still phones home prior to consent dialog - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642391 - Nov 2019 (108 comments)

Ask HN: What Happened to GitHub's Atom? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142934 - Oct 2019 (46 comments)

Future of GitHub's Atom Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258419 - June 2018 (13 comments)

Sublime vs. Atom – who will win the editor's war? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11561865 - April 2016 (13 comments)

Atom text editor 1.7.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492203 - April 2016 (139 comments)

How to make the Atom editor transparent - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916760 - Jan 2016 (55 comments)

Atom text editor 1.4 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900355 - Jan 2016 (198 comments)

GitHub's Atom Switches from the Open Code of Conduct to the Contributor Convent - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043990 - Aug 2015 (57 comments)

Atom Editor for Sublime Text Users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9872614 - July 2015 (54 comments)

Atom now opens files larger than 2MB - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9690653 - June 2015 (59 comments)

Ask HN: Why was Atom (text editor) written in JavaScript? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9257087 - March 2015 (6 comments)

“Implement text editor DOM updates manually instead of via React” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9117028 - Feb 2015 (220 comments)

Atom Editor or Sublime Text – which one to pick? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9008352 - Feb 2015 (65 comments)

Atom now using Io.js - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8991853 - Feb 2015 (130 comments)

Sublime VS. Atom: Will GitHub's Text Editor Beat the Standing Champion? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8945685 - Jan 2015 (70 comments)

Atom Shell: Cross-platform desktop application shell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8793489 - Dec 2014 (59 comments)

Atom: Editor window startup is slow - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8393648 - Oct 2014 (76 comments)

Ask HN: Are you using Atom Editor? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7547813 - April 2014 (16 comments)

Free invites to Atom, GitHub's new text editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7376063 - March 2014 (170 comments)

Download Atom editor without an invite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7328592 - March 2014 (114 comments)

GitHub's new text editor leaked on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7302941 - Feb 2014 (249 comments)

Others?

gauddasa• 4 years ago

True

squarefoot• 4 years ago

I tried Atom a few years ago and was impressed by the features, but it was such a resource hog that I ditched it immediately. As someone with web development experience amounting to zero, it seems strange to me that nobody is asking about the feasibility of porting it to less resource hungry Electron alternatives (Tauri? Neutralino? ...?). Tauri has made the front page lately and everyone praises it for being a much lighter alternative to Electron, so using it would seem the natural step, or am I missing something?

mshenfield• 4 years ago

I'm still not convinced VSCode is faster and better. My Atom setup was never slow, the only thing that wasn't instantaneous was code completion. For me, it felt like VSCode came out of nowhere and surpassed Atom for inexplicable reasons.

szastamasta2• 4 years ago

It might sound controversial, but for me Atom was almost a 1 to 1 Sublime copy with worse performance and quality. It was slow and ugly. It’s only quality was that it was 0$.

It was the first editor I’ve seen to choke when opening 1M file (it even had a warning that it’s a too big file - lol). There simply was not enough RAM in the world for this memory hog.

I’m not really sad to see it go. It was another free toy of a big company that people used not to spend 60$ on real thing made by small company and waste thousands of dollars on lost productivity and time.

whalesalad• 4 years ago

As an editor day to day yes you are correct. Sublime is the goat as far as performance. VSCode has become my primary editor because I work remotely via SSH but nothing can touch the lightness and latency of subl. I still run it in tandem with vscode for stuff that doesn’t require a remote conn. It’s an order of magnitude quicker than VSCode.

europeanguy• 4 years ago

nothing can touch the lightness and latency of subl

There's this editor called vim. You should have a look.

plonk2• 4 years ago

You need a good machine, but on an M2 SSD with a recent CPU and enough RAM, VSCode takes one second to start, much less to open a new tab. Not sure Sublime Text's speed will still be a big selling point in the future.

gizzlon• 4 years ago

Both Sublime Text and Merge are great and well worth the price for me :)

Hendrikto• 4 years ago

I do not really see the point of Sublime Merge. Tried it a few times, but it just seems unnecessary.

Is it just for people who want to avoid the CLI?

donum2• 4 years ago

Same for me and my whole Team. I'm loving it. They're cheap, reliable, fast, flexible, beautiful - just awesome enabler that don't stand in the way. Huge Kudos to the creators! <3

Emigre_3• 4 years ago

Sublime Text is a fantastic editor. In my opinion it deserves more popularity.

capableweb2• 4 years ago

Sublime Text definitely had it's moment in the spotlight, at one point (around 2012-2014) it was basically the only editor I saw people using, besides emacs/vim which has its diehard fans (including myself).

Most of those people are using Visual Studio Code today instead, although in comparison, VS Code is very bloated and slow.

For fun and giggles, here is a comparison of the Google popularity between Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code, TextMate, Vim and Emacs: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...

omnibrain• 4 years ago

Atom being free was surely the main factor. But Sublime was also in a bit of a development rut back then. So Atom filled a bit of a void there.

throwntoday2• 4 years ago

It's unfortunate because all I want is a notepad with syntax highlighting and Atom with most packages disabled offered that.

I don't need code complete, or a terminal, or extensions, or anything else VScode offers. I suppose now is a good time to write my own notepad :/

szastamasta2• 4 years ago

I think you should get just that with Notepad++ on Windows or TextWrangler (BBedit) on Mac. On Linux I think that all stock editors have it (GEdit, etc…). All that for free and without Electron madness. You should be much better with any of them.

donatzsky2• 4 years ago

SciTE is pretty good in that role.

https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html

sequoia• 4 years ago

If you use windows, notepad++ is what you're looking for. It was my first love in terms of code editors, and I still haven't found an editor (besides vim, and probably emacs) that handles on-the-fly macro recording and playback like NPP has for decades.

magicalhippo2• 4 years ago

t was the first editor I’ve seen to choke when opening 1M file

I recall trying Atom before VSCode had been released. I loaded up a 1MB XML file and it ground to a halt.

After some searching I found a bug tracker issue reflecting this, where one of the devs said something to the effect of "a 1MB XML file is extremely large, I don't think we'll support that".

At that point I uninstalled Atom.

On a related note, not long ago I accidentally dragged a 450MB SQL script into VSCode. I fully expected it to cave like Atom had on the 1MB XML. However to my pleasant surprise it worked just fine. Editing it was as quick as a regular file, and the memory usage was not excessive (around 2.5G total). I admit I was a bit impressed by that.

comprev• 4 years ago

I had a gig which required opening ridiculously large XML files (metadata for music albums). Some classical music compilations (think "6 CD bargain bin" boxsets) would end up with 1-2GB XML files.

Sublime didn't even flinch when opening and navigating around the file. Truly impressive text editor and absolutely worth the license cost.

ddevault• 4 years ago

2.5G is definitely excessive.

adwn2• 4 years ago

The first and last time I tried Sublime Text, it turned out to be impossible to properly have a file open in two editors (or tabs or whatever Sublime's term is): any changes made in one editor were only synchronized to the other editor upon saving the file. I really tried to like Sublime, but the lack of such a basic feature was a total no-go. That was several years ago, has the situation changed?

ben-schaaf2• 4 years ago

Multiple views into a single file have been supported for a long time; I believe as far back as ST2. Currently it's easily accessible by right-clicking on a tab and selecting "Split View".

ubermonkey• 4 years ago

Yeah, same. I have that disorder where I reflexively try new editors, and Atom lasted about 20 minutes on my computer.

My daily driver editors for the last 20 years, in rough order, were:

* BBEdit

* TextMate

* Sublime

* emacs

I still fire up Sublime, but the longer I use org the better I am at general editing in emacs. It's a gateway drug. ;)

kajaktum3• 4 years ago

Can someone tell me why OSes can't do what browsers do? It seems to me that browsers are the OS of today so why not just skip the middleman and make it first class? It seems to be a layer that exists solely because the 3 competing OSes is incompatible and browsers just happen to be compatible (for how long?).

IshKebab2• 4 years ago

Do you mean like ChromeOS?

Electron isn't popular just because it's cross-platform, but I think that is a big reason. The only other realistic option is Qt and that's looking increasingly dated.

nelblu• 4 years ago

Not everyone prefers browsers, especially these days when they are consolidating into one engine. Especially with text editors where you will be dealing with local files, a browser based editor won't work well.

lionkor• 4 years ago

nothing these days is really stopping you from making a cross platform native gui app, like with Qt, wxWidgets or similar. The only reason you wouldnt do it is because a lack of skilled programmers, and/or time.

Ive built quick little apps in Qt or wxWidgets for my wife, they use a few MB at most, they don't use any cpu unless you click on them (because naturally, theyre suspended), and the code bases are incredibly concise.

It really is, as gen z would say, a skill issue.

Or, said the other way around: Its simple and easy to use, and as a tradeoff you get no performance.

kajaktum3• 4 years ago

No, what I mean is that our browsers are becoming OSes. So why don't OSes become more like browsers? The way it works now is that each of my tabs have their own VM (tabs) that runs on another VM (browsers) which itself runs on another VM (OS). Why can't tabs just be processes that run directly on the OS (with all its security features).

Every time I see any problems/advancements in browsers, I squint my eyes and they look exactly like an OS problems/advancements.

kingboss2• 4 years ago

Do you even know what an OS is? How can you ask this question? Who will communicate with the hardware?

kajaktum3• 4 years ago

The kernel is just a bunch of code. What prevents the browsers from implementing all the capabilities of the kernel? Why can't my computer boots into a browser directly and it then figures out how to talk and manage the hardware directly.

The way I see it, OSes of today is simply an implementation detail of the browser. 99% of the world won't even care or notice f Windows 12 is is shipped as a Ubuntu distro with familiar UIs. Heck, not even most developers will I think.

I have this thought when I ponder on the fact that most programming languages of today assumes a virtual machine of one kind or another. But...the OS is already a virtual machine (of the yesteryear I suppose). The only reason we don't have yet another level of virtual machine inside our browsers is that most browsers are almost fully compatible. Even each browsers starts having diverging APIs then its only a matter of time before someone creates an OS on top of browsers.

balls187• 4 years ago

Never got into Atom because Sublime Text was so perfect (I was a textmate user).

taubek• 4 years ago

It was a really nice editor. I used it before VSC.

rdubrock• 4 years ago

One dark is still my favorite theme

turing_complete• 4 years ago

In the future, it will be studied as one of the slowest, worst performing software products mankind has produced.

encryptluks2• 4 years ago

I really hope that Visual Studio Code at least ports the Markdown Preview Plus extension, which was amazing:

https://github.com/atom-community/markdown-preview-plus

Unfortunately, VS Code extensions are often poor quality.

robert_foss• 4 years ago

Seems like the Microsoft ways of embrace, extend & extinguish sre still alive and well.

aembleton2• 4 years ago

What did they extend this time?

newbieuser• 4 years ago

goodbye my old friend

osbkca• 4 years ago

So sad :(

NetOpWibby• 4 years ago

About damn time

drummer• 4 years ago

Anything built on elecyron should be archived asap

gregjw• 4 years ago

Used to love Atom back in the day, thanks for everything team.

rvieira• 4 years ago

Such a shame.

Atom was (is?) great. The first editor extension I wrote was for it (in Coffeescript, no less. Terrible idea in hindsight).

Thanks for the good times.

Raed667• 4 years ago

This made me think of Brackets [0] made by Adobe. Which hasn't seen new commits in the past 4 months[1].

They seem to have spun-off a new project "Phoenix Code Editor" [2].

[0] https://brackets.io

[1] https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets

[2] https://github.com/phcode-dev/phoenix

junon• 4 years ago

Wrote some NES map editors using Atom at one point. Was kind of a pain. I didn't use it much after that.

I don't use VSCode but it just feels like this started an era of Electron-based everything that slowly consumes all of our machine's resources.

npteljes• 4 years ago

The thing I remember most about Atom is the privacy issues that it had - first of the text editors that sent telemetry by default.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(text_editor)#Privacy

Hoasi• 4 years ago

RIP Atom. It was a great few years using it before switching back to Coda > Nova a while ago after the GitHub acquisition when it became clear development was no longer a priority.

Sometimes products reach a natural end of life, but it also highlights the importance of supporting open source.

vegancap• 4 years ago

Shame, Atom was an absolute game changer back in the day. Pathed the way for new text editors. Fond text editing memories!

danwee2• 4 years ago

I liked way more the UI of Atom than VSCode. I cannot stand VSCode UI.

sangeeth96• 4 years ago

Brackets and Atom were two of the most influential developer tools in my life. Former made me fall in love with the web and the latter allowed me to ship some of my most impactful projects whilst I was in college. I don't think I'd have managed to finish, let alone start writing them had Atom and its amazing marketplace of extensions not been present. Sure, it was slow as hell on my modest Toshiba laptop but I still loved it. And no denying how it paved way for even bigger projects like the Electron framework and Visual Studio Code.

I will cherish those fond memories. Thanks a lot to all the individuals who contributed to Atom and its ecosystem—take a bow!

strzibny• 4 years ago

I also used Atom a fair bit but moved on to Sublime. RIP.

GTP• 4 years ago

By looking at the other comments, I see the seemingly unavoidable discussion over which is the best text editor/IDE. My opinion on the matter is the following: the best text editor/IDE(/many other tools) doesn't exist. What exists is the best tool for you. Each one of us has it's own opinion based on its personal experience, and it's baked by arguments that stem out of what we find most important in those tools. The problem arises when, after picking what is the best tool for me, I forget about the last two words and it becomes the best tool. Each one of us is the most productive when it's using its own favorite tool, but it doesn't mean that if I convince someone else to switch to my preferred tool, then that person will be more productive. Each one of us has to see for him/herself which tool suits him/her best. It is fine if we suggest other people to try our tools for some reasons, but it makes little to no sense to argue that our favorite tool is objectively the best one.

waitwhatt• 4 years ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/8pc8mf/im_nat_friedman...

I’m Nat Friedman, future CEO of GitHub. AMA.
Atom is a fantastic editor with a healthy community, adoring fans, excellent design, and a promising foray into real-time collaboration. At Microsoft, we already use every editor from Atom to VS Code to Sublime to Vim, and we want developers to use any editor they prefer with GitHub.
So we will continue to develop and support both Atom and VS Code going forward.
So, I love the years of collaboration between Microsoft and GitHub that have produced these two beloved editors, and I expect this fruitful relationship to continue!

And... no you won't. You make decisions that weren't your's to make.

asveikau• 4 years ago

I was at MS more than a decade ago, and I can attest that nobody cared what editor you used and there were people using everything.

Of course there were many problems at MS, but lack of religiosity about text editors was a bright point of their culture.

Narann• 4 years ago

I used it as a tuned Markdown editor and it was a blast. Had to switch to VSCode and depicts it's very fast, I don't like the experience.

Any good Markdown editor to recommend?

schipplock• 4 years ago

Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/).

passwordoops• 4 years ago

Not a professional programmer, just a weekend Python LARPer but Atom was my first. Held on until they made the announcement of it's imminent demise.

Sad to see it go

leavenotracks3• 4 years ago

Brief comment + total noob question here:

I've been using atom for several years now to main a few sites. I have always found it a pleasure to work in, but then admittedly I am probably using a small percentage of the features that it offer.

What does it mean that the project (or any project) is archived? Does it mean that it no longer has maintainers? Should we stop using it because security will worsen due to lack of updates?

If I should stop using it - what should I try instead (apart from Vi / Emacs / VS Code, which are already well represented in the discussion)?

Thanks

napolux• 4 years ago

Are you on Windows? Notepad++ in case

leavenotracks3• 4 years ago

Mostly Debian at home - thanks for reminding me though - I do use Notepad++ at work. I believe it's available as a snap on Linux. I do enjoy the simplicity of N++.

danyala• 4 years ago

I know you've said not to discuss VS Code, but VS Code was pretty much an Atom clone at release, and it would still be a very easy switch. Many of us back then loved Atom and switched simply because VS Code was so similar but could also do a find-and-replace on a large project without crashing.

leavenotracks3• 4 years ago

Thanks for that will give VS Code a spin

francasso• 4 years ago

Not even at his funeral can poor Atom be at rest, so many comments torturing or ignoring it while praising the killer.

I, for one, salute you dear Atom. You have been a worthy contribution to the community. Thanks you for all you have done.

RIP

danyadanch• 4 years ago

Communitivity• 4 years ago

Rest In Peace. The Atom devs did an amazing job, but failed to get enough market share. I used Atom a lot at home, and some at work. Work jumped on VS Code as soon as VS Code came out. I think in part it was the ease of use, but I also think a major factor was that it came from Microsoft, so work immediately accepted it as better than something from people managers didn't recognize.

If VS Code didn't have MS funding them and marketing them, then I think the outcome would have been much different. Maybe. The Atom devs did make some design choices that seemed weird. As one commenter noted, Coffeescript is a good example. I personally liked the extreme customizability and plugin ecosystem.

davidy123• 4 years ago

I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft, but they hired Erich Gamma and that was a brilliant move. He is an engineer I have tremendous respect for, with obvious vision. He was key in VisualAge for Java, which was a Java IDE, written in Smalltalk, which supported refactoring down to the smallest level (including file operations). He was obviously a key designer for VSCode. From its earliest days, I could see how they were sketching in facilities for advanced features in an open way, and it has maintained its development well.

ghuntley• 4 years ago

I didn’t quite understand the loss of Atom until I authored https://ghuntley.com/fracture about VSCode. Now I deeply care about ensuring programming languages do not outsource their LSP development to Microsoft and enable them to capture the ecosystem as is happening in python.

krunck2• 4 years ago

Thanks for the article.

VSCode is dead to me. I don't want to use development tools which allow a corporation to constantly inject it's agenda into my work.

omgomgomgomg• 4 years ago

What can I say, I had this thing frequently crash with no warning, it did not lose data or anything, but it crashed at least 10 times a day, with 2 projects loaded into it.

Apart from that, was a great tool.

ellisv• 4 years ago

I use Atom daily. There are many times when I need a simple, powerful text editor but not a full blown IDE.

I knew this day was coming but didn’t prepare for it.

andrew_2• 4 years ago

Very sad. I'll continue to use it. I can't abide how vscode is run as a project by Microsoft.

ryukoposting4• 4 years ago

What's wrong with how Microsoft runs the VS Code project?

tristan9572• 4 years ago

Biggest issue is the closed source licensing of many of the most popular extensions. Pylance, C# (future), Remote Extensions, etc. In addition, the VSCode marketplace is only licensed for use with the closed source distribution of Visual Studio Code, hence openvsx.org.

https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

andrew_2• 4 years ago

If you spend time in their issues, or try to contribute via issues, a pattern emerges; Microsoft as a corp entity has an iron grip on the development and progress. It's open source only in that you can fork freely. UX and DX improvements are routinely shut down by MS employees, MS employees have a deep, deep sense of ownership and tend to respond defensively, repo maintainers are exclusively MS employees (I'm welcome to be wrong here, I couldn't find any that weren't), platitudes are common responses to issues for legitimate improvement, any comparison to Atom or any other editor is summarily shut down after "good faith" discussion, and development and improvements are beholden to the Microsoft development and release cycle.

Now I'll admit I'm fairly cynical wrt VS Code and have a negative view of the team that runs and owns VS Code, and by extension VS Code itself as a product due to the myriad of Microsoft-esc UX and DX forced upon the user. There's a great product in there but Microsoft is a horrible steward.

kevdoran• 4 years ago

Presses "F" to pay respect

pohl• 4 years ago

I'm also sad to see it go, but I have high hopes for Lapce

https://lapce.dev

https://github.com/lapce/lapce

koinedad• 4 years ago

Atom was my first editor when I started learning coding…still have the main shortcuts in muscle memory!

saraton1n• 4 years ago

Wow, that's so odd. I used Atom when I first started learning Java back in 2009, before switching to Eclipse and eventually IntelliJ. I don't think I ever expected that it'd be archived!

swlkr• 4 years ago

I used atom for years, it was such a nice UX especially compared to vscode.

Unfortunately it was slow when I loaded it up with plugins.

I moved on to vscode first, hated it, then back to vim, then to neovim, and now finally to helix.

khiqxj• 4 years ago

now i will never know what purpose this software served

ganarajpr• 4 years ago

If it was according to Hindu calendar you can perform the shraddha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Ar%C4%81ddha) today for atom .

blablabla123• 4 years ago

VSCode might be better feature-wise than Atom but I'd choose Atom any time of the day over VSCode if it was still maintained. Just considering CVEs popping up every now and then. Also I found the UX getting slightly less in the way. Otherwise Sublime is my go to "normal" editor but it's not really free...

nathansobo• 4 years ago

The former Atom team and some new friends are building a new editor over at https://zed.dev. We're using our own Rust-based UI framework instead of Electron so it's really fast, and real-time collaboration is baked into the core.

devhead• 4 years ago

RIP, fav text tool by far. Personally, jetbrains outshines most when working on actual code; sublime for small work, and bbedit for virtual copy/paste formating.

edit: thanks M$ for messing up another beloved solution.

Atom was archived today

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