Admittedly I don't think Atom is a very worthwhile text editor, but using an augmented text editor as an IDE is a very common practice.
Vim/emacs give a better experience though: they work in a terminal/over ssh and they are FAST and lightweight (memory use). Atom has neither of these properties.
> The same reason thousands of programmers use Vim or Emacs
Uhm nope.
Also, I have yet to see an IDE that looks and feels like a native macOS application. (I'm looking forward to being corrected here.)
For languages were the language service is good (typescript, C#) I barely see a disadvantage to full visual studio. For languages with weaker support (C++) I tend to open the project in both environments and use Code for longer editing tasks and full VS for compilation and debugging.
But if you like VS Code then you should use it.
An IDE comes with its own text editor. Any Emacs user will tell you it is much more powerful to have an IDE come with your editor.
The ability to have your editor configured exactly how you want it (keybindings, fonts, etc.), and consistently use that configuration for all of your text editing is definitely appealing.
The same goes for having all the plugins you use with your editor available when doing "IDE" things (debugging, etc.).
TL;DR It just all-around makes more sense to have IDE features built into an editor instead of the other way around.
1. This is designed specifically for React since Facebook wants to control that ecosystem.
and
2. Github is internally stuck in 2013 when FB was still "cool" and using the cloud (ooooohhhh, aaaaaahhhh) to power everything was the new trend.
Don't get me wrong, Github is a fantastic product and community. But they really shouldn't be writing desktop software.
In this sense, among the popular options only Vim and Emacs live up to my expectations. Also IntelliJ possibly.
And Atom does it without Microsoft.
Seriously though, what kind of comment is that? Facebook develops open source plugins for the atom ecosystem, and somehow that's supposed to be the most important criticism?
I want a text editor that vaguely understands code with some simple file browsing and plug and play extensions. Atom trying to become VSCode isn't beneficial here at all.
Not true for jetbrains ones. Autocomplete speed is One of the reasons for me to go for their toolbox subscription
The only changes made to Atom at all to facilitate this were better built-in watching of files in Atom (benefits all packages and should improve things like the tree view when it switches over) and an async shutdown mechanism for packages.
This is my config of vscode. I disabled all autocomplete because it seemed shitty and non-functional to me (for example, I'm in an HTML file and type "<d," I see now "dialog," followed by "div." Figuring out how many times I need to press "tab" is a lot worse UX for me than just typing "<div>" every time). With all that autocomplete, pop-up dropdown menu BS disabled, it's nice and smooth.
[0]: https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PAT...
Atom-IDE is a Facebook project. It seems to be actually derived (in part) from their Nuclide project, which has a completely proprietary non-open source license.
This is a great demonstration of the danger of BSD + Patents. First it's Facebook using it for a great frontend framework. Now Github is using it for an IDE. It truly a threat to open source.
EDIT: I understand that it would be best to get a free patent grant, but most open-source projects have no patent grant at all. Why are we not complaining that Microsoft might hold patents for VSCode that they suddenly will start suing companies over?
I can't imagine switching back to Atom at this point, or even Sublime. For individual projects I might use IntelliJ or Visual Studio again, but outside of that VSCode is my exclusive editor for all languages for the foreseeable future. I'm very impressed by what Microsoft pulled off to be honest. (Blinking cursor jokes aside, of course)
Really? Isn't that what makes an IDE an IDE? We've had things like intellisense and refactoring tools in text editors for decades, the only thing that makes Visual Studio an IDE and not a stupidly complicated text editor is the debugging experience.
Anyone who says a text editor "can accomplish the same things [as an IDE]" just doesn't know how to use an IDE.
The text editor vs IDE difference is the difference between using regexes and a lexer/parser to read, analyze and manipulate source code.
The amount of effort I see people put into configuring their .vimrc or .emacs files to get a subset of what you get out of the box with a decent (ie Jetbrains) IDE that at the end of the day just dosn't work as well is... staggering.
I mean text editors have their place and most notably vim/emacs work over an SSH connection. That's fine. But where possible give me IntelliJ or CLion every time.
If you honestly think there's something an IDE can do that can't be done in a text editor with plugins, then just consider this: an IDE at its core is a text editor, and all the rest is just "plugins"
Oh, the irony...
I'm aware that text editors with plugins have more overhead than an IDE, but at least in my experience, I don't need enough plugins to make the plugins take as big of a toll as everything that comes with a text editor. I should have been more clear about this in my original comment
Fact is that it will use the maximum resource it requires, and maximum resources OS can provide.
Also Visual Studio Code kind of is like this to some degree? You start with basics, and add on what you need, their D plugin is pretty decent, and their Rust one has gotten pretty popular by the looks of the last Rust survey. Also their .NET Core support is pretty much the best on VS Code compared to on other editors from what I've seen, their Sublime Text plugin seems abandoned.
I never managed to work with Atom as it is now. It's just too slow. Now they are pushing it even further, I cannot imagine how much slower could still get.
1. On startup, it seems to take "forever" - but I can be patient for it
2. When having multiple files open that are really long; this may be due to linting or something, I'm not sure currently
And yes, memory usage is insane...
I've not used Atom so I'm curious to what you mean by this.
Firstly, what would define a really long file. Is a file with 10k of lines long?
Second, I would have though the ability to open lots of files would be a rather common occurrence for any programmer working on a large code base.
What happens in Atom if you have 30 files open?
I don't even remember what it was like to code without autosave in IntelliJ.
I will review the changeset before creating the PR anyway, so I don't see the downside of autosave.
TIOBE? No mention of Ruby.
VSCode - Ruby isn't priority.
Basically any tools / sites that aims at multiple programming languages no longer mention or support Ruby by default. Ruby has become a niche, and now even Github, seems not to support Ruby at all.
I am worried, all these WebPack 4, Rails 6, Ruby 3x3, TruffleRuby, are all too little too late. The ecosystem is shrinking, and they are reacting to it too late.
This is the only one I've found (not sure which state it's in):
Currently I use VSCode and RubyMine (from time to time) for Rails development but both have only mediocre code completion.
I use WebStorm/IntelliJ for my daily drivers. Tried Atom a while ago and have been liking VSCode more recently (good for Rust) and was very impressed, but still prefer WebStorm for JavaScript. Recently prompted to try Atom again due to the plugin for Marko.js, and was pleasantly surprised. Performance on my 2013 16GB MBPro is fine and it seems overall cleaner and snappier than I remembered. Just installed this new IDE plugin and it's instantly impressive. Good to see that the underpinnings of IDE functions are also becoming standardised thanks to LSP.
Source: https://nuclide.io/blog/2017/09/12/Introducing-Atom-IDE-UI/
So I guess the main differences are that it's more lightweight, and open-source.
I for sure wouldnt use this, especially with the whole kite controversy just being over (is it ?).
I can't really put my finger on it, but sublime text is just snappy and reliable in ways that Atom isn't. Got really tired of Atom lagging because I'm typing too fast, got tired of lockups and hanging. VS Code has very simillar issues too.
It was a nice experiment (can we do editors in HTML/JS?), but I'm convinced native is the only way to go for proper editing.
Opening files in a running instance of ST is virtually instantaneous. Not sure if it is even possible with Atom.
I'm an emacs user myself, but am looking at whether to recommend Atom to others.
Yes, I know that the answer is "electron". They picked the wrong tool for the job.
With enough C++ they might just replicate Sublime Text, vim or Emacs.
I wish I was joking but that's what it feels like sometimes
Anyone know which one is what the React ecosystem is moving to ?
You should also install language-reason and reason-refmt alongside it.
It seems to be the exact same thing?
Hoped they would cooperate with MS on VSCode
What is the point in this? Seriously. Please can someone enlighten me. Atom was bad enough with all of the other text editors are out there and not written in JS, but now you can't even say it's just a text editor. Facebook and the other contributors clearly have too much spare time on their hands.
JetBrains. End of.
</rant>
People want to improve the tools they use. Whether or not you feel they are using their "spare time" correctly, I'm sure they don't care.
Having my code analyzed by others' servers just so I can have better autocomplete does not sound like something I want.
It doesn't refer to servers in some Cloud.
