6 ms·

Atom 1.8 and 1.9 beta

rosstex 10y ago
But is it faster?
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  "Atom 1.9.0-beta0 This beta version of Atom introduces several important changes that will bring performance and reliability improvements to the editor, as well as some new features we are really excited about. We recommend you check it out! :sparkles:"
- rspeer 10y ago
  They do mention "rendering and performance improvements", and the linked pull request [1] mentions "much faster cold startup time and general increase in responsiveness". I don't know if that means it's fast enough to replace other editors now, but it's promising. [1] https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/11474 https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/11474
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  No. Just like Firefox. It's the same mantra over and over again. The only excuse you can is 'but it's Foss'.
kbd 10y ago
Every time Atom is discussed, it's pointed out how slow it is, and then others point out how VS Code is much faster yet is also based on Electron. Could someone explain what makes VS Code significantly faster? Full disclosure: Every time I try Atom I decide to stick with Sublime Text, largely because Atom feels slow. I've never tried VS Code myself.
- rmccue 10y ago
  Atom and VS Code only share the Electron environment, but the actual way they've implemented the editor rendering and interaction is completely different. Basically, all that VS Code shows is that it's not the JS/Chrome environment that's the bottleneck, it's the editor implementation itself. There's some discussion in this Atom ticket: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/10188 https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/10188
- StevePerkins 10y ago
  Just flat-out more efficient code may have a lot to do with it (I have not deeply explored the codebase for either project). However, I suspect that the larger reason is that Atom ships with a ton of plugins enabled by default, whereas VS Code ships relatively lean. If you look the settings in Atom, it tells you specifically how many milliseconds each plugin adds to startup time. They REALLY add up. Install even more plugins to customize your editor, and it rapidly enters IDE bloat territory. All that being said, VS Code recently launched a plugin marketplace of its own. I've installed Vim emulation and a couple of others, and really haven't noticed any increase in startup time.
- slimsag 10y ago
  In my experience, Sublime is vastly faster than both. VS Code comes next, and then Atom. I still wouldn't switch to VS code because by design[1] you can't open multiple folders in the same window, which destroys my workflow. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/30234987/5905344 http://stackoverflow.com/a/30234987/5905344
  - yelnatz 10y ago
    Sublime is already slow as hell for me. (I open a lot of logs) I can't imagine going any slower...
    - slimsag 10y ago
      Atom can't open files larger than 2MB IIRC, and files below 2MB are.. very rough. This was about 6 months ago, though, so hopefully it's improved since then! EDIT: yep, things have improved: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/307 https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/307
      - philliphaydon 10y ago
        It still struggles with large files. I can crash atom at work often. Never managed to crash vs code. But vs code still lacks plugins. As does sublime nowadays.
        rspeer 10y ago
        Oddly enough, about 2/3 of the times I come back to my work computer in the morning, VS Code is unresponsive and needs to be killed. (Yes, I should get together enough data to make a bug report out of this.) But, yuck, sounds like I should keep using VS Code anyway. I kind of want to be able to use Atom, but 2 MB is a frighteningly low size limit.
        bitserf 10y ago
        Open a file with everything on one line in Atom, and you can bring it to its knees, even if the file is only a couple of kilobytes.
- eknkc 10y ago
  I used Atom for a while then switched to VSCode. Atom always felt a little "wrong" after Sublime. It works perfectly but there is this feeling of heaviness on all interfaces, scrolling etc. VSCode works great, completely replaced both Atom and Sublime for me. Give it a shot sometime.
  - riscy 10y ago
    I've also found the font rendering on OS X to be better (sharper/cleaner) in Sublime than Atom on a retina display.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    I know it doesn't add much, but ditto... I love VS Code as an editor... I work in Linux, OSX and Windows on pretty much a daily basis, having the same editor everywhere is a really nice thing. Freshly updated, and the plugin ecosystem keeps growing... even debugger support (that I've never actually used). Latest update added an on-screen terminal view, which is definitely useful for a quick npm install, etc. Some of the "solution" stuff is a little clunky to get setup for a full project, but it's interesting the approach MS is taking on this compared to classic VS. Hoping it gets a bit better on integrated project tooling for the likes of getting some of the boilerplate setup. Seems that go, python, C#, JS and TS are very well supported (out of the box or via extensions).
- benatkin 10y ago
  I wonder if the major Atom users are working with nicer repos than those who lament that they can't use it. The ideal project would maybe be a max of 3 or 4 levels deep (but fewer in most part) with 5-20 folders/files in each folder, and most files less than 200 lines and all less than 1000 lines. A lot of repos are not like this though - they have too much crap in them.
- jongalloway2 10y ago
  Why haven't you tried VS Code? Relatively small download, fast install, free and open source. You could install it in just a little more time than it takes to post this question. https://code.visualstudio.com/ https://code.visualstudio.com/ Disclaimer: I work for m-dollar. My commission rate is 0.0% and VS Code is free, so I am hoping to make it up in volume.
  - pmelendez 10y ago
    Kudos to the humour in your disclaimer :)
  - lewisl9029 10y ago
    I love VS Code and have been using it as my main editor for quite a while now, but the lack of project-wide find and replace is why I still keep Atom around: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1690 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1690 This glaring omission combined with the proposed performance improvements in the Atom 1.9 beta might just be enough to tempt me back to the Atom side again.
  - donut2d 10y ago
    The thing that stops me from giving VS Code a real shot is its sad VIM mode.
  - ngrilly 10y ago
    I tried VS Code. I liked it. But I really miss project-wide find and replace. Hope it will be added soon.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Electron is the Chrome UI embedding shell. The actual editor code is totally different between the two.
  - kbd 10y ago
    Yes, I get that, but because they're both based on Electron, they're essentially both browsers and will do all their rendering through DOM manipulation. Yet VS Code is reported to be much better at it than Atom, so I was wondering what architectural differences account for this.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      It seems there's some dramatic differences in how plugins are integrated, meaning some things are easier/harder to do via plugin. The VS Code UI is much more fixed than Atom as well... that said, other than getting used to the open files on the upper corner instead of tabs, it hasn't been bad at all. It's just out of the way enough.
- shalabhc 10y ago
  Another one to try is Howl (http://howl.io http://howl.io) It's newish but very stable and uses Lua (not Javascript) as the extension language. It is very lightweight and faster than Atom. Disclosure: I'm one of the contributors.
  - riscy 10y ago
    This looks cool; kind of like modern Vim/Emacs hybrid. I especially like the filename search, which is lacking in Atom.
    - shalabhc 10y ago
      Thank you. Yes it's kind of like a modernized Emacs with a very nice API in Lua. I haven't used Vim so can't say about the similarity there but it does have a Vim mode. Do you mean the normal file browser or the recursive search (`ctrl_s`)? I did find Atom a bit lacking for general quick file browsing as well as previewing and usability of things like replace commands.
      - riscy 10y ago
        I mean the ability to list all files recursively in a buffer and then search that buffer, something Emacs got right.
        shalabhc 10y ago
        Ah yes - I find that really useful too! Do you know how Emacs handles too many recursive listings? Howl just truncates the search after 3 seconds and I'm wondering if there's something better we can do.
  - arc0re 10y ago
    This looks really nice. I'm gonna try to compile on OSX, shouldn't be too hard. It seems to be a modern vim/emacs with no bloated GUI, and I'm surprised by the relatively small number of LoC!
- lucisferre 10y ago
  For one I understand that Atom just uses Regex to highlight syntax for languages. I'd be surprised if VS doesn't use a proper parser.
- ngrilly 10y ago
  > Could someone explain what makes VS Code significantly faster? I'm wondering the same every time someone writes VS Code is faster than Atom (which is true in my experience): yes, but why?
_RPM 10y ago
atom has become my default GUI editor.
- pp19dd 10y ago
  I share with others and recognize all the problems with atom. It's so incredibly slow on my strained workstation, especially with large files. And yet, same thing happened to me: it's become my default GUI editor.
obilgic 10y ago
I never understood why everyone complains about atom's speed on HN. I have been using it for 3 years as my default editor with lots of plugins, never experienced performance issues.
- slimsag 10y ago
  Have you tried Sublime? I'm asking honestly, because I used Atom for a year and thought it was pretty fast until I tried Sublime.
- azeirah 10y ago
  The people with complaints about performance issues are the people coming from Sublime Text. Everything you do in Sublime is done instantly. Try opening the command panel (ctrl+shift+p) both in sublime and atom. At least a 300ms difference. Multiple cursors, switching to different panels (I can see the whole pane getting rendered in front of my eyes -- not instant!), even things like loading the list of installable plugins or installing a plugin is far, __far__ faster in sublime, assuming package control, compared to Atom! Sublime also has this insane feature where no matter how many plugins you have installed, Sublime will still start up in about 200-300 milliseconds, as fast as notepad on Windows and faster than gedit on linux. Atom only goes slower and slower and slower the more plugins you install. When you're used to an editor that does everything instantly, everything that takes longer than 200ms takes too long.
  - meric 10y ago
    Wow, that explains everything so perfectly. I am a Sublime user. Your comment has moved me to register my copy now. (I'm serious!)
  - philliphaydon 10y ago
    I came from Notepad2 on windows. Tried sublime, atom, vscode, brackets. End d up with brackets for a long time but as much as I hate atom. It's where the plugins at. :(
  - seanwilson 10y ago
    > Try opening the command panel (ctrl+shift+p) both in sublime and atom. At least a 300ms difference. Opens instantly in Atom for me.
gtallen1187 10y ago
A big thank you to https://github.com/joefitzgerald https://github.com/joefitzgerald for the environment handling!
hartator 10y ago
I think it's a bit disapointing to see no focus at all on performance.
- krisdol 10y ago
  Have you tried clicking the link at the top of this page that takes you to the release notes?
epmatsw 10y ago
Wow, the tab snapping in 1.9 is excellent. Looking forward to seeing that in the release version.
krisdol 10y ago
I know I'll get flak for my tone, but honestly what the fuck is even the point of ever mentioning atom on this site ever again? Every single comment is always the same exact fucking complaint. If you're going to complain and not file a bug report at least give some context to your circlejerk so we know what system and version you're running on. What languages are you using? What plugins? I've been using it as my primary editor and IDE after switching from using IntelliJ products and vim for years. There are performance improvements and rendering improvements mentioned in this very fucking link, but no one here decides to read links anymore. Congrats atom developers. Sorry that only non users talk about your work.
sotojuan 10y ago
I really like how easy it is to customize Atom. I'm over "OCD" about syntax highlighting and I love how all I need to do is add some CSS and I'm done. I know it sound small, but it's a very friendly environment if you're a web dev. I still haven't made the full switch from Sublime but I'm using Atom more and more.
dfischer 10y ago
I used VIM / Atom for a long time but after switching to Webstorm I just can't look back. I don't even use crazy IDE features but the click/symbol mapping and knowing what's in use or not is really dope. Atom didn't have anything that sophisticated when I used it. There was a click to tag thing but it wasn't as thorough as webstorm.
bhouston 10y ago
I stopped using atom last week. It crashed too many times on me even though I like it's feature set. Went back to trusty old sublime, Atom is crash-prone and slow. Maybe it is because of the extensions I installed but they were all popular. If so then Atom should track crashes and correlate with extensions or something like that.
cryptos 10y ago
I tried to like Atom two or three times, but it was simply too slow and too buggy. Visual Studio Code is much faster and I haven't encountered severe bugs so far.
mohsinr 10y ago
Atom is my main editor. It used to be little slower at ubuntu 14.04 but now on 16.04 Ubuntu, it works just fine.
dbailey5 10y ago
I finally gave up with atom this week, after switching between st3, atom, rubymine and vs code I deleted all of them and just started using vim with spf13. I liked atom and its vim-mode _alot_ but its handling of tags even with atom-ctags never worked for me.

But is it faster?

voltagex_ 10y ago
"Atom 1.9.0-beta0 This beta version of Atom introduces several important changes that will bring performance and reliability improvements to the editor, as well as some new features we are really excited about. We recommend you check it out! :sparkles:"
rspeer 10y ago
They do mention "rendering and performance improvements", and the linked pull request [1] mentions "much faster cold startup time and general increase in responsiveness". I don't know if that means it's fast enough to replace other editors now, but it's promising. [1] https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/11474 https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/11474
angry-hacker 10y ago
No. Just like Firefox. It's the same mantra over and over again. The only excuse you can is 'but it's Foss'.

kbd 10y ago

Every time Atom is discussed, it's pointed out how slow it is, and then others point out how VS Code is much faster yet is also based on Electron. Could someone explain what makes VS Code significantly faster? Full disclosure: Every time I try Atom I decide to stick with Sublime Text, largely because Atom feels slow. I've never tried VS Code myself.

rmccue 10y ago
Atom and VS Code only share the Electron environment, but the actual way they've implemented the editor rendering and interaction is completely different. Basically, all that VS Code shows is that it's not the JS/Chrome environment that's the bottleneck, it's the editor implementation itself. There's some discussion in this Atom ticket: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/10188 https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/10188
StevePerkins 10y ago
Just flat-out more efficient code may have a lot to do with it (I have not deeply explored the codebase for either project). However, I suspect that the larger reason is that Atom ships with a ton of plugins enabled by default, whereas VS Code ships relatively lean. If you look the settings in Atom, it tells you specifically how many milliseconds each plugin adds to startup time. They REALLY add up. Install even more plugins to customize your editor, and it rapidly enters IDE bloat territory. All that being said, VS Code recently launched a plugin marketplace of its own. I've installed Vim emulation and a couple of others, and really haven't noticed any increase in startup time.
slimsag 10y ago
In my experience, Sublime is vastly faster than both. VS Code comes next, and then Atom. I still wouldn't switch to VS code because by design[1] you can't open multiple folders in the same window, which destroys my workflow. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/30234987/5905344 http://stackoverflow.com/a/30234987/5905344
- yelnatz 10y ago
  Sublime is already slow as hell for me. (I open a lot of logs) I can't imagine going any slower...
  - slimsag 10y ago
    Atom can't open files larger than 2MB IIRC, and files below 2MB are.. very rough. This was about 6 months ago, though, so hopefully it's improved since then! EDIT: yep, things have improved: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/307 https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/307
    - philliphaydon 10y ago
      It still struggles with large files. I can crash atom at work often. Never managed to crash vs code. But vs code still lacks plugins. As does sublime nowadays.
      - rspeer 10y ago
        Oddly enough, about 2/3 of the times I come back to my work computer in the morning, VS Code is unresponsive and needs to be killed. (Yes, I should get together enough data to make a bug report out of this.) But, yuck, sounds like I should keep using VS Code anyway. I kind of want to be able to use Atom, but 2 MB is a frighteningly low size limit.
      - bitserf 10y ago
        Open a file with everything on one line in Atom, and you can bring it to its knees, even if the file is only a couple of kilobytes.
eknkc 10y ago
I used Atom for a while then switched to VSCode. Atom always felt a little "wrong" after Sublime. It works perfectly but there is this feeling of heaviness on all interfaces, scrolling etc. VSCode works great, completely replaced both Atom and Sublime for me. Give it a shot sometime.
- riscy 10y ago
  I've also found the font rendering on OS X to be better (sharper/cleaner) in Sublime than Atom on a retina display.
- tracker1 10y ago
  I know it doesn't add much, but ditto... I love VS Code as an editor... I work in Linux, OSX and Windows on pretty much a daily basis, having the same editor everywhere is a really nice thing. Freshly updated, and the plugin ecosystem keeps growing... even debugger support (that I've never actually used). Latest update added an on-screen terminal view, which is definitely useful for a quick npm install, etc. Some of the "solution" stuff is a little clunky to get setup for a full project, but it's interesting the approach MS is taking on this compared to classic VS. Hoping it gets a bit better on integrated project tooling for the likes of getting some of the boilerplate setup. Seems that go, python, C#, JS and TS are very well supported (out of the box or via extensions).
benatkin 10y ago
I wonder if the major Atom users are working with nicer repos than those who lament that they can't use it. The ideal project would maybe be a max of 3 or 4 levels deep (but fewer in most part) with 5-20 folders/files in each folder, and most files less than 200 lines and all less than 1000 lines. A lot of repos are not like this though - they have too much crap in them.
jongalloway2 10y ago
Why haven't you tried VS Code? Relatively small download, fast install, free and open source. You could install it in just a little more time than it takes to post this question. https://code.visualstudio.com/ https://code.visualstudio.com/ Disclaimer: I work for m-dollar. My commission rate is 0.0% and VS Code is free, so I am hoping to make it up in volume.
- pmelendez 10y ago
  Kudos to the humour in your disclaimer :)
- lewisl9029 10y ago
  I love VS Code and have been using it as my main editor for quite a while now, but the lack of project-wide find and replace is why I still keep Atom around: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1690 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1690 This glaring omission combined with the proposed performance improvements in the Atom 1.9 beta might just be enough to tempt me back to the Atom side again.
- donut2d 10y ago
  The thing that stops me from giving VS Code a real shot is its sad VIM mode.
- ngrilly 10y ago
  I tried VS Code. I liked it. But I really miss project-wide find and replace. Hope it will be added soon.
rayiner 10y ago
Electron is the Chrome UI embedding shell. The actual editor code is totally different between the two.
- kbd 10y ago
  Yes, I get that, but because they're both based on Electron, they're essentially both browsers and will do all their rendering through DOM manipulation. Yet VS Code is reported to be much better at it than Atom, so I was wondering what architectural differences account for this.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    It seems there's some dramatic differences in how plugins are integrated, meaning some things are easier/harder to do via plugin. The VS Code UI is much more fixed than Atom as well... that said, other than getting used to the open files on the upper corner instead of tabs, it hasn't been bad at all. It's just out of the way enough.
shalabhc 10y ago
Another one to try is Howl (http://howl.io http://howl.io) It's newish but very stable and uses Lua (not Javascript) as the extension language. It is very lightweight and faster than Atom. Disclosure: I'm one of the contributors.
- riscy 10y ago
  This looks cool; kind of like modern Vim/Emacs hybrid. I especially like the filename search, which is lacking in Atom.
  - shalabhc 10y ago
    Thank you. Yes it's kind of like a modernized Emacs with a very nice API in Lua. I haven't used Vim so can't say about the similarity there but it does have a Vim mode. Do you mean the normal file browser or the recursive search (`ctrl_s`)? I did find Atom a bit lacking for general quick file browsing as well as previewing and usability of things like replace commands.
    - riscy 10y ago
      I mean the ability to list all files recursively in a buffer and then search that buffer, something Emacs got right.
      - shalabhc 10y ago
        Ah yes - I find that really useful too! Do you know how Emacs handles too many recursive listings? Howl just truncates the search after 3 seconds and I'm wondering if there's something better we can do.
- arc0re 10y ago
  This looks really nice. I'm gonna try to compile on OSX, shouldn't be too hard. It seems to be a modern vim/emacs with no bloated GUI, and I'm surprised by the relatively small number of LoC!
lucisferre 10y ago
For one I understand that Atom just uses Regex to highlight syntax for languages. I'd be surprised if VS doesn't use a proper parser.
ngrilly 10y ago
> Could someone explain what makes VS Code significantly faster? I'm wondering the same every time someone writes VS Code is faster than Atom (which is true in my experience): yes, but why?

_RPM 10y ago

atom has become my default GUI editor.

pp19dd 10y ago
I share with others and recognize all the problems with atom. It's so incredibly slow on my strained workstation, especially with large files. And yet, same thing happened to me: it's become my default GUI editor.

obilgic 10y ago

I never understood why everyone complains about atom's speed on HN. I have been using it for 3 years as my default editor with lots of plugins, never experienced performance issues.

slimsag 10y ago
Have you tried Sublime? I'm asking honestly, because I used Atom for a year and thought it was pretty fast until I tried Sublime.
azeirah 10y ago
The people with complaints about performance issues are the people coming from Sublime Text. Everything you do in Sublime is done instantly. Try opening the command panel (ctrl+shift+p) both in sublime and atom. At least a 300ms difference. Multiple cursors, switching to different panels (I can see the whole pane getting rendered in front of my eyes -- not instant!), even things like loading the list of installable plugins or installing a plugin is far, __far__ faster in sublime, assuming package control, compared to Atom! Sublime also has this insane feature where no matter how many plugins you have installed, Sublime will still start up in about 200-300 milliseconds, as fast as notepad on Windows and faster than gedit on linux. Atom only goes slower and slower and slower the more plugins you install. When you're used to an editor that does everything instantly, everything that takes longer than 200ms takes too long.
- meric 10y ago
  Wow, that explains everything so perfectly. I am a Sublime user. Your comment has moved me to register my copy now. (I'm serious!)
- philliphaydon 10y ago
  I came from Notepad2 on windows. Tried sublime, atom, vscode, brackets. End d up with brackets for a long time but as much as I hate atom. It's where the plugins at. :(
- seanwilson 10y ago
  > Try opening the command panel (ctrl+shift+p) both in sublime and atom. At least a 300ms difference. Opens instantly in Atom for me.

gtallen1187 10y ago

A big thank you to https://github.com/joefitzgerald https://github.com/joefitzgerald for the environment handling!

hartator 10y ago

I think it's a bit disapointing to see no focus at all on performance.

krisdol 10y ago
Have you tried clicking the link at the top of this page that takes you to the release notes?

epmatsw 10y ago

Wow, the tab snapping in 1.9 is excellent. Looking forward to seeing that in the release version.

krisdol 10y ago

I know I'll get flak for my tone, but honestly what the fuck is even the point of ever mentioning atom on this site ever again? Every single comment is always the same exact fucking complaint. If you're going to complain and not file a bug report at least give some context to your circlejerk so we know what system and version you're running on. What languages are you using? What plugins? I've been using it as my primary editor and IDE after switching from using IntelliJ products and vim for years. There are performance improvements and rendering improvements mentioned in this very fucking link, but no one here decides to read links anymore. Congrats atom developers. Sorry that only non users talk about your work.

sotojuan 10y ago

I really like how easy it is to customize Atom. I'm over "OCD" about syntax highlighting and I love how all I need to do is add some CSS and I'm done. I know it sound small, but it's a very friendly environment if you're a web dev. I still haven't made the full switch from Sublime but I'm using Atom more and more.

dfischer 10y ago

I used VIM / Atom for a long time but after switching to Webstorm I just can't look back. I don't even use crazy IDE features but the click/symbol mapping and knowing what's in use or not is really dope. Atom didn't have anything that sophisticated when I used it. There was a click to tag thing but it wasn't as thorough as webstorm.

bhouston 10y ago

I stopped using atom last week. It crashed too many times on me even though I like it's feature set. Went back to trusty old sublime, Atom is crash-prone and slow. Maybe it is because of the extensions I installed but they were all popular. If so then Atom should track crashes and correlate with extensions or something like that.

cryptos 10y ago

I tried to like Atom two or three times, but it was simply too slow and too buggy. Visual Studio Code is much faster and I haven't encountered severe bugs so far.

mohsinr 10y ago

Atom is my main editor. It used to be little slower at ubuntu 14.04 but now on 16.04 Ubuntu, it works just fine.

dbailey5 10y ago

I finally gave up with atom this week, after switching between st3, atom, rubymine and vs code I deleted all of them and just started using vim with spf13. I liked atom and its vim-mode _alot_ but its handling of tags even with atom-ctags never worked for me.