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Prediction: I believe eventually MS will kill Atom or let development languish. People will complain that "MS is evil" and "look who they were in the past" and

Prediction: I believe eventually MS will kill Atom or let development languish. People will complain that "MS is evil" and "look who they were in the past" and so on, but devs will go where the features are. VS Code is one of the finest examples of open source Done Right™, and while it owes something to Atom and Electron, this is pure open source darwinism.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
There's been previous discussion over this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18507817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18507817 Take what you will from it. I'm not sure they will kill it, but I don't know why they need to maintain two editors either, then again they already maintain Visual Studio as well. I think it would be nice to see how both teams push their editors, but I feel like over the long haul it will be some VIM vs Neovim type of this. Additionally, VS Code will focus on strongly supporting Microsofts tech (via plugins), while Atom will focus on GitHub to some extent.
- jsgo 7y ago
  My guess is that if anything, they'd turn Atom over to an external body to maintain and let it sink/swim on its own. Currently they seem to be fine with having both, which is cool. Maybe it is to have two separate teams work on different ideas and see which ones work and mainline it into Visual Studio Code? Not sure. I wish Visual Studio Code replaced Visual Studio, but unfortunately, it still holds value if working against Microsoft's stack. I like having them both and will occasionally use Code for .NET edits, but you definitely feel like it is missing some comforts at the very least when using it.
  - Devagamster 7y ago
    Until vscode and omnisharp support design time builds of msbuild projects, visual studio proper isn't going anywhere. Vscode cannot support anything beyond the happy path of csproj files which means I will always have to dip back into visual studio
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paulcarroty 7y ago
15-20 commits per week says they just support it and don't implement any major features. Hope I'm not right here.
- denisw 7y ago
  Looking only at the commit numbers of the `atom/atom` repo is a bit misleading as the Atom source code as the core plugin packages (e.g., the language modes, but also fundamental features like the tree and the fuzzer) are each in their own repo. For instance, the fuzzy-finder repo alone had 15+ commits in the last three weeks.
youeseh 7y ago
And then we'll all go back to Vim and the cycle of life will once again complete itself.
xrd 7y ago
Can anyone who has stayed with Atom after evaluating VSCode comment on why to stay with Atom? I switched to VSCode and would never consider going back to Atom at this point. Since the GitHub acquisition, it makes no sense for MS to maintain both and I agree 100% with the parent comment that this will be killed soon.
- bwha 7y ago
  I was with Atom for years, switched to VS Code and feel in love (save for the find and replace as cited above, I still felt/feel Atom's is better than VS Code's) and stuck with it (VS Code) for months. The thing that made me switch back was that there was some combination of plugins I was using in VS Code (I think it was the VIM plugin and something else maybe) started freezing periodically and the whole editor would become unresponsive and I'd have to restart. After that became normal I decided to switch back. In the end I preferred to spend my time coding rather than hunt down the problem. Also Atom's VIM plugin is strictly better for my use case. The highlighting effect to show you what you just `yw` for example is great!
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Funny, I had a similar (but somewhat opposite) experience: was a happy Atom user for some years until it started slowing down, freezing at increasing frequency; it was due to my having a massive tree of folders and files (top-level folder with all projects), with lots of symbolic and hard links. I had checked out VS Code a few times, but finally a couple months ago I was forced to make a switch - then pleasantly surprised how easy it was to migrate to it. VS Code is not as hackable of an editor, but it comes with great sensible defaults out of the box. I gave up trying to fully customize it, settled with a few tweaks, and have been very satisfied with it as a daily driver. At least for my use case, it's been more reliable and performant than Atom. The type hinting and "IntelliSense" is one of my favorite features (I'm sure Atom has a plugin for it). I think VS Code hits the sweet spot between an editor and a full-on IDE. EDIT: Oh, I didn't see this in the article, but it seems Atom is addressing the exact issue I was having: > The fuzzy finder’s project crawling performance has been improved dramatically by switching to a ripgrep-powered backend. This is most noticeable in projects with large numbers of files - for example, we measured a 14x speed boost in a project with 270K files.
mdhughes 7y ago
Strongly disagree. VS Code is a corporate tool IDE, which is dull and awkward to use as just an editor, and binary spyware in it "phones home" to its users' masters in Redmond. It's exactly what an MSDN subscriber would like, but dire for anyone else. Atom is fun. It's easy to configure in weird personal ways, get rid of parts you don't use, add your own plugins, change CSS as you like. There's an insane number of plugins and themes. It's like emacs but organized and nice. So far the statements from project owners in public and on Slack have been that Atom 1 & 2 development continues full speed. If it is "killed" we'll just fork it and run up a black flag.
- equasar 7y ago
  I think you missed the /s in your comment.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fartcannon 7y ago
    No need to insult whoever dislike your preferences.
- paulcarroty 7y ago
  > and binary spyware in it "phones home" to its users' masters in Redmond Not a problem, https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
mythz 7y ago
> VS Code is one of the finest examples of open source Done Right™ It's easy to do OSS right when your a major cloud OSS vendor who are able to use your billions of profits from hosting OSS to fund a 30+ strong dev team in creating a free "OSS" product. If that's the definition of doing OSS right, then the only sustainable "free" products that will be done right will come from multi-billion dollar cloud vendors. I do love VS Code tho, just not a fan of seeing most of the generated wealth from OSS being collected by the major cloud vendors, this trend is going to hurt the diversity of the OSS ecosystem as we know it. Irrespective of the funding model that made it possible, I will say the VS Code team is doing a fantastic work iteratively shipping new features with each release at a super high velocity. IMO it's a poster child for why most future Desktop Apps will be built using a Hybrid or WebView dev model like Electron where its productivity is unmatched.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

There's been previous discussion over this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18507817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18507817 Take what you will from it. I'm not sure they will kill it, but I don't know why they need to maintain two editors either, then again they already maintain Visual Studio as well. I think it would be nice to see how both teams push their editors, but I feel like over the long haul it will be some VIM vs Neovim type of this. Additionally, VS Code will focus on strongly supporting Microsofts tech (via plugins), while Atom will focus on GitHub to some extent.

jsgo 7y ago
My guess is that if anything, they'd turn Atom over to an external body to maintain and let it sink/swim on its own. Currently they seem to be fine with having both, which is cool. Maybe it is to have two separate teams work on different ideas and see which ones work and mainline it into Visual Studio Code? Not sure. I wish Visual Studio Code replaced Visual Studio, but unfortunately, it still holds value if working against Microsoft's stack. I like having them both and will occasionally use Code for .NET edits, but you definitely feel like it is missing some comforts at the very least when using it.
- Devagamster 7y ago
  Until vscode and omnisharp support design time builds of msbuild projects, visual studio proper isn't going anywhere. Vscode cannot support anything beyond the happy path of csproj files which means I will always have to dip back into visual studio

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paulcarroty 7y ago

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

denisw 7y ago
Looking only at the commit numbers of the `atom/atom` repo is a bit misleading as the Atom source code as the core plugin packages (e.g., the language modes, but also fundamental features like the tree and the fuzzer) are each in their own repo. For instance, the fuzzy-finder repo alone had 15+ commits in the last three weeks.

youeseh 7y ago

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

xrd 7y ago

Can anyone who has stayed with Atom after evaluating VSCode comment on why to stay with Atom? I switched to VSCode and would never consider going back to Atom at this point. Since the GitHub acquisition, it makes no sense for MS to maintain both and I agree 100% with the parent comment that this will be killed soon.

bwha 7y ago
I was with Atom for years, switched to VS Code and feel in love (save for the find and replace as cited above, I still felt/feel Atom's is better than VS Code's) and stuck with it (VS Code) for months. The thing that made me switch back was that there was some combination of plugins I was using in VS Code (I think it was the VIM plugin and something else maybe) started freezing periodically and the whole editor would become unresponsive and I'd have to restart. After that became normal I decided to switch back. In the end I preferred to spend my time coding rather than hunt down the problem. Also Atom's VIM plugin is strictly better for my use case. The highlighting effect to show you what you just `yw` for example is great!
- lioeters 7y ago
  Funny, I had a similar (but somewhat opposite) experience: was a happy Atom user for some years until it started slowing down, freezing at increasing frequency; it was due to my having a massive tree of folders and files (top-level folder with all projects), with lots of symbolic and hard links. I had checked out VS Code a few times, but finally a couple months ago I was forced to make a switch - then pleasantly surprised how easy it was to migrate to it. VS Code is not as hackable of an editor, but it comes with great sensible defaults out of the box. I gave up trying to fully customize it, settled with a few tweaks, and have been very satisfied with it as a daily driver. At least for my use case, it's been more reliable and performant than Atom. The type hinting and "IntelliSense" is one of my favorite features (I'm sure Atom has a plugin for it). I think VS Code hits the sweet spot between an editor and a full-on IDE. EDIT: Oh, I didn't see this in the article, but it seems Atom is addressing the exact issue I was having: > The fuzzy finder’s project crawling performance has been improved dramatically by switching to a ripgrep-powered backend. This is most noticeable in projects with large numbers of files - for example, we measured a 14x speed boost in a project with 270K files.

mdhughes 7y ago

Strongly disagree. VS Code is a corporate tool IDE, which is dull and awkward to use as just an editor, and binary spyware in it "phones home" to its users' masters in Redmond. It's exactly what an MSDN subscriber would like, but dire for anyone else. Atom is fun. It's easy to configure in weird personal ways, get rid of parts you don't use, add your own plugins, change CSS as you like. There's an insane number of plugins and themes. It's like emacs but organized and nice. So far the statements from project owners in public and on Slack have been that Atom 1 & 2 development continues full speed. If it is "killed" we'll just fork it and run up a black flag.

equasar 7y ago
I think you missed the /s in your comment.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fartcannon 7y ago
  No need to insult whoever dislike your preferences.
paulcarroty 7y ago
> and binary spyware in it "phones home" to its users' masters in Redmond Not a problem, https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/

mythz 7y ago

> VS Code is one of the finest examples of open source Done Right™ It's easy to do OSS right when your a major cloud OSS vendor who are able to use your billions of profits from hosting OSS to fund a 30+ strong dev team in creating a free "OSS" product. If that's the definition of doing OSS right, then the only sustainable "free" products that will be done right will come from multi-billion dollar cloud vendors. I do love VS Code tho, just not a fan of seeing most of the generated wealth from OSS being collected by the major cloud vendors, this trend is going to hurt the diversity of the OSS ecosystem as we know it. Irrespective of the funding model that made it possible, I will say the VS Code team is doing a fantastic work iteratively shipping new features with each release at a super high velocity. IMO it's a poster child for why most future Desktop Apps will be built using a Hybrid or WebView dev model like Electron where its productivity is unmatched.