When you set out to find the text editor of your dreams the editor’s history and background play important roles and impact your decision. When you use an editor that originates from a time-tested veteran in the field, you have a solid support base and plenty of documentation and assistance when you need it.
When Atom first came out, it was novel in that it was built on web technologies and therefore pretty flexible and exciting for folks who worked in those technologies. It’s called “A hackable text editor for the 21st Century”.
But then VSCode came along and took a lot of similar ideas and executed them really well. It took off. Despite the occasional performance drawbacks of these kinds of editors, I was always a believer.
Atom passes the heritage test with flying colors. The free and open-source editor was developed by GitHub, one of the top software development platforms around. GitHub is a version control management system and has been at the forefront of web and project development for years. Programmers rely on GitHub for easy collaboration—they love its deep support network and variety of tools. Atom springs from the same minds that developed GitHub, and it unsurprisingly integrates with the platform without trouble.
Starting to code for the first time can be a challenge, and your tools need to get you through the tough times and be ready for any tasks you set them to perform. Flexibility is an essential element in your text editor and can mean the difference between a quick and accurate job and a sloppy one. When you use a flexible and customizable text editor, you have fine control over what information you get and how the editor presents it. An editor with high customizability makes your work much easier.
Atom is a good editor for many coding fields, from software scripting to web development. Atom is cross platform for Window, Linux, and OSX. It’s 100% free and open source.
One of Atom’s key selling points is its flexibility and readiness for customization. The editor calls itself the “hackable text editor for the 21st century,” and it lives up to that moniker. Atom has a massive library of tweaks and wholesale makeovers and is up for whatever you want to do with it. Want to change something in the display, set the editor to perform a specific function, or design your own color scheme? Odds are good that someone else has created a package for that. And if you can’t find a pre-existing customization, making your own adjustments in the backend CSS is a snap.
Size can make or break a software tool. You have only so much space to work with on your computer or server. So, how does Atom stack up when it comes to heftiness?
Atom doesn’t have the smallest install you’ll encounter when mucking about with HTML editors, but it’s a far drive from the biggest. Atom has an install size of 179 MB. While there are smaller and faster editors, Brackets or Notepad++, it’s a far cry from the hard drive breaking 800mb required for IDEs like visual studio.
When using Atom, the program feel responsive and snappy, without long load times that can come from other larger code editors. Yet you get to keep the useful bells and whistles.
A good text editor does more than just inspect and verify one programming language. A text editor that doesn’t have much in the way of language support can be the greatest app the world has ever seen and still be wrong for your needs if you don’t code in one of the languages it understands. Your dream editor should be able to work with many languages without reduced functionality.
You won’t be at a loss for words when you tweak your code with Atom editor. Atom supports all sorts of popular languages for syntax highlighting and, with the help of custom packages, won’t blink at your more esoteric ones, either. Node.js, CSS, and JavaScript are just a few of the languages you can use with Atom. And if you need support for a language that doesn’t come stock? There’s bound to be an open-source package to add that skill to your copy of Atom. It gets top marks for multilingualism.
So there you have it, you crazy kids. Using a quality code editor is crucial if you want the power to create respectable websites and programs in a hurry, and Atom is an editor of choice for many.
To install Atom on your system follow our Installation Guide.
