Microsoft killed Atom the day they took over Github - they haven't had the balls to say anything publicly, but just go look at the commit graphs in the Atom repos. Here's a summary: https://twitter.com/DuncanLock/status/1177747512905461760
I have both 'nightly' versions on my laptop, Atom Nightly and VSCode Insiders, and the commit activity in the former pales in comparison with the latter.
Eventually moved onto VSCode. As a former Atom hardcore fan, this was an emotional hit.
I was a big fan of Atom as well. It pains me to see MS taking over every single default developer tool. I have been watching a single VSCode issue for years now, hoping that some simple functionality which was key to my workflow (and exists in Atom) could finally be implemented. It’s free so I shouldn’t complain, I suppose!
Cramming literally everything into that tiny sidebar and making you constantly resize it when you switch between files, search, git is one of VSCode's larger UX blunders.
If Microsoft can sustain so many teams working on To-Do apps https://twitter.com/4Lou/status/1265723231396417536?s=20 that they need a chart to illustrate how your To-Dos will move between apps, I think Microsoft can afford to put a small team towards maintaining Atom while a larger team works on VS Code and separately Visual Studio. There are different target audiences, and unless Atom and VS Code end up borrowing architecture ideas from each other, and introduce API compatibility, I don’t see that changing in the near future. Generally speaking, Microsoft cares enough about existing customers and backwards-compatibility that I could see them maintaining it until there’s more overlap in UI. There’s another option too, that GitHub is large enough they might prefer using Atom internally over VS Code by enough developers to support the project in the spare time of the developers using Atom instead. So I’d say Atom is only discontinued if it breaks due to lack of developer use and interest, like just about any open source project. I mean, has Bower been discontinued? https://bower.io/ No, but yes? ;-)
Like with Bower, they're probably waiting for enough interest in Atom to drop off before they tell people to migrate to VS Code. With the example of Bower, there are still way too many projects using it in the wild. I predict it's going to be another 8 years or so before they decide to actually put Bower to sleep.
For those of you that have moved on from Atom, but didn’t go to VS Code, where did you end up? Sublime Text is probably where I’ll head (back to), but curious if there are other options people are happy with. Have tried VS Code multiple times, but it just feels kludgy to me.
I agree with you - the Atom UI/UX is much better than VSCode in lots of ways. I'm currently slowly getting used to the pain of VSCode and am about 80% VSCode & 20% Atom currently.
VSCode seems to be the next best option, with the most momentum, etc...
Atom is slowest editor I've ever used. Visual Studio would have to do pretty badly to reach that level. Atom is good in other ways. It's very extensible. But my cursor actually had noticeable lag.
Erm, I hate to break it to you, but VSCode and Atom are both Electron-based, so they're not exactly light on resources either... If you are going to have a whole browser engine running, I guess it makes sense to at least make a full-blown IDE out of it rather than a simpler editor (or a glorified chat app like Slack)
Is there any crossover in contributors from atom to VSCode since the acquisition?
If I were working on Atom when GitHub got acquired, I’d be eager to switch to contributing to VSCode just from a career perspective. It seems like there is more potential for cross organization collaboration and growth there.
