I was (to an extent still am) a staunch supporter of the Atom editor, but today I think I am finally considering moving on to Visual Studio Code (vscode). Who would have thought Microsoft would (IMO) create a faster editor using Github's Electron better than Github themselves? (Github created Atom, Electron is a UI container to write cross platform GUI apps using web technology like Javascript and html). Atom and vscode are both built on Electron.
Atom is a wonderful editor developed with node. It rightfully earned its slogan "A hackable text editor". There are tons of plugins/packages written for the editor and they are simply amazing. So why am I shying away from Atom? It is so slow! Painfully slow. Want to open a simple file to edit? 5-6 seconds (16gb ram Mac). I found myself just firing up Vim most of the time to edit, and I am not so proficient with Vim.
Visual Studio Code (vscode): I first tried out this editor when it was in beta, and I hated it. It had no plugin support, clunky (IMO) user interface, but I did like it's git integration. I fired it up a couple of months post beta and it was really fast, it also now has supports for plugins! and boy is the plugin/extensions community growing rather rapidly. I installed similar plugins/extensions like I had on atom and it was still fast!
Atom is a wonderful editor developed with node. It rightfully earned its slogan "A hackable text editor". There are tons of plugins/packages written for the editor and they are simply amazing. So why am I shying away from Atom? It is so slow! Painfully slow. Want to open a simple file to edit? 5-6 seconds (16gb ram Mac). I found myself just firing up Vim most of the time to edit, and I am not so proficient with Vim.
Things I tried to speed it up:
- Uninstalled most of my plugins/packages (no dice)
- Reverted my themes to default (no dice)
- Tried the beta version (slightly better)
- Am i missing anything else?
Visual Studio Code (vscode): I first tried out this editor when it was in beta, and I hated it. It had no plugin support, clunky (IMO) user interface, but I did like it's git integration. I fired it up a couple of months post beta and it was really fast, it also now has supports for plugins! and boy is the plugin/extensions community growing rather rapidly. I installed similar plugins/extensions like I had on atom and it was still fast!
Things I like about vscode:
- Fast.
- Great git integration (diff tool is lovely)
- Integrated terminal support off the bat
- Has support for recent files or folder (so basic! A plugin for atom 🙄)
- Amazing support for Typescript. (to be fair Typescript is created my Microsoft, so it was a given)
- I prefer the auto suggestion of vscode
Verdict? Pending. I am still going to use both of them because I have a soft spot for Atom but vscode is making me more productive. I just wanted to rant. /r
