Ali Abbas

Posted on Jun 9, 2019

Atom vs VSCode VSCode or Atom?

#discuss #atom #vscode #webdev

Which one do you prefer and why?

VS Code
Atom
Sublime Text
Brackets
Emacs
Notepad++

Top comments (53)

Lorenz • Jun 9 '19

I don't understand why Sublime Text 3 is not so popular or well known among developers. I've been using Sublime Text 3 for many years because it's incredibly fast and you can install a plugin for everything. It's also very clear and simple.

Thomas C. Haflich • Jun 9 '19

I've used ST2, ST3, and Atom (among others), and I can say that it's really down to which defaults you like better and if you need some random feature or package that isn't in one of them.

Also, how much you're willing to put up with nagware. ST2/3 is either a significant investment or periodically pulls a winrar. Atom is roughly the same product for nothing.

I know a bunch of developers who use Notepad++ for everything. Oh, and the one guy who used Dvorak layout and coded in Vim. (I think as a team of developers grows, the odds of having one of those guys approaches one.)

It is an interesting assumption that everyone is in two very specific editors.

Ben Sinclair • Jun 9 '19

It's not "how much you're willing to put up with nagware", it's "whether you're prepared to breach the license agreement and use the software illegally".

Brian Hanna • Jun 9 '19

I need some IDE style features out of the box and Sublime Text 3 didn't really cut it for me. It's my go to for editing a one-off file, but VSCode is a nice middle ground between a full blown IDE and a text editor. Atom is just too slow for me.

Also, unless they've improved their sidebar APIs significantly in the last year, there isn't a plugin for everything I want ST3 to do, unfortunately.

It's super performant and flexible and a great choice for a lot of workflows, but I've found VSCode works better for mine

najmi • Jun 9 '19

Hi ! I actually love sublime text 3 than any other IDE's because of the simplicity. Especially the tab shortcut for html tags.

Ali Abbas • Jun 9 '19 • Edited

Exactly. I too use it when designing HTML, CSS and JS Static Web Pages.

Brandon Conway • Jun 9 '19

This is available in pretty much every editor. It is called Emmet. Emmet can do a lot more than just expand simple tags, you should watch a few videos about it and you will like it even more than you do now!

Adam • Jun 10 '19

Vscode has Emmett baked in. Sometimes you have to declare it for some languages like Vue but out of the box, html/css works great

Ben Sinclair • Jun 9 '19

It's closed-source, proprietary-licensed, relatively-expensive, and not an IDE.

Rishi Kumar Chawda • Jun 9 '19

For me, It is because it is not free and VSCode is and it has been developed well for web developers - though I would still prefer sublime if I had the money, and will switch to it later probably. But for now, I get a lot of similar set of features in VSCode so yeah kinda gets the job for me.

Florian Rand • Jun 10 '19 • Edited

Stack overflow survey, tools: insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/...

Saurabh Sharma • Jun 9 '19

vs code is nice but sublime text is king when it comes to performance.

Ali Abbas • Jun 9 '19

I agree. Sublime text is light and doesn't consumes RAM that much as compared to VS Code.

miniscruff • Jun 9 '19

I use neovim, it requires some configuring but I have everything I need that other editors offer. Mainly, I use it for the window controls and terminal integrations. Vim plugins for other editors are ok but have limitations.

George • Jun 10 '19

Hello. May be do you share your favorite plugins for neovim?

Florian Rand • Jun 10 '19 • Edited

Hello there George! This may be of help (copy & paste from my init.vim):

Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plug 'tpope/vim-commentary'
Plug 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
Plug 'tpope/vim-surround'
Plug 'itchyny/lightline.vim'
Plug 'bronson/vim-trailing-whitespace'
Plug 'Yggdroot/indentLine'
Plug 'jiangmiao/auto-pairs'
Plug 'w0rp/ale'
Plug 'junegunn/limelight.vim'
Plug 'mhinz/vim-signify'
Plug 'junegunn/fzf', { 'dir': '~/.fzf', 'do': './install --all' }
Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim'
" For async completion
Plug 'Shougo/deoplete.nvim', { 'do': ':UpdateRemotePlugins' }
" For Denite features
Plug 'Shougo/denite.nvim'

" Color scheme
Plug 'dracula/vim', { 'as': 'dracula' }
Plug 'flrnprz/plastic.vim', { 'as': 'plastic' }
Plug 'flrnprz/candid.vim', { 'as': 'candid' }
Plug 'joshdick/onedark.vim'

" go
"" Go Lang Bundle
Plug 'fatih/vim-go'
Plug 'tweekmonster/hl-goimport.vim'
Plug 'buoto/gotests-vim'

"" HTML / CSS / XML Bundle
Plug 'tpope/vim-haml', {'for': ['haml', 'sass', 'scss']}
Plug 'mattn/emmet-vim'
Plug 'alvan/vim-closetag'
Plug 'ap/vim-css-color'
Plug 'amadeus/vim-xml'

" javascript
"" Javascript Bundle
Plug 'pangloss/vim-javascript', {'for': 'javascript'}
Plug 'othree/yajs.vim', {'for': 'javascript'}
"Plug 'posva/vim-vue', {'for': 'vue'}
Plug 'MaxMEllon/vim-jsx-pretty'

"Python
Plug 'vim-python/python-syntax', {'for': 'python'}

" typescript
"" Typescript support
Plug 'mhartington/nvim-typescript', {'do': './install.sh'}
Plug 'HerringtonDarkholme/yats.vim'

Ali Abbas • Jun 10 '19

Great 👍🖖

George • Jun 10 '19

Thanks.

Florian Rand • Jun 10 '19

Also, this article explain some of them: medium.com/@huntie/10-essential-vi...

miniscruff • Jun 10 '19

My nvim config is on GitHub.
github.com/miniscruff/dotfiles/blo...

NOGIER Loïc • Jun 9 '19

If you use VS Code, try VS Codium : vscodium.com/ is a Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode.

Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.

The VSCodium project exists so that you don’t have to download+build from source. This project includes special build scripts that clone Microsoft’s vscode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries for you to GitHub releases. These binaries are licensed under the MIT license. Telemetry is disabled.

Antonio Radovcic • Jun 9 '19

Both are from Microsoft 😬 and VS seems to be more popular, so that‘s where more plugins etc. will be written for. That makes it my choice. Also it has the best out-of-the-box config for front-end-web-development, so it’s a good choice for beginners, too. The Electron-part bothers me a bit, but almost all desktop-apps I use are web-based (except Safari) so I just don’t care anymore tbh

Rafael Antonio Mejía Rosales • Jun 9 '19

I love Sublime Text for its simplicity and speed, I even paid for the license to support its development, but I have to recognize sometimes it falls short on features for more complex projects and for those I reach for PHPStorm. If I have to go for an IDE, I rather go with a full featured one than a half-assed like VSCode.

Rob Blake • Jun 9 '19

I used and loved Atom for years. I was always nervous of using Microsoft software. I noticed that more and more respected developers were talking about using VS Code.

Then Microsoft bought GitHub. I decided that I might as well give VS Code a try. Now I really like it. It's not that much different to Atom IMHO but it's a good tool. I noticed that a lot of features that I liked in Atom have made their way into VS Code. Things like collaborative remote working for example.

playaspec • Sep 25 '19

I'm a little more than disturbed that Microsoft bought Github, and shortly after Atom started pestering me to try VSCode. Actually I'm annoyed. It smacks of "embrace, extend, extinguish." It triggers my PTSD whought from decades of shabby Microsoft software not doing the right thing and stealing my time as a result. No thanks.

Roman Semenov • Jun 10 '19 • Edited

Sublime when I need to quickly open something simple, IntelliJ if I want to work on it more than 15min. Removing everything except code window (even tabs and line numbers) from IDE makes much more pleasant to use, looks like a text editor. And it's very fast too if you don't count load time, faster than vscode or atom.

prassee • Jun 10 '19

add emacs to this list

Ali Abbas • Jun 10 '19

Okay👍

Florian Rand • Jun 10 '19

And vim\neovim 😋

Ben Halpern • Jun 10 '19

I'm curious about the future of Atom in general.

I made another #discuss post with some questions there if anyone cares to weigh in:

Is there a future for the Atom editor?

Ben Halpern ・ 1 min read

#discuss #editors

bvmcode • Jun 10 '19

I am a VS Code fan but I've never used Atom so it wouldn't be fair for me to compare them. I've stopped using PyCharm in favor of VS Code for python, and for javascript it's a slam dunk. VS Code is light weight and setting it up for your needs is relatively easy. I am not a huge fan of MS products but this one is great and ironically its one of their free products.

Saugat Rai • Jun 10 '19

I have tried brackets, sublime, atom and vscode.
I love Vs Code for its extensions and faster load. I tried Atom but it took time to open the app. I have also used sublime for 1 and half year. The keymaps for sublime is great. Thankfully, VS Code support keymapping of sublime.
I am currently using VS Code. I love its project manager extension which helps to switch between projects easily.

Jameel Ahmed • Jun 10 '19

Vs Code

Maxime • Jun 9 '19

I've tried all of them, and made a more detailed answer here stackoverflow.com/a/40842224/2398593

I'm also talking about angular is that answer but on the ide part I'd still use VSC no matter which JS/TS I'd work on :)

TenshiDevelopment • Jun 9 '19

I think both are very usefull, but i think Atom is like a normal text editor with features while VS Code is more for developer, but i like to use Atom.