It’s been awhile since Github’s Text editor, Atom, was announced and users with invites got the chance to try the 21st Century text editor. Yesterday, they open sourced the editor, and it is now available for everyone. I was one of those who got the chance to try Atom while it was invite only, and it was just like yet another code editor for me. At first, it looked more like a Sublime Text clone with almost similar functionality.
Atom is a modern code editor with apart from the ability to handle code nicely, also gives users the option to customize the editor just as they want. Unlike Sublime Text which makes you change the Config file for customization, Atom gives you a nice Interface to deal with preferences and customization.
The front-end is basically the same as most text editors have, tabs on top, a big workspace area where you write your code, line numbering on the left. There’s a status bar in the bottom in Atom editor which shows the current position of cursor, the file name and the file type. If you’re a user of Sublime Text, you must be knowing that it comes with Package Control, which lets you install packages to extend the power of the editor. Atom also comes with Package Control and some useful Packages come pre-installed with the editor. Atom also supports themes for the Editor Interface and the Syntax. Users can also override key bindings through Settings.
The best thing about Atom is that it comes with lots of customization options and it gives you a nice, clean interface for changing Preferences, which Sublime Text doesn’t. In terms of performance, I found it a bit slower than Sublime Text. And since it is created by Github, it will be useful for those who use Github for their projects, and it already comes with a Github Package and I am sure that they’ll be adding more Github related features in the future.
Atom text editor is currently available for Mac only and you can grab it from here.