Atom Reviews & Insights

Score9.5 out of 10

90 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Atom are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Highly Customizable: Many users have praised Atom for its high level of customization. They appreciate the ability to tailor their coding environment to their preferences, with various themes and extensions available. This feature allows them to make their code easier to read and navigate, enhancing their overall coding experience.

Code Hinting Features: Several reviewers have been impressed with Atom's code hinting capabilities. This feature helps them write code faster and integrates well with services like LINT, allowing them to clean up their code according to their team's style choices. Users find this functionality particularly useful in speeding up their coding process.

Free Software: The fact that Atom is free has been seen as a major advantage by many users. They appreciate not having to invest in expensive software while still being able to access a robust coding environment. This affordability makes it accessible to a wide range of developers.

Atom Reviews

9 Reviews

Engineering

Atom - A simplest, finest , open-source text editor

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 28, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is used by only the development team in my organization. Atom has a simple UI that makes users use it without any issues. It has support for GitHub and has a lot of plugins. Along with this, a user can write its own plugin. Support code formating for different languages and its minimap feature also helps sometimes. It is being used to develop clean, well-structured code for our product. It is simply perfect because of everything it provides. The next best thing about Atom is that you have git control over it which helps to make things super easy in terms of open sourcing.

Pros

Adding packages in preferable language
Formatting of code making it easy to read for all users
Support for GitHub and plugins and plugin development
It is able to handle large amounts of data without slowing down

Cons

There should be a better user tips manual page to learn keyboard shortcuts
It would also be beneficial if mathematical and data analytic tools were added
it has quite high start-up timing when you open large projects to work on it
Sometimes, atom closed suddenly and do not open again
It still lacks better options with the previews even though there are already some by users adding plugins
It doesn't have self-correct features for lint errors, unlike IntelliJ

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is well suited for users who just beginning with their development careers. For developing production level or at the local level, for any use-case Atom is well suited as it provides support for many plugins and version control too. It is not suitable for heavy projects because it takes a lot of time in getting opened and also stops unexpectedly in between. It can be used by early-stage startups who are just beginning their project but when there is an ample amount of code, then they must switch to some other software.

Deepshi Sharma

Software Engineer in Engineering at Kognoz Consulting (E-Learning, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Solid editor but since eclipsed by VSCode

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

February 15, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used to use Atom as our code editor of choice for our dynamically typed language. Atom comes with fantastic syntax highlighting and other plugins out of the box that make writing code a breeze. Whenever we have to write HTML, CSS, Javascript, or Python, we used to use Atom. Some engineers also use Atom with some extra plugins for quick text manipulation, such as when they need to format strips, strip out lots of whitespaces, or prefix an unnumbered list with numbers. We have since switched over to VSCode (more on that later), but I would say that Atom is still a good choice if you are already using it.

Pros

Cross platform support for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Helpful community of people on the forums to ask for help.

Cons

Development on the Atom source code has greatly stalled since Microsoft purchased GitHub.
Many plugin developers moved their plugins onto VSCode and stopped maintaining their Atom version.

Likelihood to Recommend

My recommendation depends on whether my colleague is already using Atom or not. If they are not using Atom, I sincerely find VSCode to be a slightly better editor with a much brighter future in terms of feature development, upcoming plugins, and support. So they should start with VSCode. However, if they are already using Atom, I see no reason to switch for the time being. Atom was a great editor for a long time, and though feature development has stalled, it continues to perform well. It will meet most people's needs when it comes to editing dynamically typed languages.

Patrick Fong

Senior Software Engineer in Engineering at Iterable (Internet, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

Used Atom about 1 year

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

January 30, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization (software house), it is totally developers' choice in the engineering department to choose the IDE of their own choice. I was impressed by the shortcuts of Atom like Toggle Comment, Column Selection, Select Same Words, etc. and to install the Packages for ease of development. So that's why I migrated to it.

Pros

Built-in package manager.
Smart auto completion feature was great.

Cons

Due to some default settings, when I opened the file in Atom and commit it on Git it shows almost every line is changed so my PR is looking too big/ugly.
I think omitting the empty spaces should not be the default setting.
Performance needs some attention.

Likelihood to Recommend

Features that Atom has provided were superb. I was able to do a lot of things with shortcuts like duplicate word selections, tree hierarchy of folders, the drag/drop file/folder support, etc.

Suleman Ahmad

Senior Software Developer - NodeJS/Express, Angular, MVC Framework in Engineering at CareAxiom (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

A solid editor that will not disappoint

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 23, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As an open-source editor, several people within my organization are currently using the power of Atom as their code editor of choice. Because Atom is relatively basic in interface with the added benefit of countless plugins contributed by the larger community, Atom is generally the most recommended editor in my organization outside of Visual Studio Code.

Pros

Usability: Atom is very user-friendly. Its interface is clean and the entire application is incredibly simple to navigate even for users new to editors
Cross-Platform Experience: No matter your system, Atom works the same which makes providing demos and examples pretty seamless
Community Driven Plugin Development: Because the community is able to contribute plugins, Atom is extremely useful regardless of what you are trying to do. Working on the Go? There's a plugin for that. Working with infrastructure as code using Terraform? Plugin for that. Editing chef code? There's also a plugin for that.

Cons

Memory Hog: Using Atom, Slack, and Chrome on a laptop that isn't completely specked out is a recipe for disaster. Try opening Spotify, I dare you.

Likelihood to Recommend

As a general rule, I always recommend Atom to someone new to editors or someone looking for a simple editor that is powerful but easy to get used to. For users that are new to any kind of code maintenance, Atom is a real treat. It doesn't have the clutter of Visual Studio Code in the user interface but it is just as powerful and extensible from a plugin perspective.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Information Services company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

A text editor for general analytics workflows made easy

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 4, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is being used by my team as one of the primary text editors for data analytics and machine learning workflows when it comes to making modifications to code and writing analytic SQL queries. The primary business problem it addresses is a cross-platform analytics tool that all our team members can use to make changes to code. It also allows for plugin extensibility, and thereby reduces the amount of friction when sharing text and code that needs highlighting.

Pros

Extensibility via plugins.
Code highlighting in various languages.
Cross-platform support.

Cons

User-support.
Bug and crash handling.
Lagging when connected to a server.

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is well-suited when you need a cross-platform text editor that is basic and highlights code well. This is not an integrated development environment, and therefore you should focus on finding one of those programs instead if your goal is to have a whole testing, run, and automation suite. This works well for rudimentary editing supported by external tools that do running or testing.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Information Technology and Services company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Atom- the perfect script solution

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 27, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is used as a small scripting tool by mainly myself and a few others. It's a perfect tool for drumming up a rapid solution to any problem-- in our case, aws and infrastructure problems. It has enough tools and plug-ins to help you debug a script, but still remains incredibly lightweight and quick to deploy.

Pros

Lightweight solution. Unmatched in the ability to drum up a script, test it, and deploy it until a more permanent solution is available.
Adaptable to almost any situation. Need to do a SQL script? There's a plugin that will allow you to connect to your database or a sample one and run your code. General scripts can be run straight from the program instead of the command line with the "script" plugin. There are even scripts that will "beautify" ugly code for you to fix "that guy's" code.

Cons

Should have account-based customization so that plugins sync across machines. Currently, you have to individually install each plugin/environment on every machine that you encounter, which can be incredibly time consuming and frustrating after the first time.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for small, lightweight solutions to problems that need to be made quickly and effectively. My implementation was used mainly for infrastructure scripting and automation processes through python3 and Ansible. Not very good for large application programming, as it won't remember keywords/class names/method names very well and will often suggest wrong fields that would result in errors. Also not very good at catching errors, as it's meant to be lightweight and therefore doesn't have those indexing capabilities.

Dylan Cauwels

DevOps Engineer in Engineering at CBRE (Real Estate, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

Highly Customizable IDE With Excellent Git Integration

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 14, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Atom for C++ development because I enjoy its user interface and I like how extensible it is. I first discovered Atom when a mentor of mine introduced me to the Beta. I was immediately drawn to the fact that it has support for plugins written in Node.js, which I am a big fan of. I also like its Git integration. The fact that the whole app is written in what are essentially web development technologies also appeals to me, given my history in web development. Since I do a lot of Android development, I use Android Studio. However, for the JNI layer and native code (written in C++, in my case) I prefer using Atom over Android Studio.

Pros

Git integration
Plugin ecosystem
C++ development

Cons

Sometimes things do not work as expected. Atom has improved a lot over the last couple of years, but it still could use some polish.
Atom needs plugins for quality-of-life improvements. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows you to customize Atom to suit your needs.
It would be nice if Atom had some recommended starter packages that come with popular plugins for highlighting, soft-wrapping and so on.
There are some plugins that could be turned into core Atom features, like Linter and Beautify.

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is excellent for writing code in any of its supported languages, although for Java, C#, or Objective C, it would probably not be my first choice. The reason is that there are other more robust IDEs that are made especially for those languages (e.g. Eclipse, Visual Studio, and Xcode). I use Atom for writing C++ but I also love it for web development. It's great when you want to customize your development environment for your particular workflow and have time to spare digging into the nitty-gritty of configuration, as well as trying out a lot of different plugins and removing the ones that don't work well. In general, it's great when you have the time to set it up right, and not as good when you want to get moving quickly without a lot of configuration.

Jonah Dempcy

Web & Mobile Developer in Engineering at Bluefire Productions (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Atom editor - multi-cursor mode for the win!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 22, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am the only user of Atom at my organization, but it was the editor of choice at my previous job. It is used for quick-and-dirty text manipulation, as well as for C# and Javascript coding.

Pros

Atom has an amazing plugin library that is easy to use and integrates seamlessly.
Specifically, Atom's multi-cursor plug-in functionality provides a powerful method for manipulating text in bulk.
Atom provides good syntax highlighting and other interactive support for a number of programming languages through its available plug-ins.

Cons

Some of Atom's default UX could be improved. Depending on your previous workspace, it can open with two panes and a welcome tab in each, requiring you to close lots of cruft on startup.
Atom's documentation and plugin marketplace could be a little more discoverable.

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is great as a general-purpose text editor, and is especially powerful for bulk text editing, and scripting languages where a more heavy-weight IDE isn't as appropriate (e.g. Javascript, Coffeescript, Ruby, Python, etc.)

David McCann

Director of Technology, Open Source Incubator Initiative in Engineering at Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at the United Nations Foundation (International Affairs, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Develope your web code with Atom

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 21, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is my main text editor for developing code. It is built by the GitHub team and has a native integration of Git, which is very helpful. Available for OSX, Windows and Linux, it is my favorite text editor for both work and personal projects.

Pros

Native Git integration.
Optional plugins and customization.
Cross-platform
Has all the things expected to develop code.

Cons

Maybe they can improve the themes. I haven't found a theme that I really love...

Likelihood to Recommend

I highly recommend Atom for web development.

Violeta Calvo Ilundain

Research and Development Engineer in Engineering at Brozerly (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Highly Customizable IDE With Excellent Git Integration

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 14, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Git integration
Plugin ecosystem
C++ development

Cons

Sometimes things do not work as expected. Atom has improved a lot over the last couple of years, but it still could use some polish.
Atom needs plugins for quality-of-life improvements. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows you to customize Atom to suit your needs.
It would be nice if Atom had some recommended starter packages that come with popular plugins for highlighting, soft-wrapping and so on.
There are some plugins that could be turned into core Atom features, like Linter and Beautify.

Likelihood to Recommend

Jonah Dempcy

Web & Mobile Developer in Engineering at Bluefire Productions (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile