i'm fan of atom and hope atom never die.

It is not possible and it will not happen until the big change. Though if you want to access more information then visit persuasive essay topics higher english

@kanmeiban

Its no surprise, Microsoft comes in buys <insert company name here>, then starts to extinguish any competitor products/technologies to their own even if they are arguably better/more extensible.

Its by no mean a new thing with MS or any other companies, we only matter for these companies by which data they can extract to build their new techs and build profiles on users to sell them into the next gimmick which is hardly any real new anything just lipstick on a gorilla.

In the end it doesn't matter, its an editor, they are a dime a dozen better than vscode which to me is not any alternative to Atom.

@the-j0k3r Not exactly a fair assessment, Microsoft wanted to buy GitHub, not Atom... Truth be told, then Atom has always been second-priority for GitHub, more for fun perhaps? Because they could?

That Microsoft does not want to continue a product identical to a product they already own, and which is, unfortuantly, by all means way more popular then the editor that just came with the company they bought, makes perfect sense. Would you? Would you continue developing a product that you "accidently" got when buying another product, when you already have a product that's used by way more people?

Fact is, Microsoft bought GitHub for GitHub, Atom is an editor they are now going to give zero attention and love. But Atom's license is and does allow anyone to simply fork it and continue on their own path, and it is perhaps what we should do? Or someone... Branch it off and continue developing Atom outside of Microsoft's repos (This repo).

@fjeddy I did try to fork and breathe some life/updates on Atom, but gosh, it's so horrible! https://mauricio.szabo.link/blog/2022/02/17/the-impossibility-to-maintain-atom/

I am indeed trying to reuse some fragments of the Atom editor in a new project, but it's simply too much work, so it's progressing quite slowly: https://mauricio.szabo.link/blog/2022/03/01/can-i-split-the-atom-and-from-the-parts-generate-another-thing/

@mauricioszabo You and the community would be better off joining forces with the atom community dev @aminya rather than doing everything by yourself.

@the-j0k3r Unfortunately, the Atom Community also is giving up (or already gave up). Amin Ya literally told me that he don't see himself continuing Atom development, and even offered to transfer the organization to me. I'm at their discord server, been discussing the whole new idea of the editor there too.

Atom has become totally unusable in Windows 10. It says it will start after install, but doesn't. It leaves no trace in the program listing. I located the executable and clicked it and nothing happens. I've tried reinstalling after deleting the .atom folder. No luck. I give up. It was nice to have a reasonably usable Julia editor since the only real alternative is VS Code, and I'd rather spend time learning Julia than struggling with VS Code.

Atom has become totally unusable in Windows 10. It says it will start after install, but doesn't. It leaves no trace in the program listing. I located the executable and clicked it and nothing happens. I've tried reinstalling after deleting the .atom folder. No luck. I give up. It was nice to have a reasonably usable Julia editor since the only real alternative is VS Code, and I'd rather spend time learning Julia than struggling with VS Code.

Neovim is an awesome alternative to VSCode

Not sure which version of Windows you are using. I am using Atom on Windows 10 version 21H1 and it works great.

Atom has become totally unusable in Windows 10

Works just fine here.

I'm no programming god, but I really enjoy using Atom for little scripting jobs and web development. Any ideas on ways to help out?

I'm not really sure myself. I joined the atom-community discord to see if they want help with something, but it's also quite silent to be honest.

As for today, I tried to clone the atom-community repository and run from source. It's harder than it looks, there are A TON of internal packages (instead of using other solutions), the UI framework is ALSO an internal one... I believe the best one could do is make the "impact surface" smaller - use SolidJS instead of atom's etch, change the @atom/<package> for other community-maintained packages, etc. But it's no small task...

I'm in it for the long haul, still using Atom 8 hours a day. I wish I had more time/electron skills I'd contribute in some way but it's not my forte.

Yep! glad to hear that

Atom will stay alive as long as there's a community around it. People migrated to VSCode - a closed source (VSCodium and Code-OSS are open, VSCode is not), telemetry-intensive, more limited editor. The atom.io/packages is broken (images are not being rendered, for once), etc.

Unless someone (or some group) decide to modernize things (make a way to install packages from GitHub directly, for example, or a decentralized way to search for packages), it'll be hard for Atom users.

It is already possible to install packages directly from GitHub repos. There is even a version of apm (Atom Package Manager) being worked on to use pnpm so Atom will save space by reusing duplicated dependencies for packages. Atom is not as active as it used to be but it is still very active.

Who is responsible for the webpage? Most of the time the webpages is the first page a user visits when getting information about the editor. I know there is https://github.com/atom/atom.io/issues/ but e.g. the Discuss link is broken for a while now.
Even posting a new update on Twitter would show some more love to the editor 😄 I loved the blog posts but I know they take much time and effort so I'm happy with the changelog these days.
It is still active and it's good to see new versions, PRs and package updates! But it just has to be visible to more users 👍

I don't want to change editors 😛

Atom.io pages for packages/themes have no public source code, I'd imagine none do.

So there is nothing to do (as a community member looking to doa PR to fix anything) unless bugs are reported directly to GitHub not via any tickets issues and discussions. because mostly they are left to pasture as there isnt a dedicated person/team to handle any of it.

Thank you so much! Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who does like neither VSCode nor Sublime. But I do like Atom and work with it almost every day. So thank you for keeping my hopes up!

No, you are not alone :)

think this is not the right thread for that. And you have to be a bit more specific what kind of help you want.

@novicenewfie

Please edit your message

sharing your address and phone numbers is not smart

If that is yet another attempt at making jokes, then the joke is on you.

I think he answered the thread by replying the notification email, that's why there's personal info...

again: please use a different place to ask those questions like stackoverflow. You are posting in a discussion about Is Atom dead? and ask coding questions 😄 That doesn't belong in this thread or this discussion form

@m1ga I think you're right, but the trick in most cases I see is that jamming your unrelated questions on a thread with lots of activity will likely get you an answer faster, even if that answer is like yours =)

Who was it that said , its better to ask for forgiveness than for permission?

VSCodium.deb is around 80.4 MB Linux side (I have it installed), Atom.deb file is 132MB, VSCode deb installation File is 78.8MB (I would never use VSCode tbh)

Atom by far the biggest sized package here, this VSCode bloatware claim above is sound like uninformed nonsense.

I still prefer and use Atom, VSCodium is sort of backup for some tasks, because of certain Linters and other nicknacks like editorconfig amongst others in Atom dont work well or at all because developers all fed up with Atom and stop bothering with fixing bugs in their packages or moved to VSCodium/VSCode instead.

You can't tell which program has more bloatware comparing their size on disk. It doesn't work like that. Bloatware can be a simple script of 4kb as long as it's making things that the user never requested.

The definition of what is bloatware is variant on user to me its both size on disk and useless stuff that could be installed as per user decision, this decision is removed from user by a matter of fact, all of the above Editors have bloatware to the degree the specific user definition is no matter if you agree that size on disk after install is important or not to this definition, one user may like feature A while another dislikes it, doesn't need it so that feature is bloatware for one and not another, so its arbitrary.

But alas maybe in 20 years there will finally be some editor that lets you add the features you need at time of install.

That is if we haven't wiped each other from the face of the planet by then (its not a matter of if, its a matter of when) and assuming some dystopian future where technology is usable after the fact.

In any case, the important discussion is where the future of Atom will lie, is it dead? NO. Is it maintainable by a 3rd party community via fork/rebrand with current 3rd party circumstances, NO!
Will Atom die eventually? Sure, Cycle of life, everything comes into existence and one day ceases to work properly and becomes obsolete or dies. And then is replaced with some new more annoying or exciting iteration, depending on the person.

there is no way microsoft should maintain @atom because VScode is a offshoot from visual studio which shows microsoft or represents a pure microsoft product.
Microsoft should not be allowed to handle this project @atom anymore, because if they did, they will definitely make it way worssttt than what it is , so you be forced to switch to visual studio code. Already Atom feels great so far, so good

gitlab.com is the biggest alternative

https://gitlab.com/explore/

Atom is open source and anyone could make a branch of it and start their own version or build something new using it as a reference. The only reason for Google to claim it is to hire people to maintain it, and while that would be really cool, it's very wishful thinking.

@syrsly Google? What does Google have to do with Atom or GitHub?

Was it Wishful thinking that Google should fork and maintain Atom? That will never happen, and the reason being, they would not want to waste man hours auditing the code and re-writing it to suit their coding standards. Google would straight up, if seriously interested in making a competing opensource Editor they would likely write it from scratch using their buzz word coding/scripting language of the week and call it a day.

Now what would be likely in my mind, if approached properly with the right company and contacts, To seek sponsorship from Google or other companies (as opposed to individuals) in order to fork it, rebrand (in a way that its clear its not associated with Atom/GitHub even in organization and program name/logos and trademarks) it and maintain it and further develop and support it.

@aminya has half a leg up already, just the organization name where Atom is forked and rebranding as above is needed, and seeking sponsorship or a kickstarter of some sort or both)

I dont see anything meaningful happening in all seriousness.

We don t need MSoft again to lay a finger on this, because it is business and they will make atom worst should they lay hands on it, the goal here is the competition between Atom and VScode.
So preferably, google should maintain Atom

I haven't had performance issues in a very long time, yes years ago with earlier versions but not now. I dev in python and R using Atom IDE Community plugin stack and language servers.

Simplicity, GUI wise... I don't actually modify Atom like a lot of people do, I open it and start writing code. In the early 2000's, I used Dreamweaver, (Omg), before I later migrated to Notepad++, until Atom arrived. To me, Atom is like Notepad++, with focus on the code, not two billion buttons that supposedly code for you. Yet, behind the scenes, it offers a ton of features, if you need them.

I just installed VSCode after reading this thread, been a while since the last time, and I gotta say, the entire application still looks like crap (READ: The visuals, it hurts my eyes looking at it)

Atom is basically mature and Vscode is maturely basic

Basically Atom is to VSCode as Android is to iOS. Everything is easily customizable in Atom. It is just a web page. You can even debug Atom with dev tools (Ctrl + Shift + I) built into Atom. VSCode gives you a limited set of apis to change things.

What is this bullshit? In VSCode you have access to Electron Developer Inspector just like in Atom. Even by the same key shortcut.

@zazaulola

Well, to be fair @UziTech didn't say you cant access dev tools in vscode, he said it has a more restricted set of apis available.

Also since electron uses chrome nonsense, anything using electron that has dev tools available will use the same shortcut. But good luck customizing vscode to the same extent as you can with Atom without having to install something 3rd party

Debugging vscode with dev tools doesn't really make sense since extensions don't run in that environment. In Atom extensions have access to everything that you can access in dev tools.

Also, check out the Zed editor. Written by the original authors of Atom. I assume it is a continuation of the X-ray project, which was shut down by GitHub.

What is there to check out? At first I thought you linked to the wrong page… then I realized oh no, whoever is developing this takes themselves far too seriously, and also they needed to write a bloody essay on it. Guess what, mature GPU UI frameworks already exist, just leverage those instead of suffering from “not invented here” syndrome.

A waitlist? For some initial prototype of a code editor? Why not just do what the rest of the open source community does by doing this in public with a project org and code repos and get people excited that way and wanting to contribute? Where’s their project repository? Jeez it’s for a code editor there’s nothing they will do in this space that is worthy of such secrecy.

The problem with all these projects is that, IMHO, even with all the madness in the ecosystem writing extensions in Javascript is quite easy: we don't have to worry too much about semantics on async processes, there are packages for most of the things one wants to do, etc.

These alternatives use different languages, so things are not really that easy to port. Sure, there's WASI for Lapce, but JS does not compile to WASI, and as of today not much languages compile to it. I'm also worried about backwards compatibility too...

It might be hard for web developers, but believe it or not, other programming languages also exist! And they also have open-source communities. JavaScript has failed several times to deliver acceptable performance.

What is there to check out? At first I thought you linked to the wrong page… then I realized oh no, whoever is developing this takes themselves far too seriously, and also they needed to write a bloody essay on it. Guess what, mature GPU UI frameworks already exist, just leverage those instead of suffering from “not invented here” syndrome.

I agree with you on this. I think here, they meant a Rust GPU UI framework. But I can argue that it is easier to generate/write bindings and wrappers for the C++ frameworks that have been tested for several years than writing something from scratch.

A waitlist? For some initial prototype of a code editor? Why not just do what the rest of the open source community does by doing this in public with a project org and code repos and get people excited that way and wanting to contribute? Where’s their project repository? Jeez it’s for a code editor there’s nothing they will do in this space that is worthy of such secrecy.

I think they will eventually make it open-source. With the rise of websites like Reddit, HackerNews, etc., where people bash on a project for the rest of their life based on using it for 5 seconds, I can understand that they might prefer working on it until it reaches an acceptable working state,

but believe it or not, other programming languages also exist!

Ok, that was needlessly too rude IMHO. I suppose I don't need to explain why HTML + CSS + Javascript will attract more people than WASI or other languages, plus a whole different code for UI stuff that's only valid for the specific editor. Also, for better or worse, npm have more high-level (in the sense of "I don't need to wire everything from scratch and use low-level APIs) packages than most other programming languages, so that's another reason - again, even considering all the madness on the ecosystem.

Also, Javascript is probably the second fastest dynamic language that exist today, so I don't know what do you mean by "failed to achieve acceptable performance". Even if we do consider that's not "fast enough" you can run WASM on Javascript, but you can't run Javascript on WASM - which means that the "fast code" could be written in WASM while other things on JS.

Also, if you look at the list of languages that compile to WASM, and search for the "stable" ones, you have 19 languages. If you try list of languages that run on JVM, you have more than 30. Even then, it's too few compared to the list that compiles to JS.

The fact is, someone that creates a plug-in for VSCode will be able to port and re-use code in another JS editor - as if, if Zed becomes popular, every plugin will need to be written from scratch...

I can understand that they might prefer working on it until it reaches an acceptable working state

Unfortunately, me too. Atom is still plagued with the old "it's too slow, uses too much memory" nonsense that it plagued the early editions of the editor, and I'm quite sure it was one of the reasons that the project became obsolete.

Javascript will attract more people

The goal of making good software for the end-users is not to make it desirable for the developers. It's like saying we should throw Cuda and C++ out and rewrite all the games in JavaScript, so web developers can write extensions for them! The end-user doesn't care about this at all. They want a fast smooth game that they can enjoy. It is costly for the game studios because they should pay higher for the developers that know these languages, but it creates huge profits afterwards...

npm have more high-level (in the sense of "I don't need to wire everything from scratch and use low-level APIs) packages than most other programming languages, so that's another reason - again, even considering all the madness on the ecosystem.

A large portion of the npm packages is compensating for the huge flaws in the language/runtimes.
Going through the top 100 packages that are replaced by the standard library or simply fixed by the language:
https://gist.github.com/anvaka/8e8fa57c7ee1350e3491#top-1000-most-depended-upon-packages
Lodash, Moment, async, underscore, tslib, all bundlers like webpack and all their plugins, all babel packages, all polyfill packages like core-js, eslint, q, typescript, all types packages, object-assign, all testing frameworks like jest and jasmine, ...

You will see the list shrinking significantly. For the rest, I'd like to see a high-quality npm package that I cannot find among 80,000 Rust packages!
https://lib.rs/

It died when the Atom team didn't allow the community to take over. They killed Atom and all the community excitement around it. GitHub's biggest failure.

What @aminya? Its open source ffs preventing people under MIT license to fork/modify and republish (after removing any trademarks is legal and allowed. Say the Atom logo and the name associated could be trademarked, i dont know.

So you can remove all mentions of atom, including https://github.com/atom-community, decide on a editor name, like.... idk anything, call it muon for all it matters as long as its not a trademark used by anyone else. muon-community, muon editor add a new logo, rebrand the source where Atom name is displayed on the UI and done.

Just rebrand and keep going, no one, not GitHub not Microsoft can stop you or anynoe to exercise the rights of the MIT or other opensource licenses, as long as no trademarks etc are infringed or that you dont associate the new project with the previous.

If they do try to stop you after removing trademarked content, see these guys https://sfconservancy.org/

This is more than a licensing issue.
A sustainable open-source project needs responsible maintainers or sponsorships. We lack both. I am burnt out of this, and I cannot compensate for these anymore.

It died when the Atom team didn't allow the community to take over. They killed Atom and all the community excitement around it. GitHub's biggest failure.

What @aminya? Its open source ffs preventing people under MIT license to fork/modify and republish (after removing any trademarks is legal and allowed. Say the Atom logo and the name associated could be trademarked, i dont know.

So you can remove all mentions of atom, including https://github.com/atom-community, decide on a editor name, like.... idk anything, call it muon for all it matters as long as its not a trademark used by anyone else. muon-community, muon editor add a new logo, rebrand the source where Atom name is displayed on the UI and done.

Just rebrand and keep going, no one, not GitHub not Microsoft can stop you or anynoe to exercise the rights of the MIT or other opensource licenses, as long as no trademarks etc are infringed or that you dont associate the new project with the previous.

If they do try to stop you after removing trademarked content, see these guys https://sfconservancy.org/

I agree with what @aminya says, even in open source there’s really no free lunch. Projects that are big enough do need some sponsorship or a core set of devs/maints from the community who have the time drive the project forward.

@aminya @hermidalc indeed, one man band projects and especially something of this magnitude, is indeed a huge burden.

Sadly, you need traction and an active community of people who can both make pull requests for various reasons and maybe funding if you plan on cover development costs.

I always found, that, mostly everyone is very keen on using projects and never contribute in any way, neither to community nor as a sponsor/patron and would rather switch to using other projects than be bothered with any of it.

All my projects are 100% unfunded and rare is the one which ever had any active community members that did anything for it but open bug reports, the small exception was terminus (a terminal for atom) and @UziTech helped a lot, project is now archived due to lack of time, necessary level of skills from my part, and needed a major rework.

But like an idiot, I continue to contribute to all projects I use (less these days) and still unfunded, heck I dont even have a way to get any funds.

So yea, burned out, I hear your pain.

@aminya @hermidalc indeed, one man band projects and especially something of this magnitude, is indeed a huge burden.

Sadly, you need traction and an active community of people who can both make pull requests for various reasons and maybe funding if you plan on cover development costs.

I always found, that, mostly everyone is very keen on using projects and never contribute in any way, neither to community nor as a sponsor/patron and would rather switch to using other projects than be bothered with any of it.

All my projects are 100% unfunded and rare is the one which ever had any active community members that did anything for it but open bug reports, the small exception was terminus (a terminal for atom) and @UziTech helped a lot, project is now archived due to lack of time, necessary level of skills from my part, and needed a major rework.

But like an idiot, I continue to contribute to all projects I use (less these days) and still unfunded, heck I dont even have a way to get any funds.

So yea, burned out, I hear your pain.

Many do contribute though not necessarily with PRs but creating or contributing to issues and doing troubleshooting. I think that is good enough because honestly we have our own projects and other communities we are part of where we contribute. The IDE is like an appliance, email, etc, to me and I just need it to work and work well so I can use it do do what I need to for my own work and communities. The same could he said for programming languages, the vast majority need it to function properly and have features but aren’t making PRs. That’s ok it shouldn’t be expected.