To Favor Microsoft VS Code, Microsoft’s GitHub is Killing GitHub’s Atom Editor – time to prepare switching to another open source editor with a rich ecosystem in less than half a year
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/21
If you are still on Atom, try to see if other cross platform open source editors suit your needs.
Myself, I have moved to Visual Studio Code quite some time ago as, though based on Electron – the core of Atom, it is way faster and much better supported than Atom.
The official announcement is at [Wayback/Archive] Sunsetting Atom | The GitHub Blog.
Various sites reported it in different phrasings:
- [Wayback/Archive] To Favor Microsoft VS Code, Microsoft’s GitHub is Killing GitHub’s Atom Editor – It’s FOSS News
We all knew this day would be coming sooner or later.
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub’s Atom text editor will be retired in December – gHacks Tech News
Atom editor’s problem wasn’t just the lack of development. Its performance was sub par compared to rival code editors, which is the primary reason why users shifted to other tools. Electron is often criticized by users for being a resource hog, so Atom suffered from the same issues. Why would anyone use it when lightweight options are readily available?
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub to drop open-source text editor Atom • The Register put it a bit more bluntly, but reflects how I feel about the Atom standstill over the last ~5 years:
After four years of going forward, Atom has come to a standstill. According to GitHub, the project hasn’t had significant feature development for several years, apart from maintenance and security updates. During this period community involvement has declined and the business of locally installed software now looks less attractive than the potential recurring revenue, vendor lock-in, and information gathering enabled by cloud-based apps.
–jeroen
PS: Manually posted a few hours later as the WordPress missed schedule problem is back.
It likely means I have to devote some time into Do I really need to write a WordPress API wrapper to check the status of “missed schedule” posts?.
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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