StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Text Editor
  5. Atom vs CodeMirror

Atom vs CodeMirror

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Atom
Atom
Stacks16.9K
Followers14.5K
Votes2.5K
GitHub Stars60.8K
Forks17.3K
CodeMirror
CodeMirror
Stacks747
Followers232
Votes15

Atom vs CodeMirror: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between Atom and CodeMirror

Introduction

This article aims to provide a clear understanding of the key differences between Atom and CodeMirror, two popular text editors used for coding. Below are the main differences between the two:

  1. Customization and Extensibility: Atom offers extensive customization options and allows users to personalize their coding environment with themes, plugins, and packages. CodeMirror, on the other hand, is focused on providing a lightweight and flexible editor without built-in customization features. Customization in CodeMirror can be achieved through its JavaScript API.

  2. Collaborative Editing: Atom is designed to support real-time collaborative editing through packages like Teletype. This feature allows multiple developers to work on the same codebase simultaneously. CodeMirror, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for collaborative editing, although it can be implemented using external libraries or tools.

  3. Ecosystem and Community: Atom benefits from a large and active community of developers, resulting in a vast ecosystem of themes, packages, and plugins. CodeMirror also has a supportive community, but due to its focus on simplicity, the available ecosystem may not be as extensive as Atom's.

  4. Performance and Resource Usage: Atom is known for its flexibility and extensibility, but this comes at the cost of performance and resource usage. It can be slower and more resource-intensive compared to other text editors, including CodeMirror. CodeMirror, being a lightweight editor, is designed to prioritize performance and efficiency.

  5. Built-in Features: Atom comes with a rich set of built-in features, such as smart autocompletion, Git integration, and a fully customizable environment. CodeMirror, on the other hand, is more minimalistic and does not come bundled with many advanced features. It provides a basic editing experience, focusing on simplicity and speed.

  6. Integration with Other Tools: Atom can integrate seamlessly with a variety of external tools and services, such as linters, debuggers, and version control systems, due to its extensibility. CodeMirror also supports integration with external tools, but its focus on simplicity may require more manual setup for integrating with specific tools.

In Summary, Atom and CodeMirror differ in terms of customization and extensibility, collaborative editing support, ecosystem and community, performance and resource usage, built-in features, and integration with other tools.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Atom, CodeMirror

Andrey
Andrey

Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers

May 18, 2020

Decided

Since communication with Github is not necessary, the Atom is less convenient in working with text and code. Sublim's support and understanding of projects is best for us. Notepad for us is a completely outdated solution with an unacceptable interface. We use a good theme for Sublim ayu-dark

539k views539k
Comments
Felix
Felix

Graphic Designer & Web Developer at hosting.de GmbH

Jan 9, 2020

DecidedonVisual Studio CodeVisual Studio CodeAtomAtom

I use Visual Studio Code every day, it was very refreshing coming from Atom to get a lightweight, all i need setup right out of the box.

After working with Atom for around 2 years I switch to VSCode.

Here is why:

  1. Color display of variables in code. This may now sound much, but it improve the display of scss variables and its a core feature.
  2. Out of the box features.
  3. Automation! VSCode suggests usefull things to you.
  4. Integraded console. I love the console in VSCode. It is faster than my 'default' cmd on Windows. For Atom you would have to install a package, that doesn't work so well on Windows.
  5. Output logging per Plugin.
  6. Setup time. In VSCode I can set up my workspace in under 5 minutes. For Atom I need
  7. Plugins work perfect out of the box. This is a mayor one for me. For example: In order to set up Editorconfig you have to adjust mutliple values and plugins to get it work. Plugin creators of Editorconfig for Atom are not to blame: They include a linter, that verifies whether the settings are correct or not.
  8. Git implementation. VSCode ships with Git and even if the git packet of vscode doesn't look like much, theres a lot to it. For example you can watch changes inline.
  9. Minimap and vertical scrollbar. This feature is much better implementet in VSCode and you don't need an extra plugin.
  10. Auto completion. Sass mixins example: @include and you press CTRL+SPACE and VSCode shows you every Sass mixin.
  11. Copy paths from open file tab. In VSCode you can copy the path of an file directly when you have it open. In atom you need to select 'show in tree view' and than copy the path or relative path.
  12. Tree view. The tree view VSCode automaticly brings you to the current open file by default. This helps when working with components.
  13. File search. The file search supports the asterisk so you can search for eg molecule-*.ts.
  14. Tasks support. Tasks are integrated in VSCode so eg. for Typescript you can CTRL + SHIFT + B and select tsc: watch - tsconfig.ts.
  15. Short waiting time. For example when deleting files or beautifying 20.000 lines of json (Atom hangs up).
  16. More releases. Faster feature implementation. Active community.
128k views128k
Comments
René
René

Sr. Financial Analyst

Aug 21, 2020

Review

I have used and like them both... here's my take on what to use in your case.

  1. Use whatever software your instructor is using when learning a language. It makes it simpler to start. Then change to whatever you like.
  2. Use an IDE (Integrated Development Enviroment). For Java I'd pick InteliJ (because I have found the Jetbrains IDEs great) or Visual Studio as a second pick (because it's free for individual coders).
  3. Pick your text editor: the Atom vs Notepad++, vs others question Both Atom and Notepad++ offer many features and add-ons, making it a long-disputed competition. This is what drives to chose between one and the other, and I have been alternating: On Atom: The good:
  • Good looking coding environment
  • Good autocomplete
  • Project focused structure to your files The bad:
  • Higher system resources usage
  • Slower loading time (if you are opening and closing)

Notepad++ The good:

  • Very light system resources use
  • Fast and simple, with decent code higlighting
  • Loads very fast The bad:
  • Not as pretty as Atom
  • Autocomplete and syntax checking is not that good
  • File-focused editing
483 views483
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Atom
Atom
CodeMirror
CodeMirror

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

CodeMirror is a JavaScript component that provides a code editor in the browser. When a mode is available for the language you are coding in, it will color your code, and optionally help with indentation.

Atom is a desktop application based on web technologies;Node.js integration;Modular Design- composed of over 50 open-source packages that integrate around a minimal core;File system browser;Fuzzy finder for quickly opening files;Fast project-wide search and replace;Multiple cursors and selections;Multiple panes;Snippets;Code folding;A clean preferences UI;Import TextMate grammars and themes
Support for over 60 languages out of the box;A powerful, composable language mode system;Autocompletion (XML);Code folding;Configurable keybindings;Vim, Emacs, and Sublime Text bindings;Search and replace interface;Bracket and tag matching;Support for split views;Linter integration;Mixing font sizes and styles;Various themes;Able to resize to fit content;Inline and block widgets;Programmable gutters;Making ranges of text styled, read-only, or atomic;Bi-directional text support
Statistics
GitHub Stars
60.8K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
17.3K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
16.9K
Stacks
747
Followers
14.5K
Followers
232
Votes
2.5K
Votes
15
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 529
    Free
  • 449
    Open source
  • 343
    Modular design
  • 321
    Hackable
  • 316
    Beautiful UI
Cons
  • 19
    Slow with large files
  • 7
    Slow startup
  • 2
    Most of the time packages are hard to find.
  • 1
    Cannot Run code with F5
  • 1
    No longer maintained
Pros
  • 6
    Integrable in your application
  • 4
    Better content manipulation methods
  • 3
    Easy Custom Mode
  • 1
    JavaScript based
  • 1
    Easy setup
Integrations
GitHub
GitHub
Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Sublime Text
Sublime Text
Opera Browser
Opera Browser
Safari
Safari
Vim
Vim
Emacs
Emacs
Firefox
Firefox

What are some alternatives to Atom, CodeMirror?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Vim

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Notepad++

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Emacs

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Brackets

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Neovim

Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

VSCodium

VSCodium

It is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode.

TextMate

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

gedit

gedit

gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana