Atom vs CLion: What are the differences?

Atom: A hackable text editor for the 21st Century. 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; CLion: A cross-platform IDE for C and C++. Knowing your code through and through, CLion can take care of the routine while you focus on the important things. Boost your productivity with the keyboard-centric approach (Vim-emulation plugin is also available in plugin repository), full coding assistance, smart and relevant code completion, fast project navigation, intelligent intention actions, and reliable refactorings.

Atom can be classified as a tool in the "Text Editor" category, while CLion is grouped under "Integrated Development Environment".

Some of the features offered by Atom are:

• 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

On the other hand, CLion provides the following key features:

• Smart Editor
• Code Generation
• CMake

"Free" is the primary reason why developers consider Atom over the competitors, whereas "Good editor" was stated as the key factor in picking CLion.

Atom is an open source tool with 49K GitHub stars and 12K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Atom's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Atom has a broader approval, being mentioned in 830 company stacks & 715 developers stacks; compared to CLion, which is listed in 9 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.