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Atom

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183
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Atom vs Neovim: What are the differences?

What is 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.

What is Neovim? Vim's rebirth for the 21st century. 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.

Atom and Neovim can be categorized as "Text Editor" tools.

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, Neovim provides the following key features:

  • More powerful plugins
  • Better GUI architecture
  • First-class support for embedding

"Free" is the primary reason why developers consider Atom over the competitors, whereas "Modern and more powerful Vim" was stated as the key factor in picking Neovim.

Atom and Neovim are both open source tools. It seems that Atom with 49.2K GitHub stars and 12.1K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Neovim with 32K GitHub stars and 2.33K GitHub forks.

Lyft, Typeform, and PedidosYa are some of the popular companies that use Atom, whereas Neovim is used by MAK IT, Finciero, and Focus21 Inc.. Atom has a broader approval, being mentioned in 836 company stacks & 725 developers stacks; compared to Neovim, which is listed in 11 company stacks and 14 developer stacks.

Advice on Atom and Neovim
Rogério R. Alcântara
Needs advice
on
NeovimNeovim
and
VimVim

For a Visual Studio Code/Atom developer that works mostly with Node.js/TypeScript/Ruby/Go and wants to get rid of graphic-text-editors-IDE-like at once, which one is worthy of investing time to pick up?

I'm a total n00b on the subject, but I've read good things about Neovim's Lua support, and I wonder what would be the VIM response/approach for it?

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Replies (6)
Recommends
on
NeovimNeovimVimVim

Neovim can basically do everything Vim can with one major advantage - the number of contributors to the code base is just so much wider (Vim is ~100% maintained only by B. Mooleanaar). Whatever you learn for Neovim you can also apply to Vim and vice versa. And of course there is the never ending Vim vs Emacs controversy - but better not get into that war.

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Jeffrey Johnson
Recommends
at

Actually, the biggest advantage with Neovim (as a VS user) is that you can embed REAL Neovim as the editor UI, rather than using a "Vim emulation", you're using actual NVIM, embedded in VS!

"asvetliakov.vscode-neovim" is the extension you are looking for:

  1. Install the 'vscode-neovim; extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode-neovim)
  2. Install Neovim version 0.5+ nightly
  3. Start winning.

(You can install neovim-nightly separately for just vscode, I usually build and install it to /opt/nvim - it's enough enough to do - let me know if you need help).

Works wonderfully. It might not work out of the box if you have some 100K epic nvim initialization file, but the plugin documents a workaround for having an embedding/VS specific configuration.

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Kudos Beluga
Recommends
on
NeovimNeovim

I don't actually notice much of a difference between the two, as the end result looks identical. If you use Vim and are switch to Neovim it's an extremely easy 1-minute process. I switched from Vim to Neovim. I can't say I found much of a difference, but the key points where Neovim could be better than just vim is that first, there are much more people maintaining Neovim compared to vim, which means fewer bugs and a modern code base. It also has a smaller code base which might result in a small speed improvement. Another thing is that it's basically just a fork of vim, so what harm can it do? ;)

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Recommends
on
VimVim

I recommend using vim 8+ it has native plugin support if you need language supports you can install the package vim-nox which will come with support for python, lua, ruby, etc

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Albert Kim
Recommends

It truly depends on whether you want to completely avoid GUI and stick to TUI and command lines. If you want to edit all of your codes within a terminal, then Vim or neovim would be the choice. Emacs can be run in a terminal, but the functionality is limited. Most people use Emacs using GUI and emacs-client not to use too much memory.

My general preference is to use an independent text editor, which is better if it is highly customizable and programmable. So, I have used Emacs for several years. For beginners, I guess Emacs requires significant time to learn to fully enjoy its wonderful functionalities. In that sense, using atom would be a recommendable option.

Regardless of all the situations, learning basic vim in the terminal will help you in any case. In summary, I recommend 1. vim as a default editor in the terminal 2. atom if you are a beginner, or 3. Emacs if you have a long-term plan to master a programmable editor

Other editors like sublime text, VS code, and so forth are also worth learning and using. But, no matter which editor you choose, stick to one or two until you become an advanced user. Being able to use most text editors at an intermediate level is waste of time.

I hope it helps.

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Rogério R. Alcântara
Recommends
on
NeovimNeovim

The hints on the codebase's contributors and the VSCode integration helped me make up my mind.

I really appreciate all comments, though.

Thanks a bunch!

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Decisions about Atom and Neovim
Andrey Ginger
Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers · | 3 upvotes · 494.5K views

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

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Felix Hungenberg
Graphic Designer & Web Developer at hosting.de GmbH · | 2 upvotes · 112.1K views

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.
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Pros of Atom
Pros of Neovim
  • 529
    Free
  • 449
    Open source
  • 343
    Modular design
  • 321
    Hackable
  • 316
    Beautiful UI
  • 170
    Github integration
  • 147
    Backed by github
  • 119
    Built with node.js
  • 113
    Web native
  • 107
    Community
  • 35
    Packages
  • 18
    Cross platform
  • 5
    Multicursor support
  • 5
    Nice UI
  • 5
    TypeScript editor
  • 3
    Snippets
  • 3
    Simple but powerful
  • 3
    Open source, lots of packages, and so configurable
  • 3
    cli start
  • 3
    Chrome Inspector works IN EDITOR
  • 2
    Awesome
  • 2
    Smart TypeScript code completion
  • 2
    Well documented
  • 2
    It's powerful
  • 2
    Code readability
  • 1
    works with GitLab
  • 1
    User friendly
  • 1
    full support
  • 1
    vim support
  • 1
    Split-Tab Layout
  • 1
    "Free", "Hackable", "Open Source", The Awesomness
  • 1
    Apm publish minor
  • 1
    Hackable and Open Source
  • 1
    Consistent UI on all platforms
  • 0
    Publish
  • 31
    Modern and more powerful Vim
  • 27
    Fast
  • 22
    Asynchronous plugins
  • 20
    Stable
  • 18
    Edit text fast
  • 15
    Great community
  • 15
    Vim plugins work out of the box
  • 9
    Embedable
  • 8
    Unix-like
  • 8
    Built-in terminal support
  • 4
    Plugins in any language
  • 2
    External GUIs
  • 2
    Great Colorschemes
  • 2
    Extremely customizable

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Cons of Atom
Cons of Neovim
  • 19
    Slow with large files
  • 7
    Slow startup
  • 2
    Most of the time packages are hard to find.
  • 1
    No longer maintained
  • 1
    Cannot Run code with F5
  • 1
    Can be easily Modified
    Be the first to leave a con

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Atom?

    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.

    What is 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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Atom?
    What companies use Neovim?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Atom or Neovim.
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    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Atom?
    What tools integrate with Neovim?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    What are some alternatives to Atom and Neovim?
    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.
    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.
    Brackets
    With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.
    cell
    cell is a self-constructing web app framework powered by a self-driving DOM. Learning cell is mostly about understanding how cell works, and not about how to use and memorize some API methods, because there is no API.
    Element
    Element is a Vue 2.0 based component library for developers, designers and product managers, with a set of design resources.
    See all alternatives