Atom vs Notepad++ vs Visual Studio Code

Overview

Notepad++

Stacks20.4K

Followers16.8K

Votes422

Atom

Stacks16.9K

Followers14.5K

Votes2.5K

GitHub Stars60.8K

Forks17.3K

Visual Studio Code

Stacks186.5K

Followers169.1K

Votes2.3K

GitHub Stars178.2K

Forks35.9K

Atom vs Notepad++ vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Key differences between Atom, Notepad++, and Visual Studio Code

Platform and Language Compatibility: Atom is built using web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, making it highly compatible with different operating systems. Notepad++, on the other hand, is limited to Windows. Visual Studio Code, being developed by Microsoft, runs on multiple platforms including Windows, macOS, and Linux. This makes Visual Studio Code a more versatile choice for developers who work across different operating systems.
Code Editing and Features: Atom offers a customizable and extensible code editing experience. It includes features like autocompletion, multiple cursors, and a built-in package manager. Notepad++ provides a lightweight code editor with features like syntax highlighting, code folding, and search and replace functionalities. Visual Studio Code is known for its powerful code editing capabilities, including IntelliSense for code completion, debugging tools, and an extensive marketplace for extensions. Its built-in Git integration and support for different programming languages make it a popular choice for developers.
Performance and Resource Usage: Atom is known for its flexibility and customizability but can be resource-intensive at times, leading to slower performance and higher memory usage. Notepad++ is lightweight and fast, making it suitable for quick editing tasks. Visual Studio Code strikes a balance between performance and features, providing a good compromise for both lightweight editing and advanced development tasks.
Community and Support: Atom has a vibrant community of developers, resulting in a wide range of community-created packages and themes. Notepad++ also has an active user base and a dedicated plugin manager to extend its functionality. However, Visual Studio Code, being developed by Microsoft, benefits from a large community and strong support. Regular updates, documentation, and a vast ecosystem of extensions ensure that developers using Visual Studio Code have access to the latest features and resources.
Version Control Integration: Atom has native Git integration, allowing developers to manage version control directly from the editor. Notepad++ lacks built-in support for version control and relies on third-party plugins for this functionality. Visual Studio Code integrates seamlessly with Git, providing a comprehensive set of tools for version control, including visual diffing, branch management, and conflict resolution.
Debugging Capabilities: Atom offers basic debugging capabilities through community-created packages, but it lacks built-in debugging features. Notepad++ also lacks native debugging support. In contrast, Visual Studio Code provides extensive debugging tools, supporting various programming languages, breakpoints, step-through debugging, and variable introspection. This makes Visual Studio Code a preferred choice for developers who need robust debugging capabilities.

In summary, Atom, Notepad++, and Visual Studio Code each have their strengths and weaknesses. Atom excels in customization and extensibility but may have performance issues. Notepad++ is lightweight and fast but lacks some advanced features like debugging. Visual Studio Code offers a versatile and powerful code editing experience with excellent platform compatibility, comprehensive debugging tools, and strong community support.

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Advice on Notepad++, Atom, Visual Studio Code

Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

1.36M views1.36M

Comments

Samriddhi

Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling

Sep 26, 2020

Decided

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

1.04M views1.04M

Comments

410-Ventures

Nov 18, 2020

Review

PyCharm (pro)

great editor designed specifically for Python and python apps
complex (good for configurability, bad for simplicity)
expensive ($200 first year, $120 third year)

PyCharm (free)

same as above but without a REST client or support for other web development tools (which you will likely end up using)
ok to get your feet wet (you can always upgrade later) Full comparison: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html

VS Code (free)

Configurable "IDE" with support for most modern languages
TONS of simple-to-install extensions that add functionality
Great docs and UI

Sublime Text (free)

one of the most minimal editors out there
it just works

It's really down to personal preference. But I would recommend downloading all of the FREE editors, getting setup in each, and keeping only the ones you like.

My personal choice for web development is VS Code but I started with Pycharm (free), and use Sublime text on occasion.

Just focus on learning and developing and you will find what features you're looking for.

12.1k views12.1k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Notepad++	Atom	Visual Studio Code
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.	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.	Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding;User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4;PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace;GUI entirely customizable: minimalist, tab with close button, multi-line tab, vertical tab and vertical document list;Document Map;Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion and Function parameters hint;Multi-Document (Tab interface);Multi-View;WYSIWYG (Printing);Zoom in and zoom out;Multi-Language environment supported;Bookmark;Macro recording and playback;Launch with different arguments	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	Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 60.8K	GitHub Stars 178.2K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 17.3K	GitHub Forks 35.9K
Stacks 20.4K	Stacks 16.9K	Stacks 186.5K
Followers 16.8K	Followers 14.5K	Followers 169.1K
Votes 422	Votes 2.5K	Votes 2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 104 Syntax for all languages that i use 60 Tabbed ui 56 Great code editor 54 Fast and lightweight 38 Plugins Cons 3 No default plugin manager 2 Can't install more advanced packets	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 No longer maintained 1 Can be easily Modified	Pros 341 Powerful multilanguage IDE 310 Fast 194 Front-end develop out of the box 158 Support TypeScript IntelliSense 142 Very basic but free Cons 46 Slow startup 29 Resource hog at times 20 Poor refactoring 14 Poor UI Designer 11 Weak Ui design tools
Integrations
No integrations available	GitHub	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Notepad++, Atom, Visual Studio Code?

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Kakoune

Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones. Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.

Adobe Dreamweaver

It gives you faster, easier ways to design, code and publish websites and web applications that look amazing on any size screen. Create, code and manage dynamic websites easily with a smart, simplified coding engine. Access code hints to quickly learn and edit HTML, CSS and other web standards. And use visual aids to reduce errors and speed up site development.

Related Comparisons

Atom vs Notepad++ vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Key differences between Atom, Notepad++, and Visual Studio Code

Platform and Language Compatibility: Atom is built using web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, making it highly compatible with different operating systems. Notepad++, on the other hand, is limited to Windows. Visual Studio Code, being developed by Microsoft, runs on multiple platforms including Windows, macOS, and Linux. This makes Visual Studio Code a more versatile choice for developers who work across different operating systems.
Code Editing and Features: Atom offers a customizable and extensible code editing experience. It includes features like autocompletion, multiple cursors, and a built-in package manager. Notepad++ provides a lightweight code editor with features like syntax highlighting, code folding, and search and replace functionalities. Visual Studio Code is known for its powerful code editing capabilities, including IntelliSense for code completion, debugging tools, and an extensive marketplace for extensions. Its built-in Git integration and support for different programming languages make it a popular choice for developers.
Performance and Resource Usage: Atom is known for its flexibility and customizability but can be resource-intensive at times, leading to slower performance and higher memory usage. Notepad++ is lightweight and fast, making it suitable for quick editing tasks. Visual Studio Code strikes a balance between performance and features, providing a good compromise for both lightweight editing and advanced development tasks.
Community and Support: Atom has a vibrant community of developers, resulting in a wide range of community-created packages and themes. Notepad++ also has an active user base and a dedicated plugin manager to extend its functionality. However, Visual Studio Code, being developed by Microsoft, benefits from a large community and strong support. Regular updates, documentation, and a vast ecosystem of extensions ensure that developers using Visual Studio Code have access to the latest features and resources.
Version Control Integration: Atom has native Git integration, allowing developers to manage version control directly from the editor. Notepad++ lacks built-in support for version control and relies on third-party plugins for this functionality. Visual Studio Code integrates seamlessly with Git, providing a comprehensive set of tools for version control, including visual diffing, branch management, and conflict resolution.
Debugging Capabilities: Atom offers basic debugging capabilities through community-created packages, but it lacks built-in debugging features. Notepad++ also lacks native debugging support. In contrast, Visual Studio Code provides extensive debugging tools, supporting various programming languages, breakpoints, step-through debugging, and variable introspection. This makes Visual Studio Code a preferred choice for developers who need robust debugging capabilities.

Atom vs Notepad++ vs Visual Studio Code

Overview

Atom vs Notepad++ vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?