Atom vs Xcode: 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; Xcode: The complete toolset for building great apps. The Xcode IDE is at the center of the Apple development experience. Tightly integrated with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks, Xcode is an incredibly productive environment for building amazing apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Atom and Xcode are primarily classified as "Text Editor" and "Integrated Development Environment" tools respectively.

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, Xcode provides the following key features:

• Source Editor
• Assistant Editor
• Asset Catalog

"Free" is the top reason why over 514 developers like Atom, while over 127 developers mention "IOS Development" as the leading cause for choosing Xcode.

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, Xcode has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1039 company stacks & 585 developers stacks; compared to Atom, which is listed in 830 company stacks and 715 developer stacks.