TECHNEWS

GitHub will abandon Atom in December.

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GitHub stated it will retire Atom. The 2011 app will be removed in 2022.

Atom was a promising code-development tool that led to Electron (formerly Atom Shell). It boosted Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code.

The text editor was popular with developers for its customisable UI and Git/GitHub integration.

Why shut down Atom?

Atom’s development had stalled, according to GitHub’s blog post. Atom received maintenance and security updates throughout the years, but community interest waned as cloud-based solutions appeared. The business hopes to improve GitHub Codespaces, its cloud-based developer tool. That’s GitHub’s official reason for discontinuing Atom.

Other variables may have contributed. Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2014, and its CEO pledged that Atom and Visual Studio Code would coexist. Not exactly. Surprised? Microsoft doesn’t want product competition. Atom was succeeded by Microsoft’s VS Code.

Atom still available?

Yes, the cross-platform text editor may be downloaded from Atom.io or GitHub. Atom’s repository and linked repositories will be archived on December 15, 2022. Both GitHub and Atom’s website include banners announcing the program’s retirement. To avoid losing work, export your projects to a different editor.

Since Atom is open source, other developers may fork it. There are many of free alternatives to Atom, the most remarkable being VS Code. Sublime Text, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs, and Kate are other programmers’ text editors. VSCodium is a binary distribution of VS Code without Microsoft’s telemetry, branding, and licensing. Atom’s developers are working on a new code editor called Zed.

Atom’s difficulty wasn’t only development. Its poor performance compared to other code editors is why users switched. Atom had the same resource problems as Electron. Why use it when lighter options exist?

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