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VS Code vs Atom - how to decide?

Arek Nawo on June 20, 2019

This post was taken from my blog, so be sure to check it out for more up-to-date content. I think we can all agree that there's one thing every pr...

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George • Jun 20 '19 • Edited

I moved from Atom to VS Code just to try it... not looked back.

There was nothing wrong with Atom, but everything about VS Code just feels a little smoother, more polished, less clunky. Not really sure how to define it. Just fits my way of working better somehow.

Andrew Brooks 👨‍💻 • Jun 20 '19

I'm definitely a VSCode fanboy. I have used atom but had trouble with the speed and VSCode is very snappy, although it consumes quite a bit of RAM being electron based.

I also think the extension library is one of the best you can find.

Better Coding Academy • Jun 20 '19

Hey mate, great post! Love your analysis.

I personally have used Atom for nearly two years. I've gotten so comfortable to using it that I had actually developed a few little plugins for personal use, just to make my day-to-day development workflow a bit smoother.

However, I decided to give Visual Studio Code a shot - and I do find VSCode to a be a lot nicer. It's way faster than Atom, and I didn't think that it would be noticeable - but it sure is. Built-in terminal support is also a huge plus.

However, I personally found VSCode's default settings to be a bit meh... however, after thorough configuration I've reached a state where I am quite comfortably productive with it! Been using it for the past 6 months, and I don't see myself going back. :)

Rakesh kv • Jun 21 '19

I tried most of the editors and IDE. Finally sticked to jetbrains webstrom as my primary editor. It makes my day to day work much easier. I still use vscode as my secondary editor. I also recommend vscode , if you're not interested in IDE.

Prahlad Yeri • Jun 20 '19 • Edited

I use Notepad++ editor which almost doubles up as an IDE with the right plugins installed. It suffices my needs so I've never bothered to look at the Atom/VSCode. If I ever felt the need for a "proper" IDE then I'd rather go for something like eclipse or netbeans instead of these electron abominations.

I'm not sure what the future of desktop programming will look like few years down the line but I really hope it doesn't consist of a framework that requires you to ship an entire browser along with your app! Maybe JavaFX/Qt or something from the Microsoft stable like Winfroms/WPF/Core tuned to be OS-independent otherwise we'll soon be needing super-computers to do our daily tasks!

Nathan Tamez • Jun 21 '19 • Edited

Remember Atom & VS code are not IDE's, there are text/code editors. and well I do install Notepad++ on every windows computer I use. both atom & VS code are a lot better then Notpad++ for programming. I use Visual Studio and IntelliJ as my IDE's. I use VS Code for most projects, as IDE's are generally bolted and sluggish.

Michael Harding • Jun 20 '19

I used atom for a long while, but when I tried vscode, the performance made me switch over and get all my configurations set up in it as quickly as I could manage. I'm really hoping that Microsoft combines the 2 teams sooner rather than later, vscode would be even faster than it is!

tarifa-man • Apr 4 '20

hello dear - many many thanks for this article it is great

i am pretty new to all that. Question: is VScode only a editor or can we do myore.

i am just diving into Python and i have started to code in Python literally 5 minutes ago. so do not bear with me - with this beginner question. Which is the right Editor for me to start.

Is Vscode capable to run code and to store the output of the code - eg. from the code below!?

I want to be able to export the data I have scraped as a CSV file. My question is how do I write the piece of code which outputs the data to a CSV?

the question is: can we run in VSCode the code below - and have a closer look at the output? does VSCode execute the code - and store the file somewhere on the machine!?

note - this is devinitly no coding question - those would fit on SO - no this is a superuserquestion that is aimed to get the right tool to start...

import csv ; import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

outfile = open('career.csv','w', newline='')
writer = csv.writer(outfile)
writer.writerow(["job_link", "job_desc"])

res = requests.get("implementconsultinggroup.com/caree...
soup = BeautifulSoup(res,"lxml")
links = soup.find_all("a")

for link in links:
if "career" in link.get("href") and 'COPENHAGEN' in link.text:
item_link = link.get("href").strip()
item_text = link.text.replace("View Position","").strip()
writer.writerow([item_link, item_text])
print(item_link, item_text)
outfile.close()

the question: We now should be able to run this in VSCode ( and yes: i do not think that we need a fully fledged IDE as PyCharm) and besides that we also should be able to run this in ATOM too- i guess that we can now open the py file and run it with the ATOM extension called script!?!?

What do you say -what do you think about this "extension called script or the other one called Hydrogen!?!?

PhillyFlip • Jan 5 '21

You are not new to python. You've been using it for 7 yrs now and asking the same questions repeatedly under at least 10 user names. Why don't you check the responses you got on neowin, bleepingcomputer, linuxquestions for starters?