Discovering the Atom
So I know this has been out for a few years, but I recently discovered an amazing text editor called Atom. And so far I’ve been using it for all my code. With the help of a ton of packages that can be installed in Atom, I’ve completely given up the tools I’ve used previously. There are several very awesome tutorials out there on the YouTubes and such, so I’m going to limit my remarks to my experience with Atom. However, if you, like me, have never heard of Atom, or maybe have heard of it but haven’t had time to get into it, feel free to follow what I’ve done so far.
The first thing that impressed me was their website. Go ahead, click on the link there and see what I mean. I know a cool website doesn’t mean anything necessarily. As a web developer, a very well-put-together website usually means attention to detail. Or it could just mean “we got the monies”, which usually means they can afford to put out a very nice product anyway. So either way, a good-looking website usually is a win-win. In this case, Atom does not disappoint. Not only is the website retro cool, but it has everything I needed. Meaning I did not get lost looking for anything. There is even a full — meaning massively full — user manual there. I found this extremely handy. And if you run the site through a markup validator, it comes out very clean. I got a small few warnings about some attributes, but that’s about it. I had a sight-impaired friend navigate the site and she said it was very nicely put together. It even looks great on a mobile device.
Now, I mentioned earlier that there are several very good tutorials out there. But on the Atom website, there is a full user manual that is actually very nicely written. And while it is nice to watch a how-to or something, this is one user manual that is anything but dry and boring. Anyone that's been reading techie for a long time can see a very real difference in tech and user and everything in between. While this is geared toward a geek and the text assumes a certain level of basic understanding, this is very well written for a newbie to understand. But if you go to the documents page, there is also a lot of stuff about their APIs. And a few other links like video, forum, etc.
The next step, after admiring the crap out of the awesomeness that is Atom's homepage, is to download and install the program. Even the installer is pretty solid. Seriously, these guys thought of everything. I've never seen such a well-put-together initiative. And we haven't even gotten to the main display yet.
Instead of babysitting a progress bar, or worse — staring at a static box with no info whatsoever, I get to see the Atom rocket getting loaded up with cargo. The only thing that would make it better would be a meter showing the percentage of space left in the cargo hold or something.
So now that you have Atom installed, the fun begins. There are shittons of packages out there that will make your experience very nice. A quick run to the Googles will give several suggestions as to which packages are the best to install for what you are going to use Atom for. Another nice thing that is very customizable is the theme of Atom. There are also several themes out there, but Atom comes with about a dozen installed. FWIW, the theme I really like is called Atom Dark. In fact, it is the inspiration for the theme of this blog. It seems the 'dark mode' is all the rage these days, and that is exactly what Atom Dark (and several others) accomplishes.
From this point on, I'll leave you to your own exploring. Once you find the packages that suit you, coding will become a little less monotonous. I hope this article helps a bit, and if you have never heard of Atom before, you are welcome. I know that out of the four or five different editors I've used, Atom is by far the best (for me, at least). And one thing I like very much about it is that it is so popular, it really is easy to find answers to any questions I might have. So I hope you have fun using Atom.
Happy coding!
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