Giving Atom a try

I’ve used Coda by Panic as my IDE of choice for 10 years now, but I think it is starting to fall behind other tools. It isn’t updated often and there aren’t nearly as many community-built packages as other tools have. So I’m giving both Atom and Sublime a try. I’m trying Atom first.

In my first few days of use, here are some things I love:

d3-snippets package – The D3 is super powerful, but unless you use it every day, it is easy to forget the syntax for its huge array of features. I usually need to keep the documentation open in another window. With this package I just need to start typing what I need and I get a list of options with useful snippets.

language-liquid package – Finally, highlighting liquid syntax! Coda didn’t have this.

platformio-ide-terminal package – Yeah, opening terminal.app in another window is easy. But having everything in one place is great.

It is so easy to find and install new packages for Atom. And there are so many!

Git integration – I usually use the command line for git, but I love being able to see which files in the sidebar are new, modified, and staged. Then with the click of a button I can commit and push them.

Easy customization – Within seconds I was able to switch themes and default fonts.

Multi line editing. Protip: On a Mac go to System Preferences > Mission Control and turn off the Control + Shift + Up Arrow and Down Arrow keyboard commands, which you can then use in Atom for multi line selection and editing.