When comparing Atom vs JetBrains Rider, the Slant community recommends JetBrains Rider for most people. In the question“What are the best third-party IDEs for Unity?” JetBrains Rider is ranked 1st while Atom is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose JetBrains Rider is:
ReSharper is a popular Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers. IntelliJ IDEA is a popular and fully featured JAVA IDE.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Extensive list of packages
Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive list of packages.
Pro Built-in package management
Atom was built from the ground up with the community in mind. Package management is therefore a first class feature.
Pro Multiplatform
Atom can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Pro Extendable
Due to its modular design, almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages, like those taking care of search and replace functionality, can be forked on GitHub, and changed and replaced in the editor.
The documentation for creating new plugins is also great, making it easier for developers to jump in and create plugins for Atom.
Pro Free and open source
Atom is free, open source, and written in C++, LESS, and CoffeeScript.
Pro Beginner friendly
One of the goals of Atom is to be a text editor for both experienced and beginner programmers. You can add keyboard shortcuts, change themes, install plugins, and change core settings by clicking through a GUI, or by manually editing config files the old-fashioned way. It has the added advantage of being built using the same engine that powers Google Chrome, so actions like opening and closing tabs feel familiar, even to new or non-programmers.
Pro Embedded Git control
Atom will highlight folders, files, and lines that have any uncommitted edits made. It also integrates really well with GitHub.
Pro Multi-line select and edit
Multiple cursors and column selection allow for versatile ways of editing.ctrl + d
will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection.ctrl + click
or middle-mouse click
will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also allows for selecting vertically.
Pro Command Palette support
The Command Palette permits fuzzy searching all available functions, settings, snippets, etc.
Pro Allows for instant file switching
By pressing Ctrl or Command + T and using fuzzy search, you can look for a file in your project.
Pro Themes
You can theme and customize Atom to your liking.
Pro Command line integration out of the box
Installing Atom adds two command line commands - atom
and apm
. The first one runs the application itself while the second is the Atom Package Manager that's used to add and remove various components from the package listing. While these features can be set up with other editors as well, Atom takes care of them out of the box.
Pro HiDPI support
Atom has built-in HiDPI support with zero scaling issues.
Pro Modern feel and very customizable and extendable
Pro Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim
Pro Best support for Arduino with Platformio
Arduino is the most important platform for developing embedded systems.
Pro Could also be used as an IDE
Atom qualifies to be a good IDE because of the packages like linters, atom browser and hydrogen.
Pro New C# IDE based on ReSharper and the IntelliJ platform
ReSharper is a popular Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers. IntelliJ IDEA is a popular and fully featured JAVA IDE.
Pro Superior "quality of life" features
Extremely good at filling in all the mindless boilerplate type code while you stay productive.
Pro Fast performant
Rider has everything you want from a serious IDE, but without the bloat. This results in significantly fast performance in day to day operations.
Pro Multiple runtime support
Project Rider supports the .NET Framework and Mono, with CoreCLR support in the works. It also includes templates for creating new projects, and when you create an empty project, it's literally empty
Pro Cross-platform
As well as running and debugging multiple runtimes, Project Rider itself runs on multiple platforms. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Pro Decompile code for any .net library
Pro Version control integration
Intellij plugins for Git, Mercurial, and TFS plus Local History of files.
Pro Supports all the development lifecycle
Project Rider can build MSBuild and XBuild solutions as well as DNX/.NET CLI projects, and allows debugging .NET and Mono applications. DNX/.NET CLI debugging and CoreCLR support are coming.
Pro Excellent UI, Features beyond Visual Studio (File Layout just one example)
Pro Free for Students
With a university email, Rider can be obtained for free.
Cons
Con Very slow startup time
Atom is very slow to startup, which is a big disadvantage if you are accustomed to using it to make quick changes on your files.
Con High memory usage
Atom has a relatively high memory usage, especially when compared to some other text editors not based on Electron. For those who develop on the go, this also tends to mean shorter battery life.
Con Has difficulty with large text files
Tends to crash or hang with large >(10MB) text files, making it less useful as a general text editor.
Con Slows down exponentially with plugins
Extending it needs sacrificing responsiveness.
Con Not suitable for older computers
Atom requires a lot of system resources to run, so it will most probably be painfully slow on an older machine.
Con Doesn't handle RTL (right-to-left text) well
Text can't be highlighted and manipulated properly, cursor isn't displayed visually according to where it is logically (you have to type to find out), and similar issues.
Con Indent errors
Sometimes, especially when given a file that has different indentation that the current setting, the programm seems to get confused.
Con Not known when a new window will open
It's not really clear why and when a new window is opened when you open a file out of the tree view.
Con No text UI
Con Bloated - too many packages, too little productivity
Unable to use package to even convert a C file to PDF.
Con Slow because of Electron
Atom is not a native application. As such performance is subpar and the lag is especially noticeable on larger projects. It also opens a surprising amount of sub-processes and leaks a considerable amount of memory.
Con Crash and data loss
Repeated data loss when the app crashes.
A bugreport about that was closed automatically after some time, nobody cares.
Con Missing additional touches
As Atom is still relatively new, it's missing nice little touches that other text editors have implemented over the years. From simple ease-of-use items like middle-mouse button multi-cursor select, to the ways pasted information from a spreadsheet is interpreted in multi-select situations.
Con Doesn't recognize some keyboards
Con Not free
Project Rider has a trial version available, but is not free.
Con No support for dotTrace, dotMemory yet on macOS
Support is promised on macOS, but currently only available on Windows. This means it’s not ideally suited for performance tracing and debugging.
Con Is RAM hungry
This product can hang a huge amount of RAM memory, up to 4 GB.
Con Relatively young project
Some bugs are to be expected since it's still a relatively young project.
Con Abnormal key maps
Though Visual Studio Key Map can be installed, it is still hard to find where the plugins are installed when one uses it to open a solution for the first time.