# Atom editor

16 Hacker News commenters recommended Atom editor and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, clean-looking editor that longtime users loved and still use. Critics most often cite poor performance, slower than VS Code.

## Why people recommend it

- Loved by longtime users (4 comments): "I will never have to worry about cursor or vs changing getting bought and moth balled like Atom (my favorite ide)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100038)) "I just went back to Atom (rather Pulsar, the last good fork)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48686685)) "Atom changed the way I use text editors" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952350))

## What people warn about

- Poor performance, slower than rivals (8 comments): "Despite attempts to make Atom—an Electron application—more responsive, it never reached the performance standards the team yearned for." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918698)) "atom was objectively worse on performance and a few other things i forget, but it felt so good to use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46235024)) "VSCode is another Electron application that ended up having better performance than Atom" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918547))
- Built on Electron, ships Chrome (3 comments): "Despite attempts to make Atom—an Electron application—more responsive, it never reached the performance standards the team yearned for." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918698)) "The Atom editor spawned an entire class of app: Electron apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203921)) "Atom started trend to ship Chrome alongside every single" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47285904))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend
- [GNU Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs.md): 648 recommend
- [Vim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim.md): 513 recommend
- [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend
- [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Atom editor", https://hackerapproved.com/p/atom/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).