Best Atom Packages (2015, Part I)

I have googled “best atom packages” on many occasions, but all results that I saw were from 2014, even before Atom 1.0 was released in June.

Many of the packages that would have made the list before this (such as autocomplete-plus) have been incorporated into the core set.

Beautify

https://atom.io/packages/atom-beautify

The title is self-explanatory — this package makes your code beautiful. A ton of languages is supported.

Material UI

https://atom.io/themes/atom-material-ui

Inspired by Google’s material design, this brings an aesthetically pleasing experience to your editor. A supporting synthax theme is available as well.

File Icons

https://atom.io/packages/file-icons

A package that is useful for “visual grep-ing” — this adds a nice icons next to the file names that help you with determining the file format quickly. This might seem like a trivial difference, but I suspect this increases productivity by quite a bit.

Highlight-line

https://atom.io/packages/highlight-line

I am still surprised that this is not a core package. The name is self-explanatory — this highlights the line where your cursor is.

Linter

https://atom.io/packages/linter

An essential part of any developer’s work is to check code quality. This brings IDE-like functionality to Atom since you can check your code on the fly. Linters are available for tons of packages.

Minimap git diff

https://atom.io/packages/minimap-git-diff

This package shows the git diff in the minimap.

Script

https://atom.io/packages/script

If you write many scripts and are interested in their output, this package is just for you. Press CMD + I and your script is run, with the output in the console.

• Here is a shortcut to install them all:

Stay tuned for Part II!