Comparing VS Code, Sublime Text and Atom. Who will win ?

Nikhil Gupta
Nov 4 · 3 min read

There are lot of code editors in the market now a days. Sublime, Notepad++, Atom , VS Code etc. to name some among the most popular.

In this blog I will be comparing the three very popular code editors. Atom, Sublime Text and Microsoft’s VS Code.

I am going to follow points scheme and after a series of comparisons we will be comparing all three editors final score.

Atom: 0 VS Code: 0 Sublime: 0

Speed :

As Sublime is built on C++ it is faster than than Atom and VS Code but for a electron based editor, VS Code comes very close to Sublime Text in terms of speed and smoothness. Atom is a little bit slower in starting and smoothness as compared to 2. Here I will give 3 points to Sublime, 2 points to VS Code and 1 point to atom

Atom: 1 VS Code: 2 Sublime: 3

Interface :

All 3 editors have a descent design and can be customize using themes and different extensions. Acc. to me Atom and VS Code have a more modern design as compared to Sublime Text. Atom and VS Code each will get 3 points and sublime 2 points.

Atom: 4 VS Code: 5 Sublime: 5

Usability :

I don’t think Atom and Sublime comes anywhere near to VS Code when it comes to usability of the editor. VS Code has an integrated terminal other 2 don’t, VS code ships with default git version control other 2 don’t have any. And there are many other. Though these features can be added to other two editors using extensions, I think we can reward 3 points to VS Code by including these essential features by default and 1 point each to Atom and Sublime.

Atom: 5 Vs Code: 8 Sublime: 6

Extensions :

All three editors have excellent community and a lot of extensions. Some extensions are there which are available for a particular editor but you can easily find a replacement. 3 points to each editor.

Atom: 8 VS Code: 11 Sublime: 9

Availability :

All 3 code editors are available for Windows, Linux and MacOS. 3 points each.

Atom: 11 VS Code: 14 Sublime: 12

Code Auto Complete :

VS code comes with default Microsoft’s own code auto complete feature which is far more superior than the other 2. Autocomplete in VS Code can further be enhanced using Microsoft IntelliSense Extensions for a particular language. 3 points to VS Code. Sublime has a little bit more better extensions available for code auto completion so 2 points to sublime and 1 point to Atom.

Atom: 12 VS Code: 17 Sublime: 14

From the above series of comparisons we can see what final scores are.

VS Code : 17

Sublime: 14

Atom: 12

I have no regret to say that VS Code is a clear winner with 17 points among these three very popular text editors. Sublime comes in second position with 14 points and Atom at third with 12 points in total.

From the above comparisons we can see why VS Code is becoming the first choice as a code editor among the developers. If you are reading this article and haven’t used VS Code I strongly recommend to give it a try.

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