---
title: "Atom: The Editor That Accidentally Built Its Own Killer"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/atom-the-editor-that-accidentally-built-its-own-killer-knvq9krny
source_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsTYFsmCL5E
type: video:youtube
source: "Coding with Lewis"
published: 2025-12-12T15:53:09.851Z
updated: 2025-12-12T15:53:33.012Z
tags: ["microsoft", "github", "vscode", "electron"]
reading_time: 21
upvotes: 89
comments: 8
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Atom: The Editor That Accidentally Built Its Own Killer

**[Coding with Lewis](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis)** · 21 min read · 89 upvotes · 8 comments

## Summary

Atom was a revolutionary open-source code editor built on web technologies that pioneered the Electron framework. Created by GitHub's Chris Wanstrath in 2015, Atom democratized code editor customization using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, Electron's architecture caused performance issues. Microsoft leveraged the same Electron framework to build Visual Studio Code, which proved significantly faster through better optimization. After Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018, Atom development stalled despite promises of continued support. The editor was officially sunset in 2022, but its legacy lives on—Electron now powers billions of daily interactions in applications like Slack, Discord, and VS Code itself.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsTYFsmCL5E>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@jrmemeichelbeck** · 10 upvotes

> A guy from GitHub creates Atom with Electron
> - In response Microsoft starts to create VsCode with Electron
> - Coding in JS is a mess, Microsoft creates TypeScript
> - They decide to go open source on GitHub with those projects
> - They buy GitHub
> - Atom dies
>
> This is without the whole Google's Angular adopting Microsoft's TypeScript making TypeScript very popular and decreasing the popularity of Angular because of the hard migration from JS to TS

**@thraizz** · 4 upvotes

> Electron is kind of superseded by Zed, which is maintained by Atom devs

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---

Tags: [#microsoft](https://daily.dev/tags/microsoft), [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github), [#vscode](https://daily.dev/tags/vscode), [#electron](https://daily.dev/tags/electron)

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