[WhitneyLand]

Is there any way not to conclude they have just been out designed/architected/optimized by Microsoft?

What a compliment to the VSC team that after all this work, Atom still doesn't seem to match startup time, or more importantly perceived performance while editing.

It's a more interesting comparison since they're both bound by similar constraints, and building cross platform apps.

In the bad old days I once worked for a MS competitor where there were often complaints of unfair competition. Most often around how knowledge of closed sourced OS internals allowed optimization insights unavailable to others.

Not all MS devs are great for sure, but I'm inferring two things here. The VSC team is pretty damn good, and that IP and institutional knowledge from decades of investment in dev tools probably helps a bit.

[matt4077]

I'd offer the alternative theory that the VSCode team learnt everything they could from Atom's past mistakes.

Speed is only one of the issues–I'm actually quite happy with Atom in that regard. VSCode has a much more restricted API, and a more robust extension system. With Atom, I always felt like extensions started interfering with each other, and with the 'vanilla' experience. OTOH, I was exploring a few ideas, such as inline rendering of comments in markdown, and that's really only possible in Atom.

[posguy]

Sounds similar to the complaints about Firefox, though the only notable issues I've run into with Atom have been related to shared file editing (and resulting sync issues). If someone could just leverage etherpad lite with Atom, it'd make me so happy!

[matt4077]

Firefox mostly has the problem that the open web suddenly became incredibly important for Google: it's their platform, in the fight against Facebook and Apple's iOS.

No organisation on the planet could compete with a team that Google considers a core asset for actual survival.

Mozilla has made quite a few mistakes, but the times may change, and I sure hope they'll be around when Google's incentives are no longer aligned with the open web's.

[posguy]

Google can be out-competed, look at their attempts at social networks & messaging/calling.

Google has lit dumpsters full of cash on fire in an effort to get anywhere near Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Viber or even Signal Private Messenger, and yet their extremely fractured strategy that they have dumped R&D into still has less users than any of those in their respective categories.

Mozilla can be competitive, akin to Darktable vs Adobe if Mozilla chooses to be. No more mucking about bailing their friends out (ie: Pocket acquisition), or trying to fight Google on hardware prices (Firefox OS's entire strategy). Mozilla can create a playing field tilted in their favor, and force others to compete on their turf rather than duking it out on Google or Chinese OEMs turf.

[senor_developer]

I'd offer the alternative-to-your-alternative-theory that the VSCode team had members that had lots of real world experience working on text editors and desktop apps, whereas Atom, based on the company's public statements on the matter, started as a hobby project by the CEO and slowly added a few very smart non-specialists over the years..

In other words, unlike the Atom team, VSCode didn't have to re-make mistakes Microsoft learned from 15 years ago...

[type0]

Why is it always Atom and VS Code and no one talks about Adobe Brackets, is it comparable for JS development? too bad Adobe doesn't care about Linux.

[jazoom]

Plus their speed of development has been incredible. I don't imagine it's a very large team.

And their change logs are great, thankfully.