Packages to Improve Your Atom Experience

My text editor of choice is Atom. I have found it to be highly capable right out of the box but there are packages available that make Atom even more user friendly. I’ll take you through a few of my favorite Atom packages that provide some quality of life improvements for me as a programmer.

Installing packages in Atom is a fairly painless process. First, navigate to your Atom preferences:

Next, navigate to the install section of your settings:

Finally, search for a package by name and click install. It’s as easy as that.

Minimap is a package that provides a preview of the full source code in the upper right-hand corner of your text editor. It comes in handy when dealing with large files with hundreds of lines of code. Here’s an example from a file in my current project that has over four-hundred lines of code:

As you can see, the minimap appears onthe right side of the editor. It shows you where in the code you are currently working and also allows to quickly scroll and jump to other parts of your code. It’s easy to get lost when files get too large but minimap helps make navigating these massive files quicker and easier.

PlatformIO IDE Terminal is a package that gives you access to a terminal within Atom. This saves you the hassle of constantly switching between Atom and your terminal application whenever you want to run something.

Each terminal session can easily be opened, collapsed, and made fullscreen using built in keyboard commands. You can also create new terminal sessions, switch between existing terminal sessions, and exit terminal sessions using simple keyboard commands. I much prefer being able to do everything in one place without having to worry about a separate terminal application. PlatformIO also offers many options for customizing your terminal to make it look and behave exactly how you want.

Teletype is a collaboration tool that allows multiple people to work in the same Atom session. It has been incredibly useful for me during group projects and pairing sessions.

You can begin a Teletype session by inviting collaborators to join your portal via the provided URL. Once they have joined, they will have the ability to view and edit the files you currently have opened while still have the ability to open files in their own session and work on them independently.

I have found this greatly improves the speed at which group projects can be completed, especially in the early stages while setting everything up. I’ve also used it to implement different pairing strategies; for example, one person writes a test and the other person writes the source code. It is a must have for anyone working on group projects.

There are a variety of linters developed by the Atom community that make it easier to write clean code that follows proper styling conventions. Linters are basically spell check for your code.

Linter is the base linter package but there are also language specific packages available. The main one I use is Rubocop, a Ruby based linter. Rubocop’s suggestions come in three different categories: info, warnings, and errors. Anything listed in the info category is a style suggestion. Rubocop warnings are more serious infractions but won’t affect your code’s ability to run. Errors are problems in your code that will throw an error when you try to run it. Use linters to improve the readability of your code and teach yourself proper syntax.

The open source nature of Atom is one of the many aspects of this text editor that I really enjoy. Developers are constantly coming out with new packages to improve the overall Atom experience. The ability to customize Atom using packages allows you to truly make this text editor your own. Try out the few packages outlined above and look into some others you find interesting. Or better yet, develop a package of your own to contribute to the Atom community.

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