Parts of VSCode predate Atom. The core "Monaco" code editor was built for parts of Azure and battled hardened in IE10+'s Dev Tools. The biggest chunk of code that VSCode even shares with Atom is Electron, which is likely the source of most confusion that VSCode "forked" from Atom given Electron was still called Atom-Shell when VSCode started.

as far as I know no. Both Atom and VSCode use Electron but VSCode is something MS build from scratch.

And Electron was built for Atom, so in turn Viscose uses the core of Atom, even though Electron (after VSCode started using it) became more independent.

sure. the point is that it’s not a fork of atom. if you use leftpad you’re not a leftpad clone

They both are electron-based, and when MS acquired GitHub, Atom took the worst part...

I doubt MS acquiring GitHub had a major role in Atom downfall. Atom's market share was already declining fast

i tried atom but it was atrocious when it came to even medium size files. vscode loads huge files without blinking. atom would just freeze

I concur with both and I made the switch along then because my atom was unbearable (although heavily loaded with probably unneeded extensions).

But VS Code has been a smooth experience since then.

I only brought it up because it certainly played a role on github having no longer a reason to invest resources in it having a better alternative being also developed in-house. And I also recall from other HN threads, much vocal users asking GitHub CEO about it, and why he stated just after the acquisition that Atom would be maintained even as Microsoft owning Github from there on... Which didn't happen.

IIRC Nat Friedman's words were something along the lines of "we'll keep developing it until there's enough people using it"

When vscode just came out all the developers in my company were using atom. Then a few of use started using vscode and it was a smoother experience. Atom would freeze all the time. Then slowly one by one people tried vscode and switched over.

Could any Atom users explain what it is that made you choose Atom over another text editor?

Can't speak for GP, but VS Code came out after Atom and Brackets both used similar approaches and both largely sucked. In fact, I almost didn't even try VS Code because of how bad the experience with Atom was.

In retrospect, I'm glad I did. The biggest features to me beyond a simple editor are a directory tree view, and an integrated terminal. I don't think anything had that, or at least not nearly as well working before VS Code that I recall. Everything else on top of that is just extras. Git integration, test extensions, integrations galore. In the end, VS Code has been a really great experience for me. It takes a little longer to load than the simple editors.

This doesn't even get into the Remote WSL/SSH extensions that I've started to make more use of the past few months. I've used vscode on Windows, Linux and Mac, and overall don't think I've been happier with a single editor.

I believe it’s based on Electron (which itself was part of Atom)

no