If nothing else, Atom was the birthplace of Electron.js and I know it is controversial, but Electron was a boon for the rapid development of cross-platform desktop applications. VS Code was built - in turn - on Electron.

We need people like nathansobo to try out new ideas and directions. I, personally, am very much looking forward to their WebAssembly-based extension system and Zed being the flagship UI application developed in Rust.