Atom alternatives

Atom (sunset by GitHub in 2022) was a great solution for handling program languages like LaTeX, Markdown, Python, and R in a single text editor with a smooth user interface.

Read a few comparisons of the currently popular editors to find the right choice for your needs, e.g.:

1. Visual Studio Code by Microsoft is the trending choice and what I would recommend for most users. Its quite plug-and-go as its main edge over other text editors is the range of core features it has out-of-the-box while still offering extensions like LaTeX Workshop in its Marketplace.
2. Sublime Text is the older and therefore very common text editor. However, it is slower than VS Code, has poor word-suggestions and updates are infrequent due to not being open source.

LaTeX

• I prefer MiKTeX over TeX Live for writing LaTeX with VS Code. Check out this setup guide by Filipe Salgueiro.

Python

• Python can be installed as a part of installing Anaconda or Miniconda (choose 'Add Anaconda to my PATH environment variable')
  • If you don't need Jupyter, you can skip Anaconda/Miniconda and just install Python directly. As a side note: Though you can edit Jupyter Notebooks within VS Code itself, it's arguably still too buggy as compared to using your browser.
  • If you need to uninstall Anaconda, read the documentation first. Re-installing can overcome accumulated incompatibility issues that prevent updating to newer versions, but older code might break.
• Update to the latest compatible versions of Anaconda, Conda, Python, and related packages as often as possible by running conda update anaconda, conda update conda, conda update --all and pip_upgrade_outdated (install this tool first: pip install pip_upgrade_outdated).

R

• Install R.
• Optionally, install IRkernel (R kernel for Jupyter) and/or Rstudio (standalone R editor and package manager).