GitHub introduces a text editor to beat all text editors

GitHub has built its own browser-based text editor, where developers can write and edit code. It has a shot at ending the long-running war on which text editor is best.

The code-storage superstar formally introduced Atom in a blog post today.

It’s meant to combine the best aspects of many different text editors already out there.

“Sublime and TextMate offer convenience but only limited extensibility. On the other end of the spectrum, Emacs and Vim offer extreme flexibility, but they aren’t very approachable and can only be customized with special-purpose scripting languages,” GitHub wrote.

If developers agree, Atom could become quite a boon to GitHub, getting more of them to think about storing and collaborating on code inside repositories on the site.

And GitHub is already prominent among developer tools, with 4 million users as of September.

Atom could help GitHub increase that number, even thought it will compete with existing code editors like Cloud9.

Developers can customize Atom. They can bolster it with packages and tack on elegant user interfaces.

The program is in beta, and you can request an invitation. Invitations were floating around Twitter today and getting snapped up quickly .

It’s unclear if GitHub will release the full code under an open-source license. And GitHub hasn’t said how much the service will cost after Atom’s beta period ends.