The first graphical editor we will consider is Atom, made by GitHub. It's described as A hackable text editor for the 21st Century. Hackable, in this sense, means that while the default installation of Atom is as complete as any text editor, this application really shines because it is very configurable and extensible. Anything that has not been integrated by GitHub can be written as an extension package. By using these extensions, you can make your Atom installation fully your own; if you do not like something, change it. If it can't be changed out of the box, find a package that does it. And even if there's not a package that does what you're hoping, you still have the option to create your own package!

Another nice feature of Atom is the default integration with Git and GitHub. Git is currently the most popular version control system. Version control systems are used when writing code or scripts. They ensure that history of files is preserved, and make it possible for multiple, even many, contributors to work on the same files at the same time, without getting burdened down by conflict management. GitHub, as the name suggests, is currently the most prominent web-based Git provider for open source software.

The last great thing about Atom we want to mention is that, by default, it supports many scripting and programming languages. When we say supports, we mean that it can recognize file types by their extensions, and offer syntax highlighting (which makes for much easier scripting!). This functionality is provided through core packages, which work the same way as normal packages but are included from the start. For our purposes, the core package, language-shellscript, will help us in our shell scripting endeavors.