I see the point in developing directly on atomic as it is something I desire as well, but with that said at what cost does it come?
Atomic's minimal nature not only makes it optimized for speed but also for reliability and manageability at scale, and most importantly security. It is what attracted us to the project to begin with.
The more packages that are added the more that is sacrificed. I for one will be happy dealing without all the bells and whistles to have peace of mind knowing the clusters are rock stable and have the smallest security attack footprint out of any other available operating systems.
The please add feature x will never stop and it is a slippery slope that has already been asked many times which will further pull atomic away from the very purpose it was designed and that purpose was not to be just another Linux flavor. It is intended to be a stripped down secure o.s. With one purpose; hosting containers and nothing else.
Because it is designed for hosting containers the age old method of developing on the target platform just doesnt need to be.
Just an example:
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-72/product_id-1860/GNU-Screen.html
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-11380/product_id-20683/Nicholas-Marriott-Tmux.html