11 ms·

I switched from VSCode to Zed

• css_apologist 9mo ago
  css syntax highlighting has been broken in vs code for years now. how in the world is this possible in THE web dev editor?
  • adzm 9mo ago
    How is it broken? I'm looking at it working fine right now.
    • jazzyjackson 9mo ago
      Not OP but I remember working on a team that just put up with nonhighlighted nonintelligent CSS because it was embedded in a handlebars template. Of course there is an extension that's supposed to fix this but it was flaky and broke often. An easy fix was to move CSS to a separate file for import but that was a big change for these guys.
    • publicdebates 9mo ago
      Not GP, but he's absolutely right, it's been pissing me off for years now. Only thing I can remember off the top of my head is nested selectors still not highlighting properly. They partially fixed this a few months ago but that's it. I guess we're all waiting on GHCP to prioritize and fix it now?
      • css_apologist 9mo ago
        nested is the main one, however i remember cases where a rule couldn't be parsed and the rest of the file went fuckidy this is pathetic, and really shows how much of a shitter css tooling currently resides in
        • jtbaker 9mo ago
          Insert obnoxious tailwind comment
          • jtbaker 8mo ago
            I feel bad about this comment as of today's news. I love tailwind and feel like it has supercharged my ability to be productive with CSS, but recognize that it can be overprescribed.
• replete 9mo ago
  An easy switch for an individual, for an organization the ecosystem is typically too much to give up. Hopefully this changes in a few years.
  • jonkoops 9mo ago
    Organizations are composed of individuals, if your organization is tied to a specific IDE to be able to function, that seems like a huge problem.
    • replete 9mo ago
      Ecosystem.
      • spiderice 8mo ago
        If your organization's "ecosystem" is tied to a specific editor, your organization has major issues.
  • the__alchemist 9mo ago
    Do some companies/orgs mandate which editor to use? Is this usually big companies? Which countries?
• RamblingCTO 9mo ago
  Also made the same switch and very happy. Sometimes Zed (I guess due to claude code?) would hog my CPU, but that's fine by me. Works very well. Had one crash so far due to CC.
• Surac 9mo ago
  To bad I can not change away from vs code. Most chip manufacturers use the vscode + Addons approach today to give you a toolchain to Programm for your microcontroller. They (thank god) abandon there proprietary IDE attempts and concentrate on chips and compilers again. They found VSCode and now you are required to use this. I’m very unhappy with the situation and on the job hunt to get away from embedded to application programming
  • webdevver 9mo ago
    i think i might be brain damaged because i actually like the eclipse ides they put out, atleast the stm32 one
    • Surac 9mo ago
      I very much recommend smt32cubeMX.
  • Neywiny 9mo ago
    Lol here I am moving them on my own when vendors won't or do it wrong. Sad to see a fellow embedded leaving. We certainly need all the help we can get
  • the__alchemist 9mo ago
    Which microcontrollers? Of interest, I program STM32, ESP32 (Risc-V) and Nordic chips, and do everything in RustRover. The compiling is decoupled from the editor. (You do cargo run to build and flash with debugging, or click the Run IDE button; works just like any program) The editor is for the code structure, and should reflect that, vs the chip. There is Cube IDE which is useful for configuring clocks, memory layout data, and other periph info as a supplement to the RMs and User Manuals, but it's not required to write code.
    • sampullman 9mo ago
      Do you do this in a professional setting? I'm curious because I did some embedded/uC work about 10 years ago and considering the state of C/C++ SDKs (and IDE support) at the time, I would have expected it to take decades for Rust to get a foothold.
• julik 9mo ago
  I would have switched in a pinch if Zed had their low-DPI font rendering in order. At the moment it just looks bad.
  • veidr 9mo ago
    This is interesting to me, because I see this kind of comment on almost every Zed post. I haven't used a low-DPI monitor for like... not sure, but more than a decade, I'm pretty sure, so for me the weird blocker I have with Zed is the "OMG YOU HAVE NO GPU!!!! THIS WILL NOT END WELL!" warning (I run a lot of Incus containers via RDP, and they mostly have no GPU available). But what kind of monitors are you low-DPI people using? Some kind of classic Sony Trinitron CRTs, or what? I'm actually curious. Or is it not the display itself, but some kind of OS thing?
    • Octoth0rpe 9mo ago
      Depending on the definition I'm not a low DPI user myself, but in my friend group, I seem to be the only person who cares about >160 dpi, lots of people are using 1440p displays, or >34" 4k displays. In Apple's mind, high dpi (eg retina) is > 218 dpi, so my lowly 34" 5120x2160 doesn't count for them. But it is > 160 which is my personal threshold for hi dpi. There aren't all that many >20" displays on the market that meet Apple's definition of high dpi, and not a ton more that meet my much looser definition.
      • drcongo 9mo ago
        I was imagining 72dpi like old CRT monitors, but yeah, I'd agree that 160 feels like a fair threshold.
    • burlesona 9mo ago
      I have a 4-5 year old ultra wide monitor which is a lot of pixels but low dpi. I really like the single monitor containing two screens worth of pixels, but I wish it was high dpi. At the time there weren’t really high dpi ultra wides available, and they’re still expensive enough that upgrading isn’t a high priority for me… but I’m sure I will at some point.
• zmk5 9mo ago
  I really love Zed, but my only issue is the Emacs keybindings they ship doesn’t seem to work as well as the VSCode Emacs extensions. Hopefully they can fix this in newer updates.
  • xpe 9mo ago
    This is high praise coming from an Emacs user :) I also formerly used Emacs with much joy, but I'm even happier with Zed now. Zed has a lot of issues in flight; maybe these are useful to you? Here are the issues that have been filed under the label "area:parity/emacs". Some also have the label "state:needs repro" (needs reproduction). I wonder if any of them scratch your itch? Weighing in might help get your pain points resolved a bit faster? https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20emacs%20label%3Aarea%3Aparity%2Femacs https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20...
    • zmk5 8mo ago
      Thank you! I’ll look into this!
  • necubi 8mo ago
    In the same boat, I try it every few months but give up because the emacs mode still isn't good enough. It's been getting slowly, slowly better though.
  • cpt_sobel 8mo ago
    I have a similar issue with vim support, they have built-in support which I really appreciate but don't currently support pointing to my own .vimrc. This is unfortunately a dealbreaker for me.
• koito17 9mo ago
  I used to be a daily Emacs user (both at work and for personal projects). Since trying out Zed a little over a year ago, now I only use Emacs for Magit and the occasional IRC message through the built-in ERC client. For VS Code users, there's actually a special feature where a subset of VS Code settings can be migrated to Zed settings. Cannot vouch for its stability, but the functionality is there. Sorely missing a REPL for Lisp languages, but for statically-typed languages like Rust and TypeScript, Zed works pretty well. I appreciate that Zed works smoothly with Nix and Direnv, even through remote projects. I do wish the collaboration features would receive a bit more attention, though. It feels like that functionality has slowly been bitrotting, and it's always unfortunate when my friends on Linux cannot share their screen. Then there's other little regressions, like the audio bit depth being incorrect on MacBooks connected to external monitors -- they did fix this with the experimental Rodio backend, but I am not sure if that is stabilized yet. However, AI-related features are fairly stable and it's amazing how far it has come in less than a year. That and things like the debugger UI.
  • insane_dreamer 9mo ago
    > now I only use Emacs for Magit have you tried lazygit? that's my go-to. Can even run in in a panel inside Zed.
• bestest 9mo ago
  Switched to Zed from Webstorm. Only issue is Zed has no vertical tab support. Did create a PR but it got rejected as it does not align with their milestones. Well, using it by monkeypatching the dev build after every upstream sync.
  • xpe 9mo ago
    I must admit I'm rather ignorant of the vertical tab workflow. I'm curious: when did it click for you? Was VS Code your gateway drug? A web browser?
    • adhamsalama 9mo ago
      This is the first time I've seen someone talk about vertical tabs in an editor, but I used to make fun of people using vertical tabs in browsers until I tried it and got used to it, so maybe I should try vertical editor tabs...
• gdotdesign 9mo ago
  I'm still waiting to evaluate Zed because I work with/on my programming language which has LSP Semantic Highlighting, but Zed doesn't https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/39539 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/39539 once it's merged I'll give it a go because it looks like a modern Sublime Text (which I still use). I just wish they would focus on basic editor features instead of adding AI and other non-related features.
  • tortilla 9mo ago
    I switched from Sublime Text (still keep for navigating huge files). But I love the thought put into Zed and it looks great (this is important to me). I don't use their AI features but it does come in handy when I need an quick alternate answer or perspective. I use Claude Code in a separate terminal.
• drcongo 9mo ago
  I love Zed. I switched full time from Sublime about 8 months ago, using the preview builds, and every release has been solid. The UI design is perfect and the attention to detail is top notch - it feels comfortable, like a really ergonomic pair of slippers.
• traceroute66 9mo ago
  Does Zed have something similar to VSCode Dev Containers ? That is one of the few things keeping me going on VSCode. For example, I frequently write Ansible playbooks. And with VSCode you can just fire up the Ansible-provided Dev Container with all the dependencies. Which means you don't have to clutter up your local system with them.
  • catlover76 9mo ago
    [dead]
  • pacha3000 9mo ago
    DevContainers support in coming in the following weeks, it's actually in beta
  • crabmusket 9mo ago
    They seem to be working on it, but so far it's only available in preview builds? https://zed.dev/docs/dev-containers https://zed.dev/docs/dev-containers
    • traceroute66 9mo ago
      Thanks for the link, looks promising, even if "no separate extensions" under Known Limitations for the initial release is perhaps a little unfortunate.
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • stusmall 8mo ago
    This falls under the "something similar" category but it's direnv support is great https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#direnv-integration https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#direnv-integration It isn't 1:1 since there probably won't be ansible provided configs, but I find writing nix devshells per project to be low effort and high reward. It'll only be a couple lines if all you need is a specific version of ansible
• ddoolin 9mo ago
  Zed is the only editor I've been using for maybe two months or so. But I find the extensions still sorely lacking and the API not extensive enough yet either. Still, I really love the design as well as how AI was builtin, and some more of the niche differences.
• giancarlostoro 9mo ago
  This yeah I'm switching from JetBrains to Zed after being with them nearly 10 years now. I just can't justify my yearly subscription now that they've bundled AI that I can't justify paying for if I can just use Claude Code directly. At least Zed has richer Claude Code integration than JetBrains. If I even bother to renew it will be only if they announce something worth my while.
• sabareesh 9mo ago
  I have switched to terminal
  • vegabook 9mo ago
    am I the only one who is just fine with neovim?
    • bluecalm 9mo ago
      I love it. I have 40 files open in it right now - most of them .c source files with LSP and Treesitter running and it uses 250MB of RAM. Everything works instantly, Telescope is imo the new standard for file navigation (and navigation in general: grep, symbols even neovim shortcuts). Git integration is fantastic as well. I have spent some time configuring it and probably will spend more when I start including more languages but imo it's worth it. You can configure everything but you can also find very nice defaults by running Kickstarter (or some heavier neovim "distro"). Microsoft has done great work with LSPs - I can now get great navigation/autocompletion/formatting/inline errors/warning combined with neovim navigation, light weight and fantastic tools/extensions. One thing I haven't integrated yet is a debugger (gdb from the terminal is good enough for me), maybe that's something people are missing in neovim?
      • adhamsalama 9mo ago
        I use Astronvim and it has a not-so-bad debugger support, when it works...
  • xpe 9mo ago
    Do you mean a terminal-based editor, like emacs, vim, neovim, or helix? (I quite like the latter, after having used all the former to some degree.) Or do you mean line-editors? They have gotten impressively good. See rustyline (based on linenoise) and reedline (not a typo; developed by the Nushell team) for example. Way better than one might expect! [1]: https://github.com/kkawakam/rustyline https://github.com/kkawakam/rustyline [2]: https://github.com/antirez/linenoise https://github.com/antirez/linenoise [3]: https://github.com/nushell/reedline https://github.com/nushell/reedline
• the__alchemist 9mo ago
  Concur that it's a great VSCode replacement! Also note on the Author's observation of it using similar keybinds: You can, easily, swap the keybinds for other common editors too; this is a big deal for transitions. Also, I love how they're doing things the right way using a fast language... and it shows in the consistently low latency. It is not, IMO, a replacement for Jetbrains IDEs (PyCharm, Rustrover, for example). I do substitute it on my tablet sometimes, where those IDEs can be too sluggish. Unless I'm missing something with plugins I should be installing, it is not on the same level for introspection, refactoring, import adding and moving, real-time error checking, and generally understanding the code base holistically. So, I've settled into this: Jetbrains if on a sufficiently powerful PC. (It can still bring a 9950x to its knees though...) Zed for lower-power ones. Sublime for editing one-off files, as both JB and Zed are project-oriented.
• dgllghr 9mo ago
  I would love to switch but the battery draw on my mac is just too much! I like to move around to different places in my home as I work so being able to be on battery for a while is a must for me (not to mention that I do travel occasionally)
  • r4victor 9mo ago
    Hmm, I found Zed to consume battery less than VScode on my M1 MBP. It's ~100 vs ~200 12h power consumption on average according to Activity Monitor. Do you compare it to VSCode?
    • dgllghr 9mo ago
      Yes VSCode uses far less power than Zed on my machine. I believe it is probably related to these issues: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/21146 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/21146 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/8043 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/8043
      • dgllghr 8mo ago
        It's unlikely that anyone will see this but I tried using Zed again after not using it for a while and the power draw is significantly lower! So I don't think it is related to those issues after all. I don't see much of a difference between Zed and VSCode in the amount of energy they use, but Zed is noticeably snappier (and not owned by MSFT)
• japhyr 9mo ago
  I've been frustrated by the constant nudges to use specific AI tools from within VS Code, but I made a different change. Rather than moving to a different editor altogether, I started using VS Codium. If you're unfamiliar, it's the open core of VS Code, without the Microsoft-branded features that make up VS Code. I believe Microsoft builds VS Code releases by building VS Codium, and then adding in their own branded features, including all the AI pushes. If you like VS Code except for the Microsoft bits, consider VS Codium alongside other modern choices. https://vscodium.com https://vscodium.com
  • r4victor 9mo ago
    That's a good idea. I considered VSCodium but the issue is that I used VSCode's proprietary extensions such as Pylance. So it would require to switch to OSS replacements at which point I decided why wouldn't give Zed a try – it has a better feeling by not being an Electron app. I think VSCodium is a good option if you need extensions not available in Zed.
    • krabizzwainch 9mo ago
      If you are good with a slightly jank option, I have had success with just moving the extension directory from VSCode to the VSCodium directory. Works for the Oracle SQL Developer plugin I use often. It might go against the terms in the extension, but I don’t care about that.
      • Timon3 9mo ago
        That doesn't help with Pylance and similar extensions. Microsoft implemented checks to verify the extension is running in VS Code, you have to manually patch them out of the bundled extension code (e.g. like this[0], though that probably doesn't work for the current versions anymore). [0]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1641#discussioncomment-12603240 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/discussions/1641#discus...
    • bobajeff 9mo ago
      I've been using vscodium with basedpyright as I've thought it was supposed to be a open source version of pylance. I've got to say it's annoying about type errors and after changing it's setting to be less strict it still annoys me and I've even started littering my code with the their # ignore _____ . I'm really glad the article mentioned ty as I'm going to try that today. On zed I tried it but the font rendering hurt my eyes and UI seems to be glitchy and also doesn't support the drag and drop to insert links in markdown feature * I use all the time. * https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown#_inserting-images-and-links-to-files https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown#_inser...
• r4victor 9mo ago
  Hi, I'm the author of the post. I hope it resonates with many who got tired of VSCode and found Zed. I'd also like to add there are many small features I miss in Zed that I don't go over in the post, e.g. autodetect and respect file's indentation (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4681 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4681). But I see Zed is actively shipping the missing features, so I believe they'll improve significantly over the next year.
  • delichon 8mo ago
    Your blog appears to have been hugged to death. I look forward to reading it someday.
    • e12e 8mo ago
      https://archive.is/aaJh4 https://archive.is/aaJh4
  • SnowingXIV 8mo ago
    Have you tried using vim? Or rather nvim? If tinkering is your thing, feel free to completely do your own setup but out of the box lazyvim is pretty sane and you may not need much to get it to your liking. But it’s very nice to easily able to extend or modify to fit your workflow. I’m just curious what people are getting out of zed that seems like vim has available.
    • oneeyedpigeon 8mo ago
      I use both zed and vim, but the former for 'big' work because of: a) file tree - I really like being able to 'root' the view at a directory, explore the hierarchy, and easily open any file within it b) LSP - Zed's auto-formatting is it's best feature, for me I generally like a whole bunch of things the gui gives me, but I would probably drop zed if I could get these two features working as well (or, at least, almost as well) in vi.
      • pluies 8mo ago
• gigatexal 9mo ago
  Same. I did long time ago and won’t go back.
• xutopia 9mo ago
  Zed feels way snappier to me than VSCode and I love the vim mode too.
• lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
  I switched from VSCode to Zed and clicked the "disable AI" button so gd fast. Bliss.
• wseqyrku 9mo ago
  To do this, I had to switch to Rust first which means I had to change my entire career. I love to switch to linux desktop now but before that I'm gonna need to clear some time. Which probably means I have to retire?
• globalnode 9mo ago
  vscode's become a laggy mess (admittedly only when i have 2 games open in the background, but c'mon!). i'll give zed a try.
• wateralien 9mo ago
  I also switched my editor to Zed recently, from Cursor, and brought my custom theme along too: https://zed-themes.com/themes/ldw3jOWS7edS-gifHtZg9?name=Dark%20Ocean%20Park https://zed-themes.com/themes/ldw3jOWS7edS-gifHtZg9?name=Dar...
• coopykins 9mo ago
  Vs code became unusable on a not so big monorepo on a MacBook Pro M4, which is concerning. Zed has been much smoother, even there are a couple of extensions or features that I miss.
  • dmix 9mo ago
    Sounds like an extension issue. Why would the codebase size matter otherwise.
• mark_l_watson 9mo ago
  This article struck a personal chord with me: I bought a new MacBook a week ago and installed minimal software on it, specifically I did not install VSCode and I don’t miss it. I use Emacs exclusively on my new laptop. I have about 40 years experience with Emacs and except for a treemacs automations, I am using my regular setup. VSCode is a great project but I just didn’t feel “happy” while I was using it. I feel happy using Emacs and I only use very minimal LLM integrations with Emacs, preferring to separately running gemini-cli occasionally, or using a variety of LLMs (especially strong local models) with one-shot prompting.
  • dbacar 9mo ago
    Emacs what?? Let's start an editor flame war, under a completely different editor wars :)) Yes i am a VI man. Just joking, I really mis the org-mode.
  • dleslie 9mo ago
    Likewise, I feel happy when using Emacs in a way that other editors do not. Emacs was made for a different era of development, with different views on what productive programming looked like. Rider, VSCode, and etc are all post-NetBeans editors and it shows. Editing text buffers isn't the focus so much as refactoring projects is; and agentic AI development slots easily into that refactoring process. With Emacs, it _feels_ purposeful, manual, and dare I say it, artisanal.
  • onehair 9mo ago
    We don't all have - 40 years experience with Emacs - the ability to predict that 20 years from when we started we would fall in love with Emacs - the fortitude of will to overcome the mountainous project that it is to turn Emacs, The text editor "toolkit", into the perfect text editor for you.
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    • justinhj 8mo ago
      You may be surprised how short a path it is to the perfect emacs config for you.
• Matl 9mo ago
  I want to switch to Zed from JetBrains but I am too used to [1] and it seems no other editor besides JetBrains IDEs seem too interested in implementing it the way JetBrains does. 1 - https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7721 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7721
  • jasonjmcghee 9mo ago
    JetBrains is well thought out in terms of capabilities. There are some core features that work so much better out of the box than with the best plugins in others. Local History (or even for a selection) with search, stacked clipboard, recent locations, how good search is in general (text, symbols, actions etc), how in-modal buffers work, debugging experience, version control merging experience, etc etc Old now fixed complaints: - making plugins used to be awful - used to have no lsp support (Was pleasantly surprised when I built ron-lsp [1] plugin) Long standing complaints: - it's heavy and slow - has weird failure modes All that being said, still my main IDE, with neovim (well configured) used frequently. --- [1]: https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/ron-lsp/tree/main/jetbrains-plugin https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/ron-lsp/tree/main/jetbrains-...
    • rrgok 9mo ago
      Yep, when these new editors-wanna-be ide will focus on delivering JetBrains level debugger, global search (really global through files, actions, whatever you can imagine) then maybe I will switch. It amazes me they all put debugging as a second class citizen. Are these people the ones who debug with printfs?
• emilecantin 9mo ago
  I switched to Zed from a tmux/nvim setup. I think Zed is the first editor I've tried that has a good enough Vim mode for me to switch and keep my built-up muscle memory.
  • cpt_sobel 8mo ago
    I tried switching to Zed from vim / Idea Suite with IdeaVim, and I was disappointed that I could not just use my .vimrc, have they fixed it yet? It's currently the only blocker for me.
• aitchnyu 9mo ago
  I use Zed only for million line json log dumps. Everything else stuggles to scroll or ctrl+f but those are instant in Zed.
  • stellalo 9mo ago
    This is the same reason I switched to it. It’s just lightweight and fast, I don’t see why a text editor should not be like this
• dmix 9mo ago
  I tried moving from Cursor to Zed but the LLM integration still seems very early. Cursor is very far ahead in terms of DX and the various models/tokens you get is very reasonable price wise. Zed would be a good half-way point for the people using terminal LLM CLIs and prefer the more structured approach rather than a deep IDE integration.
• throwfaraway135 9mo ago
  I tried switching from VScode to Zed but unfortunately it doesn't have Jupyter notebooks and image/video preview which are deal brakers for me. Other pain points: - Format on save by default: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/29395 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/29395 - VSCode Debugger UX seams to be much better
  • r4victor 9mo ago
    Yes! I also got bitten by format_on_save when working with legacy projects with inconsistent formatting. Given another discussion I saw, the maintainers didn't think about this use case much, i.e. "why don't you want to have a proper formatting?". It can be turned off now, so not sure if they'll change the default.
    • bluecalm 9mo ago
      It's like Excel changing .csv files after opening them so a simple load/save cycle can corrupt the file and your original copy is nowhere to be found. I imagine the damage is smaller in case of auto-formatter but still - not something I would expect a program to do to my file in a simple "open file - close the program" cycle.
  • ahurmazda 9mo ago
    I had a miserable experience with it. It could not do as simple task as discovering my python interpreter! IDEs are a dime a dozen these days — most are fast enough. But common workflows need to be air tight.
  • dcchuck 9mo ago
    I find myself using VS Code for "things like this" (its visual extension ecosystem). I've grown attached to the git diff view, so I use it for reviewing PRs mostly (especially larger ones as github UI has been struggling with them as of late). The rest of my code is written in Vim or by Claude.
  • Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
    The issue there is what you expect; when Sublime Text came out and later VS Code, they intentionally didn't have the same features as IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA had. The ecosystem of those is very impressive and feature rich, but for a lot of tasks that was overkill and the performance cost was too big. X years later and VS Code is the one with the biggest ecosystem and therefore also has the largest and most complex addons. Zed is starting from scratch again, relying on developers to create extensions. However, I'll argue that because Zed is Rust based instead of web tech based like Code, it'll be harder to get as big an ecosystem as Code has. Same with IDEs, some of the biggest plugins have corporate backers who pay people to develop and maintain them.
• bargainbin 9mo ago
  I switched to Helix and ZelliJ, ZelliJ really allows you to setup some IDE features and helix is like the surface layer of Vi. Combined it becomes a very powerful setup!
  • nbf_1995 9mo ago
    Can you expand on how you use Zellij? I tried it and I understand you can use it for splits, and tabs similar to tmux. But I might revisit it if it allows an IDE like workflow with Helix.
• a-dub 9mo ago
  i never understood why people like vscode. visual studio used to be great back in the day because it was really thoughtfully designed and everything was nicely integrated. vscode always felt like a hodgepodge of random features and extensions that don't really fit together all that well at all.
  • CuriouslyC 9mo ago
    If you're a typescript developer the VS Code experience is great. It also has a lot of useful plugins. For other languages JetBrains products are mostly still better.
• Octoth0rpe 9mo ago
  I'm a very early Zed adopter, and have gotten much more confident in it in the last 6 months mainly because of their AI plans. Note that my strongly positive opinion on this actually has very little to due with the _utility_ of their ai functionality, but rather in that it appears to be a sustainable funding model. My biggest worry with Zed since I started using it (again, early adopter) was that it would eventually need to be monetized, and likely enshittified. I'm not at all a fan of subscription software, but probably would've happily handed over $20-$50 for a one time purchase (or, maybe $20 for a 1 time purchase of a major version, with another $20 at least 3+ years out or something). In the last year, Zed has become a sort of AI reseller. You can buy their 'pro' plan, get so many openai/anthropic/gemini tokens, and set a max budget. For me, this is probably as good of a business model gets in terms of staving off enshittiffication. Zed can happily take a cut, I can preview a bunch of different services, and if you don't care about ai at all, well the core editor is still free. My only worry about this model is that I think I'd have a hard time getting my employer to pay for a Zed pro plan over copilot, so I think they may have trouble monetizing enterprise users with this plan. In any case, seeing an obvious/relatively innocuous method of sustainable dev has been a tremendous relief to me (and I'm sure the Zed devs as well). Its biggest remaining flaws IMO remain its small extension ecosystem which hopefully is simply a matter of momentum. I'm sure they could do something like provide richer examples of how to port an extension from vscode, so it's not an intractable problem. I also continue to have concerns re: the security of their chat/cooperative editing system as it's currently difficult (impossible?) to self host, but perhaps that will also be improved.
• CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  Agents are going to kill IDEs. A good editor is all you need.
• Gimpei 9mo ago
  I like zed. I just wish they’d support running multiple agents at once + chat history. If they did, I’d pay for zed just to support them.
• tigerlily 9mo ago
  I just love how Zed is used to develop Zed. For this reason I'm thinking it could emerge as the Rust editor of choice.
• jackhuman 9mo ago
  One of my favorite features with zed is the really nice keyboard and window management shortcuts. I can have my terminal just be another tab, easily switch between em and the file explorer But to the authors note, one might find a single behavior in zed really annoying. Mine is how zed appends a new line at the end of files on save. Used to be able to disable this in settings but an update broke that long ago. Maybe some can tell me its fixed but seems like I’ll need to journey down git hub issue fix but did not find one while back.
• alimbada 9mo ago
  Obligatory Zed takes money from bigots: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • spiderice 8mo ago
    Nice. Just signed up for their pro plan.
  • duskdozer 8mo ago
    Thanks for pointing it out. Ignore the vice signalers.
• KnlnKS 9mo ago
  I also recently made the jump from VSCode to Zed on my personal laptop. I've never thought VSCode to be slow, but I have appreciated the responsiveness of Zed.
• adonese 9mo ago
  Sublime is quite good. I have always been using sublime for quick edits, dumping notes etc. But lately I came to appreciate it more as a lightweight IDE. I use go (lsp and some plugins) and ST (sqltools) in addition to package manager and project manager. I like how fast it is, how well polished the editor is. And generally all plug-ins i use work nicely. Also claude helped a lot (eg writing some shortcuts for specific scenarios that I tend to use a lot). Not to say anything against Zed though. But sublime with one session of claude can help you build your very own customized ide.
  • butz 9mo ago
    I do love how Sublime Text doesn't even blink after getting huge file, where most other editors struggle. And overall speed and responsiveness is unbelievable. I would really like to see any other editor trying to overtake Sublime Text on those metrics.
    • fdg4t 9mo ago
      You can compare speed of ST with CudaText.
    • IshKebab 8mo ago
      VSCode is actually one of the best for large files. Not as good as Sublime Text, but it can happily edit million line files, and you'd be surprised how many other editors can't do that. Zed couldn't until recently (not sure if it can now; I haven't checked recently). Once you get into the GB range there are very very few editors that can edit those files unfortunately.
      • mwest217 8mo ago
        Vim, neovim, and helix all handle multiple-GB files fine!
        • IshKebab 8mo ago
          Yeah but then you have to use Vim-style editing which I hate.
• bborud 9mo ago
  Microsoft trying to push copilot on me is just the kind of thing that would drive me to investigate alternatives. This is the same kind of annoying as all those cookie pop-ups which more and more often lead me to think "fuck it, I'm not actually that interested in this content" and close the browser. I wish Microsoft would make software that just respects that I do not want to use copilot rather than enshittifying VSCode.
• Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  Zed also pushed their AI features hard though. When it first came out it was like "your editor, but Rust / not Electron based, so fast", but two years or so ago they were pivoting hard to being an AI editor. Nowadays, thankfully, it's there but it's not intrusive. The author also mentions missing the sidebar with files but it's one of the icons at the bottom left.
  • honeycrispy 9mo ago
    You can disable all ai features with "disable_ai": true in the config.
    • Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
      I think they added that due to some backlash... or I'm confusing this with Warp, the (also Rust based) superfast terminal application that first required a login, then pushed AI stuff.
      • jasonjmcghee 9mo ago
        No you were right the first time- that was Zed. I think Warp's core user base are AI users and classically low/non-terminal users.
    • mrgoldenbrown 8mo ago
      Visual Studio Code has a similar global AI opt out option.
• jrm4 9mo ago
  I am finding that AI assisted coding is greatly reducing my interest and reliance on "IDE" type features. A back and forth "conversation" with Gemini with extreme amounts of copying/pasting/executing in Geany (a relatively simple editor) is now faster than whatever I was trying to do before, hopping between emacs and vim and IDES, etc.
  • onehair 9mo ago
    I just don't turn on those features Thanks for making me look! You can actually also `Disable AI` altogether!
  • patrickmcnamara 9mo ago
    I wish AI had more access IDE-type features such as renaming or moving methods to another class. Claude often makes mistakes here because it doesn't have all the fancy tooling and indexing that IntelliJ has.
    • phito 9mo ago
      Claude recently got LSP plugins
      • patrickmcnamara 9mo ago
        Ah, thank you. I missed this over Christmas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355165
• jeorb 9mo ago
  Zed is great and close to being my favorite text editor over Vim but there are constant rough edges. I spent a fair bit of time this weekend tracking down bugs in a project caused by format on save in Zed occasionally deleting the first line of Python classes. I turned off format on save and life is good now but data loss bugs like that are pretty annoying in a text editor.
• btbuildem 9mo ago
  Zed is great and lightweight, one thing that stops me from it becoming my daily driver is the weak git integration (specifically, the lack of a history tree). From what I understand, eventually those features will get there.
  • onehair 9mo ago
    Before getting into Zed, I had fallen in love with Helix. that one doesn't even have plugins xD Getting used to splitting my Wezterm and launching lazygit on a second pane kind of made me forget about my dependence on JetBrains git integration prior to helix :P
  • WA 9mo ago
    I find Zed's inline git diff confusing. I want a side-by-side comparison of the entire file. That's currently a dealbreaker for me.
    • putna 9mo ago
      same for me. i can not understand zed git diff
  • insane_dreamer 9mo ago
    same here. pycharm is still miles ahead in this regard. I use lazygit which plugs the holes (though pycharm is still the best that I have used).
• whalesalad 9mo ago
  The only thing keeping me on VSCode these days is the remote SSH development. All of my development takes place on a beefy Linux workstation in my home office. When I am not at my desk (on couch, backyard, coffee shop, traveling) I still remote-in to that box for all of my development using Tailscale + VSCode SSH. Unfortunately the open flavors like vscodium do not support this. It's a "privileged" extension like Copilot. VSCode has really become such a nightmare to use recently I am strongly looking for a way out. Recently I had some odd corruption take place where I had to blow away essenitally my entire VSCode install on my Mac. Going from zero to hero and bootstrapping back to good state should have been trivial with a single conf file that could be used to rehydrate state (like a lockfile for bundler or node) but - particularly with the remote ssh stuff - it becomes a mess. This extension is installed locally but not remotely, this is remote but not local, ... like dude figure it out and just make it all consistent. I should expect this from Microsoft, though. I did this to myself. Revisiting Zed... I am glad to see they have SSH support! Going to give it the old college try today. It's absolutely insane to me that they do not have a first-class Debian/Ubuntu apt repo, though. This has been an issue for quite some time.
• andreldm 9mo ago
  This weekend I gave Zed another chance, this time it didn’t make me uninstall it after one hour or so. It’s much more polished, there are a few wrinkles but overall it’s finally pleasant to use. I’m actually surprised how my muscle memory from VSCode is of use, kudos to devs for making the transition easier instead of reinventing the wheel. I hope to eventually get rid of VSCode, this AI everywhere at all costs is turning the editor (that wanted to be an IDE) into something (most?) users don’t want or need.
• bpasero 9mo ago
  We maintain a single VS Code setting that allows you to opt out of the AI features provided in VS Code: "chat.disableAIFeatures" (see also: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_104#_hide-and-disable-github-copilot-ai-features https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_104#_hide-and-disab...). If you can still find AI features appearing after you have configured this setting, then please report an issue at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode https://github.com/microsoft/vscode and we are happy to take a look. It is possible that from time to time a new AI related feature slips in that does not respect that setting, but we try our best to push fixes as soon as possible. Thanks! Ben (VS Code Team)
  • madbbb 8mo ago
    I see a lot of AI features hate towards VS Code. Want to say that there are other people like me who really love these features, just want to thank you as a Copilot pro user!
  • kyrofa 9mo ago
    Thanks Ben, I wasn't aware of that.
  • g947o 9mo ago
    Make it opt-in only at welcome page, and we have a deal. (Of course, I know that's never going to happen.)
    • illiac786 8mo ago
      I really don’t get this attitude. What deal do you mean? You using VS Code? Why not change the setting simply?
      • apetresc 8mo ago
        Because the point is just to loudly proclaim how virtuously anti-AI you are, how disruptive it actually is to your workflow is irrelevant.
• brianzelip 9mo ago
  Here's a good, 1.5 year old podcast interview with the Zed founder, https://shows.acast.com/software-unscripted/episodes/664fde448c77cc0013b33384 https://shows.acast.com/software-unscripted/episodes/664fde4....
• guiambros 9mo ago
  Slashdotted :) Here's a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20260105144155/https://tenthousandmeters.com/blog/i-switched-from-vscode-to-zed/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260105144155/https://tenthousa...
  • cube00 9mo ago
    Weird it's a static site that still got hugged to death.
    • cube00 8mo ago
      Something is going on, it's still timing out for me 20 hours later. curl https://tenthousandmeters.com curl: (35) TLS connect error: error:0A000126:SSL routines::unexpected eof while reading
      • cube00 8mo ago
        Confirmed it works from AWS but not from my residential ISP. IPv6 is not setup so perhaps too much traffic out of the CGNAT IP got us blocked.
        • guiambros 8mo ago
          Old thread, but I just realized this domain was registered on 2025-12-27 11:49:33 UTC. Some DNS servers (e.g. nextDNS) block recently created domains, to curb spam and malware. Also, for some reason Google Safe Browser thinks some pages on this site are unsafe [1]. It may well be a false positive, but it further contributes to the blocking. So it wasn't the slashdot effect after all. [1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?url=ahmeto.com&hl=en https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?u...
          • cube00 8mo ago
            You've looked up and linked the wrong domain.
• joelthelion 9mo ago
  I've been using vim for 20 years. It's gotten me through all the evolutions of programming, from ctags, to language servers, to AI with copilot. There's something extremely satisfying about having a dependable free software editor, available on all systems, and not having to change every time a new fad comes in, or a VC decides it's time to make money.
  • keyle 8mo ago
    I went from intellij to emacs, to zed / vscode to vim... Even neovim was getting on my nerves. For some reason I'm happy in vim. I feel I understand most of what's happening. Not sure what It is. I still use vscode for debugging (breakpoints etc.) as it's just the easiest. Maybe there is a workflow with lldb that I could use to debug within vim...
  • the_duke 8mo ago
    The more advanced AI related workflows are the reason I finally switched away from neovim as my main coding IDE - for now. The existing AI plugins for neovim aren't great.
• plqbfbv 9mo ago
  I'm happily using Zed for a few weeks now. What prompted me to evaluate it was it being written (mostly) in rust, so expected better performance and stability and I got that (UI redraws are stupid fast compared to VSCode), but I wanted to migrate my agentic code flow too. I was pleasantly surprised to basically configure-and-use the AI part: GitHub Copilot login and use, MCP servers, custom MCP servers. VSCode made this part really annoying: Copilot would blow up every now and then, MCP server auto-starting is not there yet and you need an extension (which works for 8 things out of 10), I haven't even tried adding a custom server because I was already annoyed. In Zed I just copy-pasted the suggested custom server start-up command into the small JSON array it presents to add a custom server, and it just started the MCP server in a custom thread, no fuss. Autostart works reliably every time the editor is re-opened.
• babu_mick 9mo ago
  me 2 brother
• awfulneutral 9mo ago
  I am ahead of this curve, my trajectory was VSCode -> Zed -> Helix. Helix doubles my battery life from 4 to 8 hours compared to Zed. Zed is also on a bad trajectory IMO with the huge amount of updates being pushed constantly.
  • theappsecguy 8mo ago
    What is bad exactly about the trajectory? They are constantly adding features and none of feels like bloat, it just happens to be a much younger editor so iteration is rapid. I welcome it compared to the monstrosity that Jetbrains has become.
    • awfulneutral 8mo ago
      Yeah, it just reminds me of the early days of VS Code, where features were constantly added and it was fun at first, but they didn't stop and eventually it did feel more sluggish and bloated. Sometimes I'd have to spend time fixing or re-configuring something just because I opened the editor and the daily auto-update did something annoying. It might not happen with Zed, but it seems like a very similar approach to development.
• drannex 9mo ago
  Zed is basically the new Sublime.
  • bigstrat2003 8mo ago
    Sublime is the new Sublime. It's still just as great as it ever was.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• tlhunter 9mo ago
  Sadly momentum scrolling doesn't work on Zed for Linux. This is a big reason I haven't jumped ship. It's also a reason I still use Firefox based browsers instead of chromium based browsers.
• rcleveng 9mo ago
  I'd love to try Zed, but it's unusable on MacOS (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/20806 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/20806 seems to be the issue). If that ever gets fixed then I'd look at replacing Sublime (which is still my go-to for quick editing) and then see if it can handle more advanced coding (which one the rotating list of various vscode forks handle today)
  • Shywim 9mo ago
    So, it's been one year since I use Zed daily, and I didn't encounter this issue, or any other issue for instance, everything is smooth and I never encountered a failure or a crash. I work on large (everything is relative, though) monorepos, that would probably qualify for this limit, and I remember already did the kind of "workaround" discussed in this issue years ago on this device. I think it's hard to blame the software when the default file limit is so low depending on the languages you work with. Anyway, if you would encounter this problem, you would have already encountered it with other tools, or else this is fine.
    • rcleveng 9mo ago
      I use other tools (sublime, vscode, cursor, antigravity, emacs) none have run into this out of the box.
  • presbyterian 8mo ago
    Have you tried BBEdit recently? It's incredibly configurable, AI features are entirely opt-in, and it supports LSPs now. It's my go-to for basically all text editing these days.
    • rcleveng 8mo ago
      Not in like 20 years, I'll take a look again, it used to be my favorite back in os9 days
• jaredcwhite 9mo ago
  I've been running "VSCode" via code-server as a self-hosted solution so I can fire up an IDE on any device including my iPad. I still use code-server, but increasingly when I'm at my Mac/Linux desktops (yes I have both!) I have been using Zed and it's gotten really good. The only major feature I miss is a visual Git Graph, but since I can still load code-server when I need that, no biggie. I was genuinely surprised that I can use Zed to remote into my server and it works great with Ruby tooling like Solargraph LSP and Rubocop. Everything in the UI is refreshingly minimalist and quite snappy. Good stuff.
• kneel25 9mo ago
  I adore Zed, started on the day of the windows release and never looked back. My theme is perfect, the team works super hard, and I get a nice bit of satisfaction installing their frequent updates in barely over a second.
• _mrinalwadhwa_ 9mo ago
  I love the minimalism and speed of Zed. The Zed Agent is exceptional! It doesn't easily allow for parallel work like Claude Code in a Terminal but for a single session it is just as good plus it makes it really easy to switch between models. I also find it super useful when I'm working on our large monorepo, the minimal and fast ui makes it super easy to pull in the right context of folders, files, snippets etc to help the Agent.
• mococa 8mo ago
  I switched Zed to neovim, I had a blast on speed and productivity.
• shantara 8mo ago
  Does Zed still have an unremovable login button right in the window title? It’s been a constant eyesore for me last time I’ve tried it.
  • ChrisSD 8mo ago
    Huh, I've been using Zed for awhile now and never even noticed it until you mentioned it. Fortunately there's a setting to remove it.
  • TiredOfLife 8mo ago
    https://github.com/zed-industries/zed https://github.com/zed-industries/zed
• cjk 8mo ago
  Zed has been one of the most consequential changes to my dev tools in years. It's noticeably faster in day-to-day use than VS Code (launch time, input latency, etc.), is way less of a resource hog, and has the best Vim mode of any GUI editor I've ever used.
  • steve_adams_86 8mo ago
    I agree. It's a joy to use, and feels like it was built by people who care about it.
  • verdverm 8mo ago
    Let's see if that holds up when it has better feature parity. Things always run faster when you have less to do
    • WD-42 8mo ago
      Zed doesn’t need to run a web browser so I kinda doubt it will ever have “as much to do”
      • verdverm 8mo ago
        Zed still has to implement a rendering engine, if anything they miss out in several ways by not sharing the same rendering engine but I mean actual features you see people here asking for because they are missing, those will require CPU cycles and memory
        • mi_lk 8mo ago
          What kind of rendering engine and why Zed has to build it?
          • verdverm 8mo ago
            not sure, they do something with the GPU for sure, and because how are you going to draw anything on a monitor or screen without a rendering engine? Surely in their code base they have multiple levels of abstraction for rendering, drawing, and layout in their code base. You can see these kinds of things in other comments here and on their github without reading code. The browser engine is itself an abstraction point that many people find agreeable on both sides, for those of us that don't have a problem with chromium/codium/electron as a technology, seeing it more so as useful and enabling In my mind, sharing a common engine across chromium/codium/electron is like how so many things use the linux kernel. To me, the more eyes, devs, and consumers of the code makes it better in the long run
• kristianp 8mo ago
  I haven't tried zed and vscode for a while, but I didn't like the amount of distractions from vscode, such as info about methods. The problem I had with zed when I tried it is that I'm on linux with kde and zed had a hamburger menu on linux, whereas on Mac it has a proper application menu. It also didn't have keyboard shortcuts for menus that I expected, e.g. Alt-f to open file menu. This is a Windows specific convention that many applications bring to linux too. I still prefer Sublime Text for its user interface.
• ashvardanian 8mo ago
  I’m currently using a mix of Zed, Sublime, and VS Code. The biggest missing piece in Zed for my workflow right now is side-by-side diffs. There’s an open discussion about it, though it hasn’t seen much activity recently: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770 Stronger support for GDB/LLDB and broader C/C++ tooling would also be a big win. It’s pretty wild how bloated most software has become. Huge thanks to the people behind Zed and Sublime for actively pushing in the opposite direction!
  • __jonas 8mo ago
    I agree with that comment chain about the intelliJ diff view so much https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770#discussioncomment-13051899 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/26770#disc... I don't even need that to be built into the editor – I would pay for a fast, standalone git UI that is as good as the IntelliJ one. I use Sublime Merge right now and it's kind of ok but definitely not on the same level
    • hoistbypetard 8mo ago
      I mostly use git from the terminal, but the goodness of the IntelliJ UI for cherry-picking changes is one of the things that has me maintaining my toolbox subscription. Also, IdeaVim is a really solid vim implementation, IMO.
      • __jonas 8mo ago
        If they factor out the VCS UI into a standalone non-IDE product that starts and runs a little faster than their IDEs and doesn't care about your project setup I'd pay a subscription even
    • sushisource 8mo ago
      I dunno if you are aware, but you can use the diff/merge standalone. My gift to you: [mergetool "intellij"] cmd = 'intellij-idea-ultimate-edition' merge "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$BASE" "$MERGED" trustExitCode = true
• submeta 8mo ago
  NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools. When I need AI and Agents, I create multiple instances of Claude Code or Codex. However, I don’t let them interfere with my workflow if I don’t need them.
• callumprentice 8mo ago
  I tried Zed for a few months but just couldn't get the JavaScript/Python syntax checking and Prettier type reformatting to work reliably. I would poke at it for a few hours, get it working and then mysteriously, a few days later, it'd stop working again. I switched to VSCode now and whilst that piece of it seems to be much more reliable, I think overall I prefer the "feel" of Zed. I've bookmarked the article to see if that helps me figure out how to make the settings stick.
  • aratahikaru5 8mo ago
    I had the same issue a few months ago with TSX files and ended up going back to Sublime. I just found out (after reading your comment and doing some searching) that Zed has a setting to force Prettier globally. Might be helpful: "prettier": { "allowed": true },
    • callumprentice 8mo ago
      I'll try that - thank you.
  • dminik 8mo ago
    It's kind of funny, but I had the exact opposite experience. I couldn't get VSCode to reliably format Typescript/React code across several projects. Some would work and others would not. Sometimes it would format, but with wrong settings. Frustrated, I switched to Zed and have not had that issue since.
    • callumprentice 8mo ago
      Fascinating. Can you share your non-private Zed config? I still have mine from before the switch - I'd like to compare.
• unethical_ban 8mo ago
  Does anyone else have issues wrapping their head around the UI and configuration of VSCode? Or is this a symptom of my losing touch with how IDEs work vs. my old habit of solo coding in Vim and running scripts? Everything is monocolored, everything feels like it's an add-on, and settings are in weird different places rendered as json or a web page feel. Last time I used a "real" IDE was 2008, so I may be the problem here.
  • verdverm 8mo ago
    You can change the layout and theme so it makes sense for you. There are buttons in the title bar and you can drag panels around at will
• Lramseyer 8mo ago
  As much as I love Zed, I am of the belief that VScode (and its derivatives) will remain the dominant build-your-own IDE for a really long time unless something like Zed can support web based extensions. I created a VScode extension for chip designers and I would love to port it to Zed, but I can't because it's a visualization extension with a custom webview. I realize the irony here that Zed is fast because it's not web based, but I stand by my claim that being able to optionally display web UIs would be a really cool feature to have. It would open the door to a lot of extensions.
• meander_water 8mo ago
  For those looking for a better language server for python, I would recommend ruff. As of v0.4.5 it's completely written in rust, and much faster than pylance. If you've got the ruff plugin installed it should use it by default. Should be able to use it in zed as well.
• capitanazo77 8mo ago
  I'd love to read articles like "I didn't switch editors because mine is perfect, neovim btw"
• foxylad 8mo ago
  This article (and holiday spare time) made me update and check zed again. I really liked it when I tried it a few months ago, but it failed miserably when doing work on remote code. It would hang, and I couldn't find any diagnostics to debug it's fairly complex remote agent to find out what went wrong. But now it works fine! Remote work is noticeably snappier than via mounting the remote server as a drive, and remote git seems to work nicely. A very nice Christmas present - thanks, Zed! Good job Zed!
  • roywiggins 8mo ago
    Funny, I switched to Zed after VS Code remotes kept hanging!
• worik 8mo ago
  Golly I have been using Emacs since 1989. I have seen so many editors come and go, and Emacs was never the best, but it was always good. And it has stuck to its (very broad) knitting. There are AI tools I can incorporate into Emacs, and one day I might. But I have so much choice, it gets distressing Articles like this remind me why I keep loyal....
• Heidaradar 8mo ago
  do you use ANY AI tools like Claude Code etc? if not, why not?
• habosa 8mo ago
  So did I. I was just curious if it would really be noticeable faster and … wow yes it is. It’s really nice to use. VSCode is still more polished and I’m going to keep it installed, but I’ve been using Zed for a month now and loving it.
• kopirgan 8mo ago
  I am not much of a programmer only fool around a bit for fun and occasional profit. I find Helix to be very good for coding. Compared to Neovim, I could get LSPs going for go, c without any effort. Only thing is I haven't figured out much of debugging which I guess is must have for a serious coder. My favorite is printf and is enough for me across go, awk, c , Excel VBA macros and JS!
• astrea 8mo ago
  I like that this article paints VSCode as bogged down by too much AI tooling and the first thing I see on the Zed website is how create it is with Sonnet 4.5 and there’s a subscription plan for AI features.
• hliyan 8mo ago
  Just tried this out for the first time and found their implementation of the "Outline Panel" (Ctrl+Shift+B) to be very useful, at least for the C++ code base I tried it with.
• temporallobe 8mo ago
  I tried switching to Zed, and was even able to get it use identical themes and key mappings as my preferred ones in VSC, but ultimately I switched back due to lack of plugins that I’ve really come to depend on, not to mention some key feature differences. I didn’t notice that much of a performance boost over VSC (given that I was on an M4 with 32GB of memory), so in the end, the switch wasn’t worth it. I really want to like Zed, so I will be sure to occasionally check out any new releases. By the way, I did indeed notice that Zed was a heck of a lot faster than VSC on an old Intel-based MBP!
• bjackman 8mo ago
  Zed is faster and less annoying than VSCode, I hope to switch to it permanently sooner or later. Annoyingly the only hard blocker I have right now is lack of a call-graph navigation widget. In VSCode you can bring up an expandable tree of callers for a function. Somehow I am completely dependent on this tiny little feature for reading complex code! The annoying thing is: "can't you just use an extension for this?" No, Zed extensions are much more constrained, Zed is not a web browser. And I like it this way! But... My widget... I also have some performance issues with searching large remote repos, but I'm pretty confident that will get fixed.
  • gabeidx 8mo ago
    Does "Find All References opt+shift+F12" function help mitigate this for you? It opens a buffer that you can use to navigate, and it's a built-in feature not an extension. Or do you want a more graphical tree view?
    • bjackman 8mo ago
      Yeah need a tree view. Find all references, and references to references and so on.
• huflungdung 8mo ago
  [dead]
• childintime 8mo ago
  Few people seem to recall that MS is making tsc, the typescript compiler, faster, and as a result VSCode: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-port/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-...
  • presentation 8mo ago
    If you are a TypeScript developer, this is typescript inference and compilation performance, not the compiled code at runtime.
• throw-12-16 8mo ago
  VSCode's plugin architecture is a security nightmare and an extremely juicy target for supply chain attacks. Does Zed address this in any meaningful way?
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• dv_dt 8mo ago
  I switched from VSCode back to Sublime Text lol. If I want AI involved I use claude-code or other cli in a terminal. Its been nicer and less distracting
• Kindercrusher 8mo ago
  [dead]
• hit8run 8mo ago
  Don’t tell bro about SublimeText
• artur-gawlik 8mo ago
  I'm using vscode for couple of years now. I have disabled all AI related features with "chat.disableAIFeatures" option and it worked really well in my case. But I was convinced by this article to checkout zed mainly tempted by the promise of much better performance because it is written in native language instead of javascript. So to test it out I've opened https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/blob/main/src/compiler/checker.ts https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/blob/main/src/compil... file and zed after "ctrl + o" command frizzed. Also when scrolling this file in zed there is noticeable drop in FPS, where in vscode scroll with checker.ts file opened is very smooth. So I guess I'm staying with vscode :)
  • artur-gawlik 8mo ago
    additionally there is currently ongoing effort to make main editor to be rendered with WebGPU instead of DOM nodes, which I'm really waiting to happen.
    • artur-gawlik 8mo ago
      this is the issue that tracks that effort https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/221145 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/221145
• lvl155 8mo ago
  For such an incomplete product, Zed sure is popular among devs. I guess they love to waste time working with a tool missing key features. I can forgive all that but Zed has one of the worst UIs I’ve experienced in a long time.
  • _sinelaw_ 8mo ago
    What specifically are you missing from Zed? (not a Zed user but curious to know)
• HackerThemAll 8mo ago
  Good luck. It cannot even preserve unsaved files across restarts. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15098 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/15098
• _sinelaw_ 8mo ago
  I also got tired of the bloat and also prefer working from the terminal. I'm building Fresh [0] [1] as an alternative to VSCode that runs in your terminal, with the main goal being ease-of-use out of the box (not a vi-clone modal editor), for example supports mouse, menu, command palette, etc out of the box. LSP as well. I'm focused on making it easy to use with minimum or zero configuration. [0] https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh [1] https://sinelaw.github.io/fresh/ https://sinelaw.github.io/fresh/
  • reflog 8mo ago
    Just discovered Fresh recently. IT'S AMAZING. gives a real sublime+turbo pascal vibe. All shortcuts work perfectly. Thank you!
• gethly 8mo ago
  My daily driver is JetBrains. I never liked VS Code, or rather VS Codium. I use it as text editor and only when i want to open a directory i do not care about(ie. some old or foreign code) or really need syntax highlighting. I had high hopes for Zed, despite that built-in AI crap, but after I tried it I still could not configure my syntax highlighting theme, like i can in jetbrains, and for some reason going to definitions in std libraries does not work(i tested with odin). I am not fan of JetBrains and their pricing policies or their new ui changes. So i am working on my own editor/ide right now and I just wanted to mention that zed was the final nudge for me to do it.
• dejw 8mo ago
  Zed, VSCode, Antigravity, Sublime Text... They all have the same workflow. For writing the code by hand I recommend Helix, batteries included, fast and efficient. For AI-assisted development it doesn't matter and you'd have to switch the app every 4 months if you want to choose the best one.
  • heybales 8mo ago
    For terminal text editing I've switched everything over to helix, highly recommended. Basically no config other than I'll change the theme. Unfortunately I'm still trying to figure out my AI workflow. Right now it's a mix of Cursor, Claude Code, and JetBrains Rider. I mainly use Cursor for the heavy AI lifting and then switch to Rider and Claude Code for tweaking and debugging. If Cursor didn't completely suck at .NET debug, I might just be able to use it alone.
• rahen 8mo ago
  My only complaint regarding the Zed editor is the inability to display two panes of the sidebar one below the other. Not only is it impossible to display them together, but switching between them requires clicking a tiny button in the status bar. To make matters worse, performing a search hides the symbols and the tree view. So right now I'm sticking to Emacs.
• ach11235 8mo ago
  Zed is nice. I use neovim as my main code editor, but when I want a private respectful UI code editor for use AI then I go to Zed, also there is a vim mode that is not so bad.
• achayala 8mo ago
  Zed is nice. When I need AI features I use it. Otherwise I am using Neovim.
• mirawelner 8mo ago
  I really love Zed bc it’s fast and doesn’t try to run the code for you. I really dislike the “play” feature of IDEs. I learned Java in eclipse and for the linear time don’t know how to run it from the terminal. It has all the editing and highlighting features of a full ide but makes you run it from the terminal. And if you have Zellij or another muxer set up, it runs it in the Zed terminal automatically.
• bovermyer 8mo ago
  What country is Zed based in?
• avanwyk 8mo ago
  Others have echoed the same, but I also switched from VSCode to Zed, but then put in the effort to learn Neovim (Lazyvim) properly, and I haven't looked back. Writing code feels exciting again. I recommend something like https://github.com/adomokos/Vim-Katas https://github.com/adomokos/Vim-Katas to accelerate muscle memory. And also Vimium in the browser is great.
• Koshkin 8mo ago
  No CMake support (VSCode, emacs, nvim all have it).
• pmarreck 8mo ago
  > With Python, it wasn't so smooth, and I had to spent half a day to get it working. Next is boring details that I wish I knew from the start. that's not unusual for python. in fact, that is why I avoid python.