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And this is why I'm using Zed today. I'm deadly serious. I was a huge proponent of VSCode at first but I've soured on it, and now I don't want my workflow to depend on it in any way.

Awesome software, but I don't trust the upstream org further than I must.

▲ int_19h 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I actually worked on VSCode (Python support specifically) at Microsoft in the past, and seeing this kind of thing frustrates me to no end.

The worst part is all the VSCode is still promoted to developers as open source, even though official extensions increasingly aren't, with bits and pieces gradually replaced with closed code. It's not that closed source is necessarily bad, but when F/OSS popularity is milked for marketing purposes while stuff like this happens, it just feels very wrong. If you want to be closed source for reasons, fine, but be honest and upfront about it.

	▲	VyseofArcadia 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's a special place in hell for orgs that do this. Google has been doing the same thing with Android. IIRC Apple at least has always been fairly clear and consistent with what bits of its software are open and what bits aren't. To my knowledge they haven't been breaking off chunks of Darwin and closing them. (Although if I'm wrong do correct me.)

▲ bitbasher 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So, you hopped from one walled garden to another?

I don't mean that in a mean way, but have you considered another editor that is more open?

▲ hnlmorg 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’ve just installed Zed based on your recommendation and I’m already impressed.

It’s fast, the interface is distraction free and it already has support for all the languages I use regularly. Even Terraform support, which is notoriously hard to get right, is better than the current “best” in VSCode.

Thanks for the recommendation

	▲	kstrauser 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Glad you like it! It’s a proper native app (no Electron) and super responsive. I truly enjoy using it. And yes, the language support (via Treesitter and LSPs) is fantastic.

▲ sureglymop 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Zed is nice but I still prefer vs codes configuration scheme. Was working on a web/frontend project a while ago and had honestly a very hard time to set up Zed to do everything from formatting to linting and syntax highlighting correctly. Meanwhile in vscode I had to install 3 extensions, enable them for the workspace and they were already aware of each other and seamlessly worked together.

I also think it's a mixed opportunity not to allow for something like Lua or a Lisp to configure Zed in. It's very promising but I'm not willing to switch just yet.

▲ eviks 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does Zed have a comparable C++ extension?

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dharmab 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Zed uses tree-sitter and LSP; most popular languages do not require extensions, and extensions for niche languages are shockingly easy to write. Literally 100-300 lines of Rust boilerplate and around 300 lines of config boilerplate, with minimal maintenance/upkeep.

https://zed.dev/docs/languages/cpp

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wolvesechoes 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Many words to state that it doesn't.

	▲	dharmab 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Many words to explain that it doesn't need one, as you can see by clicking that link.
	▲	mort96 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No idea why they worded it the way they did. But the answer is: yes, Zed has something comparable, using clangd as a C and C++ LSP server.

▲ notnmeyer 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

zed is veerrrry good. i really appreciate the clean ui compared to vscode and its ilk. don’t love the pricing they just announced though. i don’t mind paying for my tools, but it not being unlimited scares me off slightly.

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dharmab 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it's totally fair for them to charge for an optional feature that requires a cloud service. And if you don't like their pricing you can use a different provider, including self-hosted ones.

	▲	notnmeyer 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		absolutely agree

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kstrauser 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Agreed, but at least that's an optional feature you can choose to pay for if you want to. And if that changes, I'll drop it and head back to a Free editor.

▲ exceptione 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even better: Theia.

It supports most vscode extensions right out of the box.

https://theia-ide.org/

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6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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0rzech 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Supports without auto updating them and along with other annoyances: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43793016 . VSCodium [1] has much better UX than Theia IDE, IMHO.

[1] https://vscodium.com/

	▲	bobajeff 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah I've just tried Theia. Vscodium is still the way to go. I just wish they had answers for issues like running extensions that depend on cpptools. I managed to work around it by installing an old version of cpptools from before the nag prompt that checks you're running it in vscode was added. Zed is almost a good solution but like most they are missing most of vscodes markdown editing features. Also, right now there's no way to hide the sign in and ai buttons from the UI. https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/markdown

▲ rs186 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So how do you get intellisense and debug C++ in Zed?

▲ dharmab 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's a great doc on exactly how Zed handles syntax and intellisense-style completions: https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-languages

Debugging isn't in yet, but is actively being worked on and planned for public release before 1.0: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5065, there's an active channel in their Discord discussing the development of the feature.

▲ pests 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That first link doesn’t really explain anything about syntax/autocomplete. It’s just about config options per language (formatted, linter, lsp) but I guess I was expecting something else?

▲ dharmab 8 hours ago | parent [-]

It explains it in clear terms:

"""

Zed's language support is built on two main technologies:

    Tree-sitter: This handles syntax highlighting and structure-based features like the outline panel.
    Language Server Protocol (LSP): This provides semantic features such as code completion and diagnostics.

These components work together to provide Zed's language capabilities.

"""

Note this is _not_ how VSC's C++ Intellisense works. The VSC C++ plugin uses proprietary features of MSVC, it doesn't use LSP.

	▲	pests 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s not really a description of anything, just a list of libraries zed uses, let alone a great doc. Just expected more than “its tree sitter and lsp”.

▲ AbuAssar 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Will they use DAP?

	▲	dharmab 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My understanding is that DAP support is merged into their internal builds and is being polished up for a public release.

▲ yoyohello13 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

clangd is an LSP. You can use it in any editor with LSP support https://clangd.llvm.org/

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hu3 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Why isn't Cursor using this by default then?

	▲	dharmab 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think MSVC provides an LSP, so the VSC C++ extension uses proprietary Intellisense features instead. LLVM provides their own extension to use the clangd LSP: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=llvm-vs-... In short: Corporate politics and the Cursor team taking the path of least resistance.

▲ LoganDark 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Zed uses open-source language servers. It just doesn't rely on proprietary extensions.

I actually worked a bunch on the language server logic in Zed trying to get a bunch of it to work on Windows. All I have to say about that is: ugh.

▲ hobs 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reminds when I excited to see Azure Data Studio adding Postgres support, but it was actually a binary extension with no ability to fix or change anything and no way for other useful databases to extend and use the functionality; they had spent all the time and effort to make sure nobody could do something like it but them.

Weird, ADS is dead and nobody spent any time on it, I wonder why.

▲ lysace 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Still using VSCode, but you kind of know that's it's going to go sour eventually. It is Microsoft. :/

I figure e.g. emacs will always be there when that happens.

All I need is a Github Copilot clone and a good code search feature.

Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches.

Oh and the ssh remote extension.

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kstrauser 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> All I need is a Github Copilot clone

I'm using https://github.com/copilot-emacs/copilot.el

> good code search feature.

project-find-regexp is a nice start.

> Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches.

(global-auto-revert-mode t)

> Oh and the ssh remote extension.

I haven't compared it to Tramp.

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bryanlarsen 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> All I need is a Github Copilot clone

or you could just use copilot through copilot.el

> and a good code search feature.

Like through helm or ivy?

> Oh and automatic reloads of open but unchanged buffers when switching between git branches.

My emacs does that, and I don't think I did anything special to get it.

> Oh and the ssh remote extension.

like tramp?

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pjmlp 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Many of us are perfectly fine with commercial software, we have been into the other side and got tired of the religion.

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mschild 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I think a lot of people don't have a problem with commercial software, but rather with the disingenuous behavior that some companies display.

VSCode was/is often touted as open source and Microsoft are using it to present themselves as community loving until MS sees an opportunity to extract some money/hinder the competition.

In comparison, Jetbrains is transparent with their offerings and what you get. There is in my opinion a clear difference in how they operate and how they are perceived.

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pjmlp 10 hours ago | parent [-]

You mean transparent like the way they added AI to their products?

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mschild 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm unaware of how they added it. Was there controversy around it?

	▲	pjmlp 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, initially it was a pain to disable, a big no-no for many customers. https://devclass.com/2024/03/11/jetbrains-bows-to-user-press...

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znpy 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Emacs user here, have used vscode in the past.

Yep, vscode is more intuitive.

However emacs is mostly the kind of thing you dedicate a couple of months of discomfort and enjoy for the rest of your life. Quite literally.

Spending some money on the “mastering emacs” book (https://www.masteringemacs.org/) is worth imho.

Bonus point: little by little you start enjoying doing more stuff in emacs. It’s a meme, but it’s true.

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kstrauser 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I second all this. I'm using Zed today, but I was using Emacs for 20 years, then Sublime/VSCode/etc. for a few, and now Zed. If it disappears, I'm going right back to Emacs without a moment's hesitation.

And "Mastering Emacs" is brilliant.

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rurban 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And with copilot.el you get access to all models, not just some. I'm using Claude

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pjmlp 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I dedicated my time between 1995 and 2005 as my main UNIX editor, and don't miss installing Emacs.

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kstrauser 12 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s gotten way more ergonomic, BTW. Even if you treat it as a toolkit to build your own editor, the building blocks are much nicer than they were back then.

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pjmlp 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thing is, I don't want to build my editor, I want to live the dream of Xerox PARC workstations, and that is what IDEs are for.

I had to make Emacs my go to editor in UNIX, because in those days there were hardly any alternatives, IDEs only started to be taken seriously on UNIX around 2000.

Even James Gosling, one of influencial people in the Emacs history says its time is now passed and he rather use Netbeans,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5Q39MuTvk

	▲	DonHopkins 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Speaking of old obsolete versions of Gosling Emacs, Lars Brinkhoff just posted this source code for UniPress Emacs 2.20 he got from from Hans Hübner! That's the version we called NeMACS, with support for NeWS (Gosling's PostScript based window system), tabbed windows and pie menus, etc: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/emacs-history/tree/sources/... So the answer to DVRC's ("Adopter of orphaned technologies") question on June 3, 2023, is yes, finally! HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36166642 DonHopkins on June 2, 2023 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs UniPress Emacs for NeWS in 1988: Scriptable GUI, tabbed windows, pie menus, hypermedia authoring tool for HyperTIES browser. Emacs served as an IDE with tabbed window and pie menus, for interactively editing, viewing, and navigating HyperTIES markup language documents, graphics, and interactive PostScript "applets". HyperTIES browser and Gosling Emacs authoring tool with pie menus on the NeWS window system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:Hy... >HyperTIES is an early hypermedia browser developed under the direction of Dr. Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. This screen snapshot shows the HyperTIES authoring tool (built with UniPress's Gosling Emacs text editor, written in MockLisp) and browser (built with the NeWS window system, written in PostScript, C and Forth). The tabbed windows and pie menu reusable components were developed by Don Hopkins, who also developed the NeWS Emacs (NeMACS) and HyperTIES user interfaces. (Sorry about the quality -- this is a scan of an old screen dump printed by a laser printer.) Emacs provides the pie menus you see popped up in the illustration (Articulate, Edit, New (Storyboard, Link, Picture, Target), Define) that control the HyperTIES browser from the custom text editing mode of HyperTIES storyboards (like web pages), which the HyperTIES browser (in the background, which emacs controls in a sub-process) formats and displays. HyperTIES also uses pie menus for navigation and in interactive "applets" programmed in PostScript. DVRC on June 3, 2023 [–] Do any version of UniPress Emacs (that support the NeWS driver) or NeMacs survive? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31989423 I wrote the following description of how NeWS relates to modern web browsers and "AJAX" in the NeWS article on Wikipedia, and I also worked on TNT (The NeWS Toolkit) at Sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS >NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently: >- used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming. >- used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering. >- used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation. [...] HyperTIES Emacs Authoring Tool MockLisp code (Yet Another HyperTIES Implementation, This Time In Emacs): http://donhopkins.com/home/ties/yahtittie.ml https://donhopkins.com/home/ties/ HyperTIES Discussions from Hacker News: https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hac...

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cess11 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm something of a vim fanatic because Emacs was sluggish, but these days have to admit that the multicore support turned out fine and the difference isn't that big anymore.

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znpy 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Uh, not only that. I recently updated from emacs 29 to emacs 30 where native compilation is enabled by default and it’s much much faster. Like, noticeably faster.

	▲	cess11 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, nice. Definitely time for me to carve out a few hours and try it out again, then. Who knows, maybe I'll have closed the circle in a year and gone back to Emacs full time, where I started off in the editor wars a quarter of a century ago.

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lysace 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I spent 25 years using emacs before vscode (1997 to 2022-ish). I didn't go deep, I mostly just enjoyed the core parts of emacs + ccmode. I don't enjoy LISP but I still enjoy emacs, if that makes any sense.

MS made some very real and very usable innovations. Emacs hackers/maintainers would be wise to copy them, like I'm sure Microsoft copied things from emacs.

It's a bit like the UI aspect of the browser wars. Everyone wins when good things are cloned and then iteratively improved upon.

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datadrivenangel 19 hours ago | parent [-]

What are the ways that VScode is better than Emacs?

	▲	baq 14 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		vscode does three things extremely well: defaults, defaults and defaults. The most important ‘you just need M-x do-whatever after installing the whatever-doer package’ is supported out of the box (no details on purpose, try running emacs or vim without any config and compare to a clean fresh install of vscode).
	▲	lysace 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I listed my favorites above. Generalizing it: Having smart people who really understand UX helps a lot with minimizing those months of pain before the payoff.

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dharmab 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're almost describing Zed to a T.

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baq 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

vscode find in files is literally ripgrep FYI.

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globular-toast 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Warning, though: the older you get, the harder it will be to learn emacs. The best time to learn it is yesterday. The second best is today.