What's so great about zed ?

It uses a fraction of the memory of VS Code and is much faster to launch.

trashface 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Do people really need that with modern computers? My computer is 10 years old and I just restarted VS in the last project I was working on. It was about 4-5 seconds before I could edit the text, which doesn't seem long. And I have 17GB available memory. Anyway it doesn't matter because I just don't restart VSCode that much. I do open projects in new windows and those can get slow, but the slow ones are mostly just rust code with rust-analyzer overhead, and when dealing with rust, slow-opening projects are only the beginning.

I don't know, it feels like Zed popularity is just people chasing the latest editor hotness, a time-honored traditional programmer ritual to be sure, but still, just a ritual. And now it seems zed devs have to put AI in front of all other initiatives, probably because of the VC funding they took.

I could see not wanting to use VSCode for other reasons, like MS pivoting back to "be evil", but at least in my little bubble, performance is not one of them.

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veber-alex 6 days ago | parent [-]

I agree with you.

I tried Zed several times and I just don't see the point.

The main issues with VScode over something like the Jetbrains IDEs is that language servers are just not as powerful or as integrated to the IDE as the Jetbrains solution can be and Zed does nothing to solve it.

I don't think it being a native app offers much added value.

	▲	gazpachotron 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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johnisgood 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Zed still takes a relatively long time to start on my old desktop. I thought something was wrong but no, it is just THAT slow. Emacs starts up faster than an empty Zed window, unfortunately. It is still way faster than IntelliJ but comparing it to that is a low bar.

VSCodium starts up faster for me than Zed which I compiled yesterday with release mode. Here I am referring to the time spent just on waiting for the window to start up, not the extensions and all that I am using with VSCodium, that takes time. I wonder why this is, that VSCodium shows the window quicker than Zed.

Regardless, I will give Zed a try with Go development. I assume Zed has extensions, too? Are there any extensions for Go? If so, I might replace VSCodium with Zed but only if it has similar features to VSCodium. If not, I will stick to VSCodium as there is no reason for me to change.

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yobert 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Zed has easy to use extensions, but also Go support is built in. (syntax highlighting, gofmt on save, and language server support)

	▲	johnisgood 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's builtin? Nice. I will give it a try, then! I wonder why the startup time is slow though, may have to debug that one.

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tracker1 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not a Zed developer, but I'm pretty sure LSP interfaces are pretty much standardized now, in large part to VS Code's efforts, so they're pretty consistent across most editors that support them.

That doesn't mean Zed will have all the other extensions that VS Code has... Recently added the new SQL Server extension(s) and it's been at least interesting, in a way slightly better than using SMMS. It's pretty much burrowing the UI from Azure Data Studio (or whatever it was called). Haven't tried similar for PG/SQLite etc yet.

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veber-alex 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

VScode starts very quickly for an electron app. MS did a great job there.

Memory usage of the IDE doesn't matter much when your language servers can eat 10s of gigs of RAM.

	▲	eviks 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> for an electron app But the comparison here is broader than electron apps...
	▲	6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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digitaltrees 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s built by the team that built atom which was way better than vscode but was mothballed when Microsoft bought GitHub.

They built it from scratch and not on electron bloat so it is a much better foundation. It will take a long time to reach parity with vscode but when it does it will smoke it.

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veber-alex 6 days ago | parent [-]

So...nothing.

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rvnx 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think you do not understand the value proposition of Zed.

It is an editor made for people who are used to double-clicking individual files rather than opening a folder in VS Code, so they close and open their editor dozens or even hundreds of times per day.

Let's say VS Code takes 5 seconds to boot.

Some programmers may argue: "yes, I spend 3 hours on a project or just leave it open overnight, so 5 seconds per week is nothing"

But here is not the case, it is for programmers who come from Notepad/Sublime/Notepad++/emacs/vi, and who opens a single file and closes the editor right after.

If you work 2 hours, maybe 4 files per minute, this means 120 * 4 openings = 480 openings.

It means you would have wasted 2400 seconds (40 minutes per day!) waiting for VS Code to open (about 33% of the 2-hour work session spent waiting)

Yes, like with Notepad or Zed, you lose some features like Colors or Syntax checking, but still, time is the most precious thing in life.

For users who come from very advanced but slow text editors like Microsoft Word (used in coding exams: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76102874/single-and-doub... or programming courses: https://youtu.be/0TVugOJtAiU?t=162 ), this is truly revolutionary and life-changing.

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bergheim 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

This has to be a joke.

No one ever closes emacs.

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veber-alex 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are right. I don't understand.

How can any software developer work when they need to open and close 4 files per minute? I have never met or heard of anyone working like this.

	▲	typpilol 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Right lol. It's so ridiculous

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6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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robinhood 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your comment is as insulting as it is indicative of a complete lack of knowledge about the world of editors and software development in general.

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veber-alex 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

If you think "build by atom team" and "not electron" are any kind of serious advantage for any peace of software than your are the one who lacks knowledge about software development.

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rvnx 6 days ago | parent [-]

Made me think about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041923 where they mention Atom as well

	▲	conartist6 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		It would be relevant that they were the team behind Atom if they seemed to understand the lessons of Atom... Instead of learning from what worked and fixing what didn't, they just threw everything away and wandered off in some totally different direction. They did the reactionary kind of learning instead of the theory-building kind: https://xkcd.com/242/

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sexyman48 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A complete lack of knowledge? At least GP understood 90% of his peers don't know vscode is built on a browser framework, and wouldn't care.

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digitaltrees 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Did you miss the point about it being built on a fundamentally better tech stack by a team with a track record of better design decisions?

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wolvesechoes 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is new and is talked about a lot on HN and Reddit. And it is not developed by Big Bad Corporation, instead it is developed by Good VC-backed Startup.

In this demographics, hype rarely is connected to technical qualities, they are used more as a post-hoc rationalization.

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cyanf 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Snappiness is the primary reason for using Zed.