I have no idea what they're talking about. Maybe they're used to a smooth scroll animation in VS Code or something? Zed feels snappier/lighter in just about every way to me.

No kidding. It is /so/ fast. It has remote development like VS Code, and most of the features I use, so it's my main thing now. Claude Code was the only thing that made me wince, since I wondered if I was living in the dark ages. VS Code of course has many more extensions, but I don't use that many.