6 ms·

Zed – The Editor for What's Next

50 points by 9woc 2y ago

unshavedyak 2y ago
I long for an editor like this to have very, very expansive support for all of the weird text editor choices. Ie the ability to effectively, not literally recreate Vim, Helix, etc in it. Sounds insane i know.. but i adore this editor and despite that, i just can't give up Helix for "vim bindings". I don't know if i'm ever going to get out of the terminal at this rate :s
- imjonse 2y ago
  There are a couple WIP PRs for Helix key-bindings in their repo. It is what I am also waiting for to try it out more seriously.
  - unshavedyak 2y ago
    Oh i'll have to look at that - is it something i could build and run locally? I'd be willing to contribute I've not tried building Zed locally, but i know i struggled with building GPUI on NixOS
affinepplan 2y ago
does remoting work with the REPL or notebooks yet?
dartos 2y ago
They pivoted pretty hard into AI, huh. I remember when being multiplayer was their big selling point.
- unshavedyak 2y ago
  I've been curious on when AI was going to feel compelling for me to try. I might give this a try. I've had a subscription to some LLM service for ages, but overall i just haven't found it useful at all for programming. Maybe with this Context workflow it'll be nice. Though from the video it sounds like it might be difficult to get access to it?
  - mattnewton 2y ago
    You definitely should try a workflow with modern LLMs, but if you have trouble with Zed give cursor a try. No relation to the company, just was surprised at how good the product was for me for your bog-standard python and typescript work, but also surprisingly good in some side projects in embedded C++ and C. A lot of it is polish over how good Claude sonnet 3.5 has gotten at code with enough context.
    - linsomniac 2y ago
      Zed's AI integration is good, Cursor's is great! I'm mostly using Zed and Aider right now, because I'm not doing a lot of coding currently and cancelled my Cursor subscription because I wasn't getting $20 of value out of it the last few months, but I plan to renew it when I'm doing more coding.
  - dartos 2y ago
    It’s hit or miss for me as a coding assistant. Sometimes the snippets are helpful and sometimes not.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  Anybody who takes VC money will always pivot to "the current thing".
levzettelin 2y ago
God, how often are people gonna post this editor here. I guess you can sell everything as long as it says "AI".
- sealeck 2y ago
  It's a pretty decent editor to be fair. The AI features are probably there to raise money from investors.
  - IanCal 2y ago
    AI integration is really handy for coding. I wouldn't consider an editor that didn't have decent support for models and getting diffs back.
  - linsomniac 2y ago
    Mmm, AI integration for coding is table stakes for any development tool right now IMHO. Even for things as simple as "I have an idea about how I'd check to see if the time is between midnight and 4:30am, but I don't have the python datetime module locked into memory, how would you do it" is extremely useful.
    - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
      sad. software quality deteriorating sharply because of all this. To learn an API also helps to keep it small and focused instead of having thousands of methods on it. All software will now go the way of Java.
  - ciwolsey 2y ago
    If it's so decent why isn't there even a version for Windows....
    - sealeck 2y ago
      Wouldn't that would imply that Windows support is necessary for software to be good? Often it's easier to write good software when you target a specific platform (rather than spending time troubleshooting problems that occur across lots of different environments), and do it well.
sashank_1509 2y ago
I’ve never got its python LSP to work as well as Pylance in VSCode. Once you start using Pylance for large codebases, even if it is slow and sometimes crashes, you cannot go back to coding without it. Go to Definition, and automatic argument hints are too useful to code without
- d0mine 2y ago
  As far as I know Pylance (unrelated to pypi's pylance) is python LSP with microsoft's proprietary extensions that you can use only with official microsoft products. btw, go to definition, argument hints can work without it just fine.
  - sashank_1509 2y ago
    I’ve not gotten it working properly in Zed though, have others managed to do so?
    - d0mine 2y ago
      It works in Emacs. Don’t know about Zed (if there is an issue, it is likely temporary)
steve_adams_86 2y ago
I’ve been trying to love Zed for months now and still run into constant snags. It’s frustrating to use with TypeScript. Support is very intermittent as basic features randomly break and come back during the same session. Want to jump to a declaration? Maybe it’ll work. Want information about this type? If you’re lucky. How about autocomplete for existing types, variables, and functions? This probably breaks most often. I update the editor regularly, have tried heaps of suggested fixes and reset settings each time. It’s a mess. It’s a beautiful, fast, powerful editor and I want to use it, but I’m pretty frustrated. I keep hoping an update will address the autocomplete at least, but as of last week it will still stop functioning while I’m working.
- pimeys 2y ago
  To be honest, I've had very similar results with TypeScript using neovim, helix and emacs. The tooling somehow never works correctly, or needs a lot of tinkering until the experience is decent. As a comparison, I write Rust as my main language, and the tooling always _just works_. The experience with Zed is very good. Maybe the time for Zed in TypeScript development is not yet there, but if you write any Rust code, it's worth a try.
GaggiX 2y ago
Zed allows you to use Claude 3.5 Sonnet for free unlimited under Zed AI, at least for now.
syndicatedjelly 2y ago
I’ve been spending the weekend getting setup in NeoVim and have enjoyed the process so far. It’s definitely not for people who want a plug-and-play IDE, but if you want to see all the programming details that are involved in a text editor (and learn some Lua along the way), then I highly recommend it. Fair warning, it is HIGHLY recommended you come in with a working knowledge of Vim first.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  I'd recommend using one of the editor bundles like LazyVim or SpaceVim. I was using Lunarvim and very happy with it, but he's discontinued development on it so I'm planning on moving to LazyVim. After 30+ years of messing around with vi configuration, I'm glad to have someone else doing the bulk of the work.
  - syndicatedjelly 2y ago
    Hm wish I knew that, I just got set up in LunarVim...
- milch 2y ago
  Setting it up from scratch isn't, but if you just want something that works you can always go with one of the pre-made distributions, which is about as plug and play as you can get. I've had colleagues that were up and running after 10min with all the bells and whistles you expect from a modern IDE by just setting up LazyVim. Really the hardest part is the modal editing workflow, which is just inherent in how vim and nvim work - and I would recommend to set up regardless of which editor you use (e.g. by using the VSCode Neovim plugin)
xmstr 2y ago
"Zed collects anonymous telemetry data to help us understand how people are using the app." No thanks!
- brittlewis12 2y ago
  simple as two config options in `.zed/settings.json` (or `~/.config/zed/settings.json`): ``` { "telemetry": { "diagnostics": false, "metrics": false } } ``` for anyone who wants a fast, modern, resource-minimal, gpu-native text editor that is open source.
  - hu3 2y ago
    This should be opt-in or at least have a giant red confirmation dialog shown until the user agrees.
mega_dean 2y ago
Thorsten Ball streams development of Zed on Twitch sometimes, and it's pretty entertaining to watch: https://www.twitch.tv/thorstenball https://www.twitch.tv/thorstenball (EDIT: if his name sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because he is the author of https://interpreterbook.com/ https://interpreterbook.com/ and https://compilerbook.com/ https://compilerbook.com/ )
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 2y ago
I'd like an editor that uses an open LLM like Lama locally and runs on the Linux desktop. Is this it? Does that exist?
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  Emacs can do that (there are a couple of add-ons that layer in inference). I believe Neovim can also. On the commercial side IntelliJ and other JetBrains IDEs now have local-inference single-line completion model included. It won't build a project for you (incorrectly... that doesn't compile...), but will help you code faster.
  - michaelsbradley 2y ago
    Yes re: Emacs, see gptel: https://github.com/karthink/gptel https://github.com/karthink/gptel
- _lvbh 2y ago
  Neovim? There are plugins for Llama
entrox 2y ago
I very much applaud the effort in trying to push the boundaries, especially on the front of responsiveness and performance. We are typing on machines with mind-boggling resources and yet editors don't feel snappier(tm) at all, so I appreciate optimizing on that dimension. However, I can't see myself moving away from Emacs. I've been using it for almost a quarter of a century and have seen many editors come and go in that timeframe: BBEdit, Textmate, Sublime Text, Atom and so on. The current hotness is VS Code, but I personally believe that will be abandoned at some point as well. It would be great if some of the learnings of Zed can be backported to Emacs, however unlikely that is due to the amount of old cruft there.
James_K 2y ago
I've seen a million and one text editors, and almost all of them offer the feature of being "fast <rocket emoji>" or "gpu driven" or "cleanly implemented" (now "AI integrated"; LOL). Never features that users actually care about. Perhaps this is just my ego taking, but I think I would struggle to develop such an app. What is the point in programming if you aren't presenting the user with anything new? I suppose the collaborative features in this are almost novel, but they seem misguided. It relies on other people using the same text editor as you, which is going to be quite difficult to organise. How about a text editor which represents code as a syntax tree that is formatted as you type? Or one that has support for embedding multi-media content within source files? Or one with advanced program rewriting capabilities (in-lining functions, replacing struct members into getter methods, etc)? These things would all change the a user's experience much more than replacing the CPU rendering with GPU rendering. A text editor is the window through which we interact with code. It is an immensely rich domain for experimentation, yet the best most come up with is "what if there was a 10ms smaller latency on keyboard input?" I think the issue here is one of perspective. As programmers, we see the code. We tend to put more focus on the features that took us the longest to implement. But often, these are not visible or relevant to the user. We like to show off the 80% of the effort that gets 20% of the outcome rather than the 20% that yields 80%. I think there's also a measurability bias at play. It's easy to make the case that a faster thing is better than a slower thing, but harder to make the case for an interesting feature. One is measurable but the other is not.
- ozgrakkurt 2y ago
  Performance is extremely important in an editor imo, it changes the whole feel of it. But I don’t even use LSPs now so I may be in the minority
  - James_K 2y ago
    I've been using Emacs for ages. The performance is probably somewhat below average, but I just learned to ignore it. Having better editing features is worth more to me than responsive keyboard input. It would be nice to have both of course, but I don't think switching to a different editor would be worth it for me.
vunderba 2y ago
Zed has been on my shortlist as a natively fast text editor to replace Sublime, but I have very little interest in all the AI integration. I'm also not a fan of the prominent "sign in" button at the top right that's completely unhideable - it just serves to remind me that an off-line editor isn't necessarily the goal. These are pretty minor criticisms, and for the most part I really like using it. Additionally, the fact that it's open source means that it's just a fork away from ripping out the sign in button manually.
- ozgrakkurt 2y ago
  Editor with a sign-in is insane
rglover 2y ago
I love the snappiness of Zed, but the only reason I haven't used it is because of confusion around getting LSP to work (specifically for JS/Node).
johneth 2y ago
I switched to Zed from Sublime a few months ago, and I really like it. Super snappy, doesn't choke, and just pleasant to use. I don't make any use of the AI features though, and as a solo dev the collaborative aspect is also not useful to me.

50 points by 9woc 2y ago

I long for an editor like this to have very, very expansive support for all of the weird text editor choices. Ie the ability to effectively, not literally recreate Vim, Helix, etc in it. Sounds insane i know.. but i adore this editor and despite that, i just can't give up Helix for "vim bindings". I don't know if i'm ever going to get out of the terminal at this rate :s

imjonse 2y ago
There are a couple WIP PRs for Helix key-bindings in their repo. It is what I am also waiting for to try it out more seriously.
- unshavedyak 2y ago
  Oh i'll have to look at that - is it something i could build and run locally? I'd be willing to contribute I've not tried building Zed locally, but i know i struggled with building GPUI on NixOS

affinepplan 2y ago

does remoting work with the REPL or notebooks yet?

dartos 2y ago

They pivoted pretty hard into AI, huh. I remember when being multiplayer was their big selling point.

unshavedyak 2y ago
I've been curious on when AI was going to feel compelling for me to try. I might give this a try. I've had a subscription to some LLM service for ages, but overall i just haven't found it useful at all for programming. Maybe with this Context workflow it'll be nice. Though from the video it sounds like it might be difficult to get access to it?
- mattnewton 2y ago
  You definitely should try a workflow with modern LLMs, but if you have trouble with Zed give cursor a try. No relation to the company, just was surprised at how good the product was for me for your bog-standard python and typescript work, but also surprisingly good in some side projects in embedded C++ and C. A lot of it is polish over how good Claude sonnet 3.5 has gotten at code with enough context.
  - linsomniac 2y ago
    Zed's AI integration is good, Cursor's is great! I'm mostly using Zed and Aider right now, because I'm not doing a lot of coding currently and cancelled my Cursor subscription because I wasn't getting $20 of value out of it the last few months, but I plan to renew it when I'm doing more coding.
- dartos 2y ago
  It’s hit or miss for me as a coding assistant. Sometimes the snippets are helpful and sometimes not.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Anybody who takes VC money will always pivot to "the current thing".

levzettelin 2y ago

God, how often are people gonna post this editor here. I guess you can sell everything as long as it says "AI".

sealeck 2y ago
It's a pretty decent editor to be fair. The AI features are probably there to raise money from investors.
- IanCal 2y ago
  AI integration is really handy for coding. I wouldn't consider an editor that didn't have decent support for models and getting diffs back.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  Mmm, AI integration for coding is table stakes for any development tool right now IMHO. Even for things as simple as "I have an idea about how I'd check to see if the time is between midnight and 4:30am, but I don't have the python datetime module locked into memory, how would you do it" is extremely useful.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    sad. software quality deteriorating sharply because of all this. To learn an API also helps to keep it small and focused instead of having thousands of methods on it. All software will now go the way of Java.
- ciwolsey 2y ago
  If it's so decent why isn't there even a version for Windows....
  - sealeck 2y ago
    Wouldn't that would imply that Windows support is necessary for software to be good? Often it's easier to write good software when you target a specific platform (rather than spending time troubleshooting problems that occur across lots of different environments), and do it well.

sashank_1509 2y ago

I’ve never got its python LSP to work as well as Pylance in VSCode. Once you start using Pylance for large codebases, even if it is slow and sometimes crashes, you cannot go back to coding without it. Go to Definition, and automatic argument hints are too useful to code without

d0mine 2y ago
As far as I know Pylance (unrelated to pypi's pylance) is python LSP with microsoft's proprietary extensions that you can use only with official microsoft products. btw, go to definition, argument hints can work without it just fine.
- sashank_1509 2y ago
  I’ve not gotten it working properly in Zed though, have others managed to do so?
  - d0mine 2y ago
    It works in Emacs. Don’t know about Zed (if there is an issue, it is likely temporary)

steve_adams_86 2y ago

I’ve been trying to love Zed for months now and still run into constant snags. It’s frustrating to use with TypeScript. Support is very intermittent as basic features randomly break and come back during the same session. Want to jump to a declaration? Maybe it’ll work. Want information about this type? If you’re lucky. How about autocomplete for existing types, variables, and functions? This probably breaks most often. I update the editor regularly, have tried heaps of suggested fixes and reset settings each time. It’s a mess. It’s a beautiful, fast, powerful editor and I want to use it, but I’m pretty frustrated. I keep hoping an update will address the autocomplete at least, but as of last week it will still stop functioning while I’m working.

pimeys 2y ago
To be honest, I've had very similar results with TypeScript using neovim, helix and emacs. The tooling somehow never works correctly, or needs a lot of tinkering until the experience is decent. As a comparison, I write Rust as my main language, and the tooling always _just works_. The experience with Zed is very good. Maybe the time for Zed in TypeScript development is not yet there, but if you write any Rust code, it's worth a try.

GaggiX 2y ago

Zed allows you to use Claude 3.5 Sonnet for free unlimited under Zed AI, at least for now.

syndicatedjelly 2y ago

I’ve been spending the weekend getting setup in NeoVim and have enjoyed the process so far. It’s definitely not for people who want a plug-and-play IDE, but if you want to see all the programming details that are involved in a text editor (and learn some Lua along the way), then I highly recommend it. Fair warning, it is HIGHLY recommended you come in with a working knowledge of Vim first.

linsomniac 2y ago
I'd recommend using one of the editor bundles like LazyVim or SpaceVim. I was using Lunarvim and very happy with it, but he's discontinued development on it so I'm planning on moving to LazyVim. After 30+ years of messing around with vi configuration, I'm glad to have someone else doing the bulk of the work.
- syndicatedjelly 2y ago
  Hm wish I knew that, I just got set up in LunarVim...
milch 2y ago
Setting it up from scratch isn't, but if you just want something that works you can always go with one of the pre-made distributions, which is about as plug and play as you can get. I've had colleagues that were up and running after 10min with all the bells and whistles you expect from a modern IDE by just setting up LazyVim. Really the hardest part is the modal editing workflow, which is just inherent in how vim and nvim work - and I would recommend to set up regardless of which editor you use (e.g. by using the VSCode Neovim plugin)

xmstr 2y ago

"Zed collects anonymous telemetry data to help us understand how people are using the app." No thanks!

brittlewis12 2y ago
simple as two config options in `.zed/settings.json` (or `~/.config/zed/settings.json`): ``` { "telemetry": { "diagnostics": false, "metrics": false } } ``` for anyone who wants a fast, modern, resource-minimal, gpu-native text editor that is open source.
- hu3 2y ago
  This should be opt-in or at least have a giant red confirmation dialog shown until the user agrees.

mega_dean 2y ago

Thorsten Ball streams development of Zed on Twitch sometimes, and it's pretty entertaining to watch: https://www.twitch.tv/thorstenball https://www.twitch.tv/thorstenball (EDIT: if his name sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because he is the author of https://interpreterbook.com/ https://interpreterbook.com/ and https://compilerbook.com/ https://compilerbook.com/ )

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 2y ago

I'd like an editor that uses an open LLM like Lama locally and runs on the Linux desktop. Is this it? Does that exist?

slowmovintarget 2y ago
Emacs can do that (there are a couple of add-ons that layer in inference). I believe Neovim can also. On the commercial side IntelliJ and other JetBrains IDEs now have local-inference single-line completion model included. It won't build a project for you (incorrectly... that doesn't compile...), but will help you code faster.
- michaelsbradley 2y ago
  Yes re: Emacs, see gptel: https://github.com/karthink/gptel https://github.com/karthink/gptel
_lvbh 2y ago
Neovim? There are plugins for Llama

entrox 2y ago

I very much applaud the effort in trying to push the boundaries, especially on the front of responsiveness and performance. We are typing on machines with mind-boggling resources and yet editors don't feel snappier(tm) at all, so I appreciate optimizing on that dimension. However, I can't see myself moving away from Emacs. I've been using it for almost a quarter of a century and have seen many editors come and go in that timeframe: BBEdit, Textmate, Sublime Text, Atom and so on. The current hotness is VS Code, but I personally believe that will be abandoned at some point as well. It would be great if some of the learnings of Zed can be backported to Emacs, however unlikely that is due to the amount of old cruft there.

James_K 2y ago

I've seen a million and one text editors, and almost all of them offer the feature of being "fast <rocket emoji>" or "gpu driven" or "cleanly implemented" (now "AI integrated"; LOL). Never features that users actually care about. Perhaps this is just my ego taking, but I think I would struggle to develop such an app. What is the point in programming if you aren't presenting the user with anything new? I suppose the collaborative features in this are almost novel, but they seem misguided. It relies on other people using the same text editor as you, which is going to be quite difficult to organise. How about a text editor which represents code as a syntax tree that is formatted as you type? Or one that has support for embedding multi-media content within source files? Or one with advanced program rewriting capabilities (in-lining functions, replacing struct members into getter methods, etc)? These things would all change the a user's experience much more than replacing the CPU rendering with GPU rendering. A text editor is the window through which we interact with code. It is an immensely rich domain for experimentation, yet the best most come up with is "what if there was a 10ms smaller latency on keyboard input?" I think the issue here is one of perspective. As programmers, we see the code. We tend to put more focus on the features that took us the longest to implement. But often, these are not visible or relevant to the user. We like to show off the 80% of the effort that gets 20% of the outcome rather than the 20% that yields 80%. I think there's also a measurability bias at play. It's easy to make the case that a faster thing is better than a slower thing, but harder to make the case for an interesting feature. One is measurable but the other is not.

ozgrakkurt 2y ago
Performance is extremely important in an editor imo, it changes the whole feel of it. But I don’t even use LSPs now so I may be in the minority
- James_K 2y ago
  I've been using Emacs for ages. The performance is probably somewhat below average, but I just learned to ignore it. Having better editing features is worth more to me than responsive keyboard input. It would be nice to have both of course, but I don't think switching to a different editor would be worth it for me.

vunderba 2y ago

Zed has been on my shortlist as a natively fast text editor to replace Sublime, but I have very little interest in all the AI integration. I'm also not a fan of the prominent "sign in" button at the top right that's completely unhideable - it just serves to remind me that an off-line editor isn't necessarily the goal. These are pretty minor criticisms, and for the most part I really like using it. Additionally, the fact that it's open source means that it's just a fork away from ripping out the sign in button manually.

ozgrakkurt 2y ago
Editor with a sign-in is insane

rglover 2y ago

I love the snappiness of Zed, but the only reason I haven't used it is because of confusion around getting LSP to work (specifically for JS/Node).

johneth 2y ago

I switched to Zed from Sublime a few months ago, and I really like it. Super snappy, doesn't choke, and just pleasant to use. I don't make any use of the AI features though, and as a solo dev the collaborative aspect is also not useful to me.