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I don’t think it will dethrone Neovim for me, but this makes me wonder whether Kate could become my second editor and allow me to largely drop VS Code, especial

I don’t think it will dethrone Neovim for me, but this makes me wonder whether Kate could become my second editor and allow me to largely drop VS Code, especially with the DAP support. The session support also looks interesting.

arendtio 1y ago
Well, I use KDE for a while now, but one thing I've always tried to avoid was Kate ;-) My primary editor is vim (cli), and my secondary editor is kwrite. Nowadays, I think kwrite is part of the Kate package, just simpler, as I don't like the whole session feature when you just want to edit a single file.
- ognarb 1y ago
  Kwrite is basically kate without any plugins. Both applications are hosted in the same repo and developed at the same time.
nartho 1y ago
Have you tried zed ? I have been really impressed by it.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  I have tried zed, and promptly uninstalled once I saw it was automatically downloading and running nodejs. I want an editor that is lightweight, not one that starts running extra crap I neither need nor want in the background. That was on top of the big focus on LLM integration (itself already a significant negative for me), but which I was willing to overlook to try out the rest. I don't think Zed is very good in its current state. Too much extra cruft out of the box which you need to disable.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Zed on my Mac is taking 180MB of RAM right now. That's far less proportionally than Emacs use to be teased about.
  - d3Xt3r 1y ago
    Are you sure that was Zed? I see that it's 98.3% coded in Rust. But if you're right and it still depends on node.js, I'll have to scratch that off my list.
    - bigstrat2003 1y ago
      It was definitely Zed. I forget what it was that used node.js, and I was able to disable that with some effort. But it annoyed me because I shouldn't have to, you know? In my opinion the default out of the box install should be sleek and not use many resources, and only add more stuff if I ask for it.
      - cirwin 1y ago
        Zed maintainer here. We use node.js to run a number of language servers and formatters (which are often written in node due to the VSCode ancestry...). There've been a lot of requests to disable language servers by default; but I think that's not the right default for most users – things should work out of the box. That said, better control over this is definitely something we will add.
        tasuki 1y ago
        Is it true Zed downloads node.js as a binary from the web? Why wouldn't you use the system provided node or package it with Zed if it's necessary?
        cirwin 1y ago
        We currently download node if the system version isn't recent enough (we used to always download it, but I fixed that...).
      - d3Xt3r 1y ago
        You're right, I just checked the Arch package and it has a non-optional dependency on the nodejs package[1], which means you're forced to install it even if you don't use it. That sucks. :( [1] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/zed/ https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/zed/
  - creatonez 1y ago
    Using a runtime doesn't automatically mean it's bloat. I mean, do you uninstall Python from your system immediately after installing a distro? I would much rather an editor provide as many runtimes as possible for plugins, so that developers from all walks of life can contribute. This is largely the success story of Neovim, which lets you interface with it in 7 different languages. Most editors that are constrained to only one language for plugins have a completely barren ecosystem.
    - watermelon0 1y ago
      The main issue is that Zed doesn't package them (or rely on having them installed on the system), but instead downloads binaries from the web.
      - tasuki 1y ago
        Oh, that sounds pretty bad. I wonder if there's a reason...
  - tengbretson 1y ago
    Do you not use anything at all that has a V8-based JavaScript runtime? Or is it the node-specific things you dislike like their bizarre Stream API?
    - bigstrat2003 1y ago
      I actively avoid any desktop app that uses JS, yes. I find it to be a silly design choice to use a web language (which the vast majority of people, even its creator, agree is not very good) outside of the context of a web environment. And in my experience such apps are serious memory hogs (like VS Code which takes something like 1 GB of memory to display the same files that take Sublime Text 300 MB).
- actuallyalys 1y ago
  Fasterthanlime recommended it a while back on Mastodon so that did pique my interest. The focus on AI kind of put me off Zed, though. I don’t know whether that’s fair—I see one of their blog posts touts “Out of Your Face AI”—but that was my reaction.
israrkhan 1y ago
I have been using neovim extensively for past several years. I also use vscode occasionally. Last year I tried Zed and was very impressed with its speed, responsiveness and featureset. Now it is available for Linux has well, but I have not tried linux version yet.
shmerl 1y ago
I use Kate only causally for some small temporary text snippets. I use Neovim with DAP fine using nvim-dap + nvim-dap-ui. I also recently started using LSP in neovim, and it's actually pretty powerful.
- actuallyalys 1y ago
  I should honestly give DAP a try in Neovim. I think DAP being newer, seemingly getting less attention than other elaborate technologies to integrate like LSP or Treesitter, and having a more complex UI made me suspect it might not be reliable. Adding a DAP plugin to a secondary editor also feels less risky. But it sounds like my concerns may have been addressed, if not overblown all along.
  - shmerl 1y ago
    If you worry about it interfering with other stuff, you can lazy load nvim-dap + nvim-dap-ui on demand (using lazy.nvim for example), but it's not really interfering with what I use in my experience. Plus I use sessions for key mappings, i.e. temporary sets of mappings used for debugging for example, which can be reset to what they were after debugging is finished. This way you can assign a bunch of common combos for stuff like step in / step out without it messing up other existing mappings which you can restore after you are done.

arendtio 1y ago

Well, I use KDE for a while now, but one thing I've always tried to avoid was Kate ;-) My primary editor is vim (cli), and my secondary editor is kwrite. Nowadays, I think kwrite is part of the Kate package, just simpler, as I don't like the whole session feature when you just want to edit a single file.

ognarb 1y ago
Kwrite is basically kate without any plugins. Both applications are hosted in the same repo and developed at the same time.

nartho 1y ago

Have you tried zed ? I have been really impressed by it.

bigstrat2003 1y ago
I have tried zed, and promptly uninstalled once I saw it was automatically downloading and running nodejs. I want an editor that is lightweight, not one that starts running extra crap I neither need nor want in the background. That was on top of the big focus on LLM integration (itself already a significant negative for me), but which I was willing to overlook to try out the rest. I don't think Zed is very good in its current state. Too much extra cruft out of the box which you need to disable.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Zed on my Mac is taking 180MB of RAM right now. That's far less proportionally than Emacs use to be teased about.
- d3Xt3r 1y ago
  Are you sure that was Zed? I see that it's 98.3% coded in Rust. But if you're right and it still depends on node.js, I'll have to scratch that off my list.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    It was definitely Zed. I forget what it was that used node.js, and I was able to disable that with some effort. But it annoyed me because I shouldn't have to, you know? In my opinion the default out of the box install should be sleek and not use many resources, and only add more stuff if I ask for it.
    - cirwin 1y ago
      Zed maintainer here. We use node.js to run a number of language servers and formatters (which are often written in node due to the VSCode ancestry...). There've been a lot of requests to disable language servers by default; but I think that's not the right default for most users – things should work out of the box. That said, better control over this is definitely something we will add.
      - tasuki 1y ago
        Is it true Zed downloads node.js as a binary from the web? Why wouldn't you use the system provided node or package it with Zed if it's necessary?
        cirwin 1y ago
        We currently download node if the system version isn't recent enough (we used to always download it, but I fixed that...).
    - d3Xt3r 1y ago
      You're right, I just checked the Arch package and it has a non-optional dependency on the nodejs package[1], which means you're forced to install it even if you don't use it. That sucks. :( [1] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/zed/ https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/zed/
- creatonez 1y ago
  Using a runtime doesn't automatically mean it's bloat. I mean, do you uninstall Python from your system immediately after installing a distro? I would much rather an editor provide as many runtimes as possible for plugins, so that developers from all walks of life can contribute. This is largely the success story of Neovim, which lets you interface with it in 7 different languages. Most editors that are constrained to only one language for plugins have a completely barren ecosystem.
  - watermelon0 1y ago
    The main issue is that Zed doesn't package them (or rely on having them installed on the system), but instead downloads binaries from the web.
    - tasuki 1y ago
      Oh, that sounds pretty bad. I wonder if there's a reason...
- tengbretson 1y ago
  Do you not use anything at all that has a V8-based JavaScript runtime? Or is it the node-specific things you dislike like their bizarre Stream API?
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    I actively avoid any desktop app that uses JS, yes. I find it to be a silly design choice to use a web language (which the vast majority of people, even its creator, agree is not very good) outside of the context of a web environment. And in my experience such apps are serious memory hogs (like VS Code which takes something like 1 GB of memory to display the same files that take Sublime Text 300 MB).
actuallyalys 1y ago
Fasterthanlime recommended it a while back on Mastodon so that did pique my interest. The focus on AI kind of put me off Zed, though. I don’t know whether that’s fair—I see one of their blog posts touts “Out of Your Face AI”—but that was my reaction.

israrkhan 1y ago

I have been using neovim extensively for past several years. I also use vscode occasionally. Last year I tried Zed and was very impressed with its speed, responsiveness and featureset. Now it is available for Linux has well, but I have not tried linux version yet.

shmerl 1y ago

I use Kate only causally for some small temporary text snippets. I use Neovim with DAP fine using nvim-dap + nvim-dap-ui. I also recently started using LSP in neovim, and it's actually pretty powerful.

actuallyalys 1y ago
I should honestly give DAP a try in Neovim. I think DAP being newer, seemingly getting less attention than other elaborate technologies to integrate like LSP or Treesitter, and having a more complex UI made me suspect it might not be reliable. Adding a DAP plugin to a secondary editor also feels less risky. But it sounds like my concerns may have been addressed, if not overblown all along.
- shmerl 1y ago
  If you worry about it interfering with other stuff, you can lazy load nvim-dap + nvim-dap-ui on demand (using lazy.nvim for example), but it's not really interfering with what I use in my experience. Plus I use sessions for key mappings, i.e. temporary sets of mappings used for debugging for example, which can be reset to what they were after debugging is finished. This way you can assign a bunch of common combos for stuff like step in / step out without it messing up other existing mappings which you can restore after you are done.