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Zed is exactly how software should be made. Granted, I don't agree with all of their UX decisions (i think the AI panel is really bad compared to Cursor's), but

by volkk 1y ago

Zed is exactly how software should be made. Granted, I don't agree with all of their UX decisions (i think the AI panel is really bad compared to Cursor's), but good lord is the thing fast. These guys are the real deal. They built a rendering system (GPUI) in Rust before building Zed on top of it, and so it is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) pieces of software that resides on my computer. I can't wait until GPUI becomes a bit more mature/stable so I can build on top of it, because the other Rust GUI libraries/frameworks aren't great. edit: they updated the AI panel! looking good!

cies 1y ago
> because the other Rust GUI libraries/frameworks aren't great. Iced, being used by System76's COSMIC EPOCH, is not great in what regards? Serious question.
- volkk 1y ago
  there's basically zero documentation for Iced as it stands. They even wrote that if you're not a great Rust dev, you're going to have a bad time and that all docs are basically "read the code" until their book is written. I'm glad System76 is able to build using Iced, but you need a great manual for a tool to be considered mature and useful. IMO Slint is milestones ahead and better. They've even built out solid extensions for using their UI DSL, and they have pages and pages of docs. Of course everything has tradeoffs, and their licensing is funky to me.
  - rice7th 1y ago
    Then you should try egui. It has a lot of examples and it is among the most mature libraries along with iced and slint, without the licensing problems
    - jenadine 1y ago
      egui is nice but its API changes a lot between versions which makes it hard to rely on. Slint is stable and well documented. Its license is open source and also free to use in many cases so there is no real issue there.
  - airstrike 1y ago
    The crate is 100% documented. what specific documentation do you think are lacking? Tutorials? That's for users to write. Calling iced not useful reads like an uninformed take
    - volkk 1y ago
      > what specific documentation do you think are lacking? Tutorials? examples beyond tiny todo app/best practices would be a great start. > Tutorials? That's for users to write. sure, and how's that going for them? there are near zero tutorials out there, and as someone looking to build a desktop tool in rust, they've lost me. maybe i'm not important enough for them and their primary goal is to intellectually gatekeep this tool from the vast majority for a long time, in which case, mission accomplished
      - airstrike 1y ago
        there are literally dozens of examples, including many apps you can reference. come join the discord and check out the showcase channel. I've written and published probably 50-100 examples to show best practices to people who want to learn more. I basically leave zero questions unanswered on that server, unless they are so far out of my wheelhouse that I can't answer them, but even then I might point you to the right resource or person...and I'm not even part of the team. the community is just wonderful IMHO > sure, and how's that going for them? there are near zero tutorials out there, and as someone looking to build a desktop tool in rust, they've lost me. maybe i'm not important enough for them and their primary goal is to intellectually gatekeep this tool from the vast majority for a long time, in which case, mission accomplished 26.5k stars on github and a flourishing community of users, which grows noticeably larger every day. new features basically every week. bug fixes sometimes fixed in literal minutes. it's not a matter of gatekeeping, but a matter of resources. iced is basically the brainchild of a single developer (plus core team members who tackle some bits and pieces of the codebase but not frequently), who already has a day time job and is doing this for free. would you rather him write documentation—which you and I could very well write—or keep adding features so the library can get to 1.0? I encourage you to look for evidence that invalidates your biases, as I'm confident you'll find it. and you might just love the library and the community. I promise you a warm welcome when you join us on discord ;-) here are a few examples of bigger apps you can reference: https://github.com/squidowl/halloy https://github.com/squidowl/halloy https://github.com/hecrj/icebreaker https://github.com/hecrj/icebreaker https://github.com/hecrj/holodeck https://github.com/hecrj/holodeck and my smaller-scale examples (I'm afraid my own big app is proprietary): https://github.com/airstrike/iced_receipts https://github.com/airstrike/iced_receipts a simple app showing how to manage multiple screens for CRUD-like flows https://github.com/airstrike/pathfinder/ https://github.com/airstrike/pathfinder/ a simple app showing how to draw on a canvas https://github.com/airstrike/iced_openai https://github.com/airstrike/iced_openai a barebones app showing how to make async requests https://github.com/airstrike/tabular https://github.com/airstrike/tabular a somewhat complex custom widget example
rtfeldman 1y ago
> i think the AI panel is really bad compared to Cursor's Have you had a chance to try the new panel? (The OP is announcing its launch today!)
- input_sh 1y ago
  It was available in their preview release for about a month: https://zed.dev/releases/preview https://zed.dev/releases/preview The annoncement is about it reaching prod release, but they emailed people to try it out in the preview version.
- volkk 1y ago
  i have and it's more of the same (unless i'm missing something). the fact that the entire thing is editable is weird to me. i really think they should just clone cursor's in this one case because they really nailed the UX with the checkpoint restoration edit: yes i missed something. i see the new feature. hell yeah!
  - rtfeldman 1y ago
    Ah, that's still the old one - the whole thing is no longer editable in the new one we launched today. (You can still access the old one, but the new one is the default as of today.) Check out the video in the blog post to see the new one in action!
    - volkk 1y ago
      yeah it's dope. i love the "follow agent" feature as well
  - terhechte 1y ago
    In the new agent panel not everything is editable. Maybe give it another try.
    - benlm 1y ago
      I really miss the everything is editable panel, it felt like a superpower. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but after it’s amazing and everything else feels limited.
duped 1y ago
Is it only fast on MacOS? I tried it on Linux and it was unusably slow. Seconds per frame instead of frames per second.
- signorovitch 1y ago
  I’ve been using Zed a few months on my fedora laptop (thinkpad x230) and haven’t had any performance issues. Definitely faster than any other graphical editor I’ve used. Perhaps a driver issue would be slowing it down?
  - duped 1y ago
    Maybe, but no other application or editor has this problem. If all other apps work but Zed doesn't then it sounds like a Zed has an issue. EDIT: just gave it a shot and I get "unsupported GPU" as an error, informing me that my GPU needs Vulkan support. Their detection must be wrong because this is not true. And like I said, other applications don't have this problem.
    - boxed 1y ago
      The microcosm of a linux user played out so fast in that thread :P
    - samtheprogram 1y ago
      You should report an issue with your specs, not just say “other applications don’t have this problem” — especially as a Linux user. For one, not all applications are GPU accelerated. Two, their UX may need to be improved for a specific hardware configuration. I have used Zed with good performance on Intel dGPU, AMD dGPU, and Intel iGPU without issue — my guess is a missing dependency?
      - duped 1y ago
        Meh, it's not worth the trouble. I don't care enough about using Zed to fix their Linux distribution problems or debug something for them. This isn't some volunteer backed FOSS project where they get a free pass or free QA work from me.
rapnie 1y ago
> because the other Rust GUI libraries/frameworks aren't great. Waiting for Robius / Makepad to mature a bit more. Looks very promising.
andrepd 1y ago
Honestly, miss me withy the AI shit. I just want an open-source Sublime Text that has first-class support for LSP.
- jamienicol 1y ago
  You can not use it. I rarely do, but I love zed, it's fast and the LSP (rust and clangd in my case) just work
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- haiku2077 1y ago
  That's also Zed. You can turn off the AI features in the settings and a have a very fast, LSP-based editor.
unshavedyak 1y ago
> I can't wait until GPUI becomes a bit more mature/stable so I can build on top of it Man, so true. I tried this out a while back and it was pretty miserable to find docs, apis, etc. IIRC they even practice a lot of bulk reexports and glob imports and so it was super difficult to find where the hell things come from, and thus find docs/source to understand how to use something or achieve something. Super frustrating because the UI of Zed was so damn good. I wanted to replicate hah.
- volkk 1y ago
  part of me wants to dedicate time to making something with it and then creating examples/PRs -- but it's too unstable given how fast they're moving for now IMO. if anyone from Zed team can chime in and confirm, that'd be awesome.
ksec 1y ago
I am thinking if Firefox could adopt any of these.
- kvark 1y ago
  Firefox rendering is based on WebRender, which runs on OpenGL. The internals of WebRender are similar to gpui but with significantly more stuff to cover the landscape of CSS.
jenadine 1y ago
> I can't wait until GPUI becomes a bit more mature/stable so I can build on top of it I wouldn’t hold my breath. GPUI is built specifically for Zed. It is in its monorepo without separate releases and lots of breaking changes all the time. It is pretty tailored to making a text editor rather than being a reusable GUI framework.
- volkk 1y ago
  i don't think that's quite true based on this repo: https://github.com/zed-industries/create-gpui-app https://github.com/zed-industries/create-gpui-app i think there's some desire from within zed to making this a real thing for others to reuse.
  - jenadine 1y ago
    That repo is to download a small template (why do we need a crate for that?), and it still pulls `gpui` directly from the Zed monorepo via a git dependency. That kind of setup is fine for internal use, but it’s not how you'd structure a library meant for stable, external reuse. Until they split it out, version it properly, and stop breaking stuff all the time, it's hard to treat GPUI as a serious general-purpose option.
    - volkk 1y ago
      i agree that it's currently too unstable, but the point was to show they have intent in others using it. maybe it'll be later
xmorse 1y ago
I would love having gpui bingings for JS using NAPI, now using it from Rust is too slow, Rust feedback loop is too long
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by volkk 1y ago

cies 1y ago

> because the other Rust GUI libraries/frameworks aren't great. Iced, being used by System76's COSMIC EPOCH, is not great in what regards? Serious question.

volkk 1y ago
there's basically zero documentation for Iced as it stands. They even wrote that if you're not a great Rust dev, you're going to have a bad time and that all docs are basically "read the code" until their book is written. I'm glad System76 is able to build using Iced, but you need a great manual for a tool to be considered mature and useful. IMO Slint is milestones ahead and better. They've even built out solid extensions for using their UI DSL, and they have pages and pages of docs. Of course everything has tradeoffs, and their licensing is funky to me.
- rice7th 1y ago
  Then you should try egui. It has a lot of examples and it is among the most mature libraries along with iced and slint, without the licensing problems
  - jenadine 1y ago
    egui is nice but its API changes a lot between versions which makes it hard to rely on. Slint is stable and well documented. Its license is open source and also free to use in many cases so there is no real issue there.
- airstrike 1y ago
  The crate is 100% documented. what specific documentation do you think are lacking? Tutorials? That's for users to write. Calling iced not useful reads like an uninformed take
  - volkk 1y ago
    > what specific documentation do you think are lacking? Tutorials? examples beyond tiny todo app/best practices would be a great start. > Tutorials? That's for users to write. sure, and how's that going for them? there are near zero tutorials out there, and as someone looking to build a desktop tool in rust, they've lost me. maybe i'm not important enough for them and their primary goal is to intellectually gatekeep this tool from the vast majority for a long time, in which case, mission accomplished
    - airstrike 1y ago
      there are literally dozens of examples, including many apps you can reference. come join the discord and check out the showcase channel. I've written and published probably 50-100 examples to show best practices to people who want to learn more. I basically leave zero questions unanswered on that server, unless they are so far out of my wheelhouse that I can't answer them, but even then I might point you to the right resource or person...and I'm not even part of the team. the community is just wonderful IMHO > sure, and how's that going for them? there are near zero tutorials out there, and as someone looking to build a desktop tool in rust, they've lost me. maybe i'm not important enough for them and their primary goal is to intellectually gatekeep this tool from the vast majority for a long time, in which case, mission accomplished 26.5k stars on github and a flourishing community of users, which grows noticeably larger every day. new features basically every week. bug fixes sometimes fixed in literal minutes. it's not a matter of gatekeeping, but a matter of resources. iced is basically the brainchild of a single developer (plus core team members who tackle some bits and pieces of the codebase but not frequently), who already has a day time job and is doing this for free. would you rather him write documentation—which you and I could very well write—or keep adding features so the library can get to 1.0? I encourage you to look for evidence that invalidates your biases, as I'm confident you'll find it. and you might just love the library and the community. I promise you a warm welcome when you join us on discord ;-) here are a few examples of bigger apps you can reference: https://github.com/squidowl/halloy https://github.com/squidowl/halloy https://github.com/hecrj/icebreaker https://github.com/hecrj/icebreaker https://github.com/hecrj/holodeck https://github.com/hecrj/holodeck and my smaller-scale examples (I'm afraid my own big app is proprietary): https://github.com/airstrike/iced_receipts https://github.com/airstrike/iced_receipts a simple app showing how to manage multiple screens for CRUD-like flows https://github.com/airstrike/pathfinder/ https://github.com/airstrike/pathfinder/ a simple app showing how to draw on a canvas https://github.com/airstrike/iced_openai https://github.com/airstrike/iced_openai a barebones app showing how to make async requests https://github.com/airstrike/tabular https://github.com/airstrike/tabular a somewhat complex custom widget example

rtfeldman 1y ago

> i think the AI panel is really bad compared to Cursor's Have you had a chance to try the new panel? (The OP is announcing its launch today!)

input_sh 1y ago
It was available in their preview release for about a month: https://zed.dev/releases/preview https://zed.dev/releases/preview The annoncement is about it reaching prod release, but they emailed people to try it out in the preview version.
volkk 1y ago
i have and it's more of the same (unless i'm missing something). the fact that the entire thing is editable is weird to me. i really think they should just clone cursor's in this one case because they really nailed the UX with the checkpoint restoration edit: yes i missed something. i see the new feature. hell yeah!
- rtfeldman 1y ago
  Ah, that's still the old one - the whole thing is no longer editable in the new one we launched today. (You can still access the old one, but the new one is the default as of today.) Check out the video in the blog post to see the new one in action!
  - volkk 1y ago
    yeah it's dope. i love the "follow agent" feature as well
- terhechte 1y ago
  In the new agent panel not everything is editable. Maybe give it another try.
  - benlm 1y ago
    I really miss the everything is editable panel, it felt like a superpower. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but after it’s amazing and everything else feels limited.

duped 1y ago

Is it only fast on MacOS? I tried it on Linux and it was unusably slow. Seconds per frame instead of frames per second.

signorovitch 1y ago
I’ve been using Zed a few months on my fedora laptop (thinkpad x230) and haven’t had any performance issues. Definitely faster than any other graphical editor I’ve used. Perhaps a driver issue would be slowing it down?
- duped 1y ago
  Maybe, but no other application or editor has this problem. If all other apps work but Zed doesn't then it sounds like a Zed has an issue. EDIT: just gave it a shot and I get "unsupported GPU" as an error, informing me that my GPU needs Vulkan support. Their detection must be wrong because this is not true. And like I said, other applications don't have this problem.
  - boxed 1y ago
    The microcosm of a linux user played out so fast in that thread :P
  - samtheprogram 1y ago
    You should report an issue with your specs, not just say “other applications don’t have this problem” — especially as a Linux user. For one, not all applications are GPU accelerated. Two, their UX may need to be improved for a specific hardware configuration. I have used Zed with good performance on Intel dGPU, AMD dGPU, and Intel iGPU without issue — my guess is a missing dependency?
    - duped 1y ago
      Meh, it's not worth the trouble. I don't care enough about using Zed to fix their Linux distribution problems or debug something for them. This isn't some volunteer backed FOSS project where they get a free pass or free QA work from me.

rapnie 1y ago

> because the other Rust GUI libraries/frameworks aren't great. Waiting for Robius / Makepad to mature a bit more. Looks very promising.

andrepd 1y ago

Honestly, miss me withy the AI shit. I just want an open-source Sublime Text that has first-class support for LSP.

jamienicol 1y ago
You can not use it. I rarely do, but I love zed, it's fast and the LSP (rust and clangd in my case) just work
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
haiku2077 1y ago
That's also Zed. You can turn off the AI features in the settings and a have a very fast, LSP-based editor.

unshavedyak 1y ago

> I can't wait until GPUI becomes a bit more mature/stable so I can build on top of it Man, so true. I tried this out a while back and it was pretty miserable to find docs, apis, etc. IIRC they even practice a lot of bulk reexports and glob imports and so it was super difficult to find where the hell things come from, and thus find docs/source to understand how to use something or achieve something. Super frustrating because the UI of Zed was so damn good. I wanted to replicate hah.

volkk 1y ago
part of me wants to dedicate time to making something with it and then creating examples/PRs -- but it's too unstable given how fast they're moving for now IMO. if anyone from Zed team can chime in and confirm, that'd be awesome.

ksec 1y ago

I am thinking if Firefox could adopt any of these.

kvark 1y ago
Firefox rendering is based on WebRender, which runs on OpenGL. The internals of WebRender are similar to gpui but with significantly more stuff to cover the landscape of CSS.

jenadine 1y ago

> I can't wait until GPUI becomes a bit more mature/stable so I can build on top of it I wouldn’t hold my breath. GPUI is built specifically for Zed. It is in its monorepo without separate releases and lots of breaking changes all the time. It is pretty tailored to making a text editor rather than being a reusable GUI framework.

volkk 1y ago
i don't think that's quite true based on this repo: https://github.com/zed-industries/create-gpui-app https://github.com/zed-industries/create-gpui-app i think there's some desire from within zed to making this a real thing for others to reuse.
- jenadine 1y ago
  That repo is to download a small template (why do we need a crate for that?), and it still pulls `gpui` directly from the Zed monorepo via a git dependency. That kind of setup is fine for internal use, but it’s not how you'd structure a library meant for stable, external reuse. Until they split it out, version it properly, and stop breaking stuff all the time, it's hard to treat GPUI as a serious general-purpose option.
  - volkk 1y ago
    i agree that it's currently too unstable, but the point was to show they have intent in others using it. maybe it'll be later

xmorse 1y ago

I would love having gpui bingings for JS using NAPI, now using it from Rust is too slow, Rust feedback loop is too long

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]