4 ms·

What do you feel is missing from the UI?

by sirodoht 1y ago

tmdh 1y ago
I feel like the UI is not as smooth as VSCode. There is a slight lag when scrolling.
- Longhanks 1y ago
  Wait what? Isn't a super fast UI one of their main selling points, what led them to write their own rendering in Rust? ...and now they lose to a web app?
  - seanssel 1y ago
    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.
    - sayrer 1y ago
      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.
  - sapiogram 1y ago
    There's a reason everyone writes their GUI apps in Electron nowadays. Browser have spent 30 years figuring out fast rendering, it's hard to beat that, even with native code.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- mlnj 1y ago
  Smoothness and frames per second is the core of why they were building a very optimized editor. Not sure if it is just your machine that it is not leveraging the right bits. For me the extension ecosystems is something I really like about VSCode, but that is an entirely different matter.
- rtaylorgarlock 1y ago
  Wow. This might be the 1st time i've seen someone comment negatively regarding UI performance. Zed is one of the fastest programs i use. I used to laugh when seeing them market fps and such, but yeesh it's fast
  - hu3 1y ago
    > Wow. This might be the 1st time i've seen someone comment negatively regarding UI performance Here you go: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=zed%20slow&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... > I found Copilot tab completion completion to be VERY slow in Zed, for some reason. > 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 > I have tried it out and by default it was so slow as to be unusable. After discovering it required some customization in /etc (because it's the only GUI application that fails to recognize my GPU on a very popular distro with next to zero customization, because I game a lot on Linux - weird how that's a me problem and not a Zed problem) it got better, but still noticeably slower than VS Code. > I mean, good AI tab completion feels like a super power. Zed’s is not that good. It’s slow and normally not at all what I want. > Zed tab is a lot worse in comparison (partly because it’s slow) > In my personal experience I couldn't use Zed for editing python. Firstly, when navigating in a large python repository, looking up references was extremely slow (sometimes on the order of minutes). > All I'm saying is that contrary to what someone else said about the software being "fast" I tried it and at startup, it was unusably slow. > Tried using zed on Linux (pop os, Nvidia) several months ago, was terribly slow, ~1s to open right click context window. > Zed is as close as it gets, I also use it, but it is still slow and cumbersome sometimes. I'll stop here. There are other 4 pages of comments to pick anecdotes from, in this simple search alone.
    - cyanf 1y ago
      The other examples you listed are valid, but A.I tab auto complete is a model & inference issue unrelated to the editor.
      - 1y ago
- blurbleblurble 1y ago
  This could be an issue with GPU drivers. I experienced some incompatibility with GPU kernel drivers that allowed Zed to crash the whole window manager during text selection.
sapiogram 1y ago
Their font rendering looks awful on non-high dpi displays, and the devs don't seem to care at all. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992
- jsheard 1y ago
  That figures, their lead platform was the Mac where HiDPI is totally ubiquitous, so their renderer probably has no provisions for subpixel font rendering.
  - jamesgeck0 1y ago
    It's frustrating because even on macOS, every other text editor looks better on a 1440p display.
- delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
  My guess: their shaders or text rendering don't account for sub-pixel anti-aliasing, which is critical to getting decent text rendering on low pixel density displays. If they'd used Skia (which is what Electron and Chromium use), they would've got this for free. Instead they tried to reinvent the world and didn't realise how big the world was.
  - AlexandrB 1y ago
    I love how we just reinvent the wheel again, and again, and again, and again... MacOS native apps have had great sub-pixel rendering all along, but I guess since we have to develop everything in Electron now it's time to reimplement all the exiting functionality.
    - jsheard 1y ago
      > MacOS native apps have had great sub-pixel rendering all along Apple removed subpixel anti-aliasing in Mojave, seven years ago, because it's not necessary on the HiDPI/Retina displays they ship as standard. They still do greyscale anti-aliasing but that's not the same thing as subpixel. Discussion from the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476873
kenhwang 1y ago
Top of my head switching between IntelliJ and Zed: - Git UI is extremely barebones with no support for other VCS - No merge tool or side-by-side diffs - Configuration is all JSON - Would be nice having a full file tree for the search editor instead of just the list; having the functionality split between a tab and the outline panel is quite clunky. - Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows or other configurations (multiple docks per side, multiple copies of the same panel linked to a specific tab). Zed is basically a slightly more featured text editor, so it does a good job when I just want to open something quickly and do small edits. So it's really replacing Sublime Text. But I find myself hopping out to other tools when I'm using Zed which wasn't really common with IntelliJ. So I still want to use a proper IDE for proper development work.
- WA 1y ago
  No side-by-side diff is a deal-breaker for me unfortunately.
  - ricardobeat 1y ago
    This is a great divider between people who want an IDE vs a text editor - Zed explicit is the latter.
  - ronyeh 1y ago
    I use git icdiff (a plugin) in my terminal. I use Zed and VSCode GUI editors, but I don’t care to use their git tools. Command line git is fine. https://www.jefftk.com/icdiff https://www.jefftk.com/icdiff
- seanssel 1y ago
  The IntelliJ 3-way mergetool/diff viewer is best in class. I haven't found anything else that touches it.
  - conartist6 1y ago
    Me either. I thought by now it would be standard UX everywhere, but that is very much not so.
valentinnnnn 1y ago
I can’t really pin down the reason but somehow vscode just feels a bit more „balanced“ to me - the font sizes, little borders, icons and details, it’s more consistent.
pseufaux 1y ago
Merge tool is the big one for me
SJMG 1y ago
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/20086 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/20086
extr 1y ago
People are bringing up a lot of sophisticated stuff. Honestly for me it would just be a more flexible panel system that lets me see eg: File Explorer, Git UI, AI mode, etc, all at the same time.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Git: IntelliJ is miles ahead. And we’re talking about essential features like three-may merge panel, diffing 2 files, diffing same file between branches, diffing folders, etc Tests:. Zed is bare bones compared to IntelliJ (rerun failed tests, export list of failures, go to failed lines easily etc The AI stuff is cool but it won’t get me to switch from PyCharm.

What do you feel is missing from the UI?

tmdh 1y ago

I feel like the UI is not as smooth as VSCode. There is a slight lag when scrolling.

Longhanks 1y ago
Wait what? Isn't a super fast UI one of their main selling points, what led them to write their own rendering in Rust? ...and now they lose to a web app?
- seanssel 1y ago
  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.
  - sayrer 1y ago
    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.
- sapiogram 1y ago
  There's a reason everyone writes their GUI apps in Electron nowadays. Browser have spent 30 years figuring out fast rendering, it's hard to beat that, even with native code.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
mlnj 1y ago
Smoothness and frames per second is the core of why they were building a very optimized editor. Not sure if it is just your machine that it is not leveraging the right bits. For me the extension ecosystems is something I really like about VSCode, but that is an entirely different matter.
rtaylorgarlock 1y ago
Wow. This might be the 1st time i've seen someone comment negatively regarding UI performance. Zed is one of the fastest programs i use. I used to laugh when seeing them market fps and such, but yeesh it's fast
- hu3 1y ago
  > Wow. This might be the 1st time i've seen someone comment negatively regarding UI performance Here you go: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=zed%20slow&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... > I found Copilot tab completion completion to be VERY slow in Zed, for some reason. > 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 > I have tried it out and by default it was so slow as to be unusable. After discovering it required some customization in /etc (because it's the only GUI application that fails to recognize my GPU on a very popular distro with next to zero customization, because I game a lot on Linux - weird how that's a me problem and not a Zed problem) it got better, but still noticeably slower than VS Code. > I mean, good AI tab completion feels like a super power. Zed’s is not that good. It’s slow and normally not at all what I want. > Zed tab is a lot worse in comparison (partly because it’s slow) > In my personal experience I couldn't use Zed for editing python. Firstly, when navigating in a large python repository, looking up references was extremely slow (sometimes on the order of minutes). > All I'm saying is that contrary to what someone else said about the software being "fast" I tried it and at startup, it was unusably slow. > Tried using zed on Linux (pop os, Nvidia) several months ago, was terribly slow, ~1s to open right click context window. > Zed is as close as it gets, I also use it, but it is still slow and cumbersome sometimes. I'll stop here. There are other 4 pages of comments to pick anecdotes from, in this simple search alone.
  - cyanf 1y ago
    The other examples you listed are valid, but A.I tab auto complete is a model & inference issue unrelated to the editor.
    - 1y ago
blurbleblurble 1y ago
This could be an issue with GPU drivers. I experienced some incompatibility with GPU kernel drivers that allowed Zed to crash the whole window manager during text selection.

sapiogram 1y ago

Their font rendering looks awful on non-high dpi displays, and the devs don't seem to care at all. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992

jsheard 1y ago
That figures, their lead platform was the Mac where HiDPI is totally ubiquitous, so their renderer probably has no provisions for subpixel font rendering.
- jamesgeck0 1y ago
  It's frustrating because even on macOS, every other text editor looks better on a 1440p display.
delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
My guess: their shaders or text rendering don't account for sub-pixel anti-aliasing, which is critical to getting decent text rendering on low pixel density displays. If they'd used Skia (which is what Electron and Chromium use), they would've got this for free. Instead they tried to reinvent the world and didn't realise how big the world was.
- AlexandrB 1y ago
  I love how we just reinvent the wheel again, and again, and again, and again... MacOS native apps have had great sub-pixel rendering all along, but I guess since we have to develop everything in Electron now it's time to reimplement all the exiting functionality.
  - jsheard 1y ago
    > MacOS native apps have had great sub-pixel rendering all along Apple removed subpixel anti-aliasing in Mojave, seven years ago, because it's not necessary on the HiDPI/Retina displays they ship as standard. They still do greyscale anti-aliasing but that's not the same thing as subpixel. Discussion from the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476873

kenhwang 1y ago

Top of my head switching between IntelliJ and Zed: - Git UI is extremely barebones with no support for other VCS - No merge tool or side-by-side diffs - Configuration is all JSON - Would be nice having a full file tree for the search editor instead of just the list; having the functionality split between a tab and the outline panel is quite clunky. - Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows or other configurations (multiple docks per side, multiple copies of the same panel linked to a specific tab). Zed is basically a slightly more featured text editor, so it does a good job when I just want to open something quickly and do small edits. So it's really replacing Sublime Text. But I find myself hopping out to other tools when I'm using Zed which wasn't really common with IntelliJ. So I still want to use a proper IDE for proper development work.

WA 1y ago
No side-by-side diff is a deal-breaker for me unfortunately.
- ricardobeat 1y ago
  This is a great divider between people who want an IDE vs a text editor - Zed explicit is the latter.
- ronyeh 1y ago
  I use git icdiff (a plugin) in my terminal. I use Zed and VSCode GUI editors, but I don’t care to use their git tools. Command line git is fine. https://www.jefftk.com/icdiff https://www.jefftk.com/icdiff
seanssel 1y ago
The IntelliJ 3-way mergetool/diff viewer is best in class. I haven't found anything else that touches it.
- conartist6 1y ago
  Me either. I thought by now it would be standard UX everywhere, but that is very much not so.

valentinnnnn 1y ago

I can’t really pin down the reason but somehow vscode just feels a bit more „balanced“ to me - the font sizes, little borders, icons and details, it’s more consistent.

pseufaux 1y ago

Merge tool is the big one for me

SJMG 1y ago

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/20086 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/20086

extr 1y ago

People are bringing up a lot of sophisticated stuff. Honestly for me it would just be a more flexible panel system that lets me see eg: File Explorer, Git UI, AI mode, etc, all at the same time.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Git: IntelliJ is miles ahead. And we’re talking about essential features like three-may merge panel, diffing 2 files, diffing same file between branches, diffing folders, etc Tests:. Zed is bare bones compared to IntelliJ (rerun failed tests, export list of failures, go to failed lines easily etc The AI stuff is cool but it won’t get me to switch from PyCharm.