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Zed was supposed to be the answer to Atom / Sublime Text in my opinion, and I kinda do want to use it as my main driver, but it just isn’t there yet for me. It’
by hmokiguess 1y ago
Zed was supposed to be the answer to Atom / Sublime Text in my opinion, and I kinda do want to use it as my main driver, but it just isn’t there yet for me. It’s shameful because I like its aesthetics as a product more than the competition out there.
Just this other day I tried using it for something it sort of advertised itself as the superior thing, which was to load this giant text file I had instantly and let me work on it.
I then tried opening this 1GB text file to do a simple find/replace on it only to find macOS run out of system memory with Zed quickly using 20gb of memory for that search operation.
I then switched to vscode, which, granted opened it in a buffered sort of way and limited capability, but got the job done.
Maybe that was a me issue I don’t know, but aside from this one-off, it doesn’t have a good extensions support in the community for my needs yet. I hope it gets there!
- j_bum 1y agoVSCode is my go to for large text file interaction on macOS. TextEdit may be worth looking into as well? Haven’t tested it for large files before.
- dewey 1y agoI have Sublime Text installed for the onlu use case of opening large files. Nothing comes close.
- CharlesW 1y agoGoogling around a bit, Sublime Text doesn't seem to be particularly good at this: https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/unable-to-open-a-large-text-file-767-mb/7068/3 https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/unable-to-open-a-large-text-... In my experience, BBEdit will open files that kill other editors: "Handling large files presents no intrinsic problems for BBEdit, though some specific operations may be limited when dealing with files over 2GB in size."
- xrisk 1y agoWhile I don’t know if the claim is true, you’ve linked a post from 2012…
- roto 1y agoI have always found sublime to be the best at large files, well over 1gb. Since you mention bbedit, maybe this is some mac specific issue? I really don't know. But at least among people i know, opening large files has effectively become its main USP. Should be noted that the linked post is almost 15 years old at this point too, so perhaps not the most up to date either.
- spartanatreyu 1y agoSublime text works better on large files (where file sizes are a few gb) compared to VSCode. But, you can go faster depending on your usecase: - If you're trying to manually look through the file, use `less`. You can scroll up and down, go quickly to the top and bottom of the file, and also search the file for strings quickly - If you already know the string in the file that you're looking for, use ripgrep - If you're trying to do a search and replace, and you already know what the strings are, use sed. (macos' built-in sed isn't good, so get the proper gnu coreutills through homebrew, and you can access the good sed through `gsed`)
- hmokiguess 1y agoWell ripgrep can be just a backend right. Just like your terminal is how you invoke it, you could have your editor do that. In fact, I believe that is what vscode uses. Apparently there’s been a neglected issue about bringing it to Zed. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4560 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4560
- fdg4t 1y agoThe open source CudaText has the same speed on opening huge files. It has slower rendering, but for huge files it is not the issue.
- hmokiguess 1y agoSpeaking of TextEdit, I like what the folks at CodeEdit are doing. They are moving slow and focusing on just the core parts. Maybe I should go give them a try too!
- typpilol 1y agoVscode has a special optimizations in place for large files. That's why it works so good. You can actually disable it in the settings if you want it to try and render the entire thing at once
- laweijfmvo 1y agoSimilar experience: I added a folder to my zed project that was too big, causing zed to lock up and eventually crash. But because the default setting was to re-open projects on launch, I was stuck in a loop where I couldn’t remove the folder either. Eventually found a way to clear the recent projects, load an empty editor, and change the setting to avoid it in the future.
- mr90210 1y agoOk, how big was your project? My JetBrains IDEs (RustRover, Goland) probably would have choked out too.
- tux3 1y agoYou can open large codebases in Jetbrains IDEs and it takes forever to index, but it shouldn't outright crash or completely freeze. You can open the kernel in CLion. Don't expect the advanced refactoring features to work, but it can deal with a ~40 million lines project folder for example
- sensanaty 1y agoIntelliJ IDEs are fine with huge files and projects. At certain sizes it'll disable intellisense in active files, but IME stuff like find and replace works fine regardless of size and you can still turn intellisense on if you want. They'll index for a long time on huge codebases, but I only go through that like once a month max, I just have the editors as always open
- silverwind 1y agoBig files/projects is where Sublime really shines. I hope Zed can replicate that performance.
- klaussilveira 1y agoI feel like Zed stopped working on the editor itself since AI was rolled out. I also wanted it to be the open-source alternative to Sublime, but nothing comes close.
- hmokiguess 1y agoYeah exactly this! I get they want to stay in the game and follow the market, but I’m sad they’re not being more aggressive on that original vision. I still think there could be a huge payoff for them if they invested more on their brand and aesthetics of a more polished and comfy editor. The way I see it, we’re sort of living in a world where UX is king. (Looking at you Cursor) I feel like there’s a general sentiment where folks just want a sense of home with their tools more than anything. Yes they need to work, but they also need to work for you in your way. Cursor reinvented autocomplete with AI and that felt like home for most, what’s next? I see so much focus on Agents but to me personally that feels more like it should live on the CI/CD layer of things. Editors are built for humans, something isn’t quite there yet, excited to see how it unfolds.
- bombcar 1y agoIf the full magnitude of products that stopped working on the main product and started to try to shoehorn AI in was known, the economy would collapse overnight.
- torben-friis 1y agoIt really is concerning. I keep an excel sheet with links of all companies I could apply to whenever i change jobs, and checking it the other day practically every row was now selling an ai product.
- sensanaty 1y agoI just went through the job hunt circuit and honestly while many companies do have some AI thing they're selling, for the actual day-to-day work and what most teams are working on, there's barely any mention of AI. It seems mostly marketing people and non-technical management cares, the devs I've spoken to in my interviews have not cared about AI much at all, and I had interviews with some large, influential companies.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mr90210 1y agoSpeaking of aesthetics, I switched back to VSCode but I ended up installing the theme "Zed One Theme" and switched the editor's font to "IBM Plex Mono". I know it's not Zed, but I am pretty satisfied with the results.
- shafyy 1y agoZed is the opposite of Sublime. Zed is VC funded and will eventually be enshittified. Sublime is not and has been going strong for many years.
- hmokiguess 1y agoYeah fair point. I think CodeEdit is a perhaps a closer comparison there
- jeltz 1y agoMy experience with Zed was that it was a buggy mess with strange defaults. I had high hopes until I tried it but it was not even close to working for my pretty normal use case of coding C so I went back to Sublime.
- indigodaddy 1y agoCotEditor is quite good with very large files. https://github.com/coteditor/CotEditor https://github.com/coteditor/CotEditor
- epolanski 1y agoThey don't care about the editor anymore, it's all about becoming millionaires.
- razodactyl 1y agoThoughts on https://nova.app/ https://nova.app/ ?
- hmokiguess 1y agoLooks fun! I may give it a try. What do you like about it?
- SpartanJ 1y agoI think there's still space in the editor market for an open-source Sublime/Zed alternative. I've been working solo on a code editor with similar characteristics for a few years. It's still a work in progress, but it's already feature-rich (all the basics and some advanced features, like LSP, DAP, multi-cursor, etc.): https://github.com/SpartanJ/ecode/ https://github.com/SpartanJ/ecode/ ecode can handle big files, though it's not specifically designed for that. I just tested it with the largest text file I could find (760MB), and it worked just fine (searches included). The editor is designed with performance in mind, taking a similar approach to Zed (custom GPU-accelerated renderer, fully native C++ code, heavily multi-threaded, etc.). The biggest challenge is forming a community of collaborators, solo developing such a project in my free time is a huge task. So if anyone is interested, please contact me =)
- jeanlucas 1y agoWhy? Genuine curiosity, what's the angle for a market for sublime/zed alternatives? What are they lacking? And congrats on your project, looks interesting.
- SpartanJ 1y ago> Why? Genuine curiosity, what's the angle for a market for sublime/zed alternatives? What are they lacking? In my opinion, Sublime’s biggest gap is that it’s not open-source, and there aren’t many (if any) open-source alternatives that match its feature set, performance, and unique user experience, Sublime just feels especially nice. Zed comes closest, and I think it’s fantastic, but it’s VC-backed, so their focus on profitability will likely shape the user experience over time (as some users are already noticing). Every editor has its pros and cons, and preferences vary, but there’s always room for innovation. Even subtle differences can add up to a significantly better user experience. With ecode, I’m aiming to deliver a polished, enjoyable experience while subtly innovating on common editor features. That said, ecode is opinionated in some ways, so it won’t suit everyone, though it’s highly customizable and configurable. > And congrats on your project, looks interesting. Thanks! =)
- 1y ago