I'm very happy to see work on the debugger. This is the main feature preventing me from switching full time to zed.
Unfortunately, "here" is not accurate. Not having a watch window, a stack trace view, and no mention of data breakpoints in the announcement still keeps the "beta" tag. I know those features will arrive eventually, but what is described is definitely not sufficient for 97% of my debugging sessions.
I would also have liked to see more in the announcement of multiple simultaneous debug sessions, and on how multithreaded debugging is planned. There are really cool things that can be done with multithreaded debugging further down the line that I'd be interesting in hearing about (like how RemedyBG has a DAW-like UI for freezing certain threads, or hitting one button to "solo" a thread and freeze all others).
anthony-eid
Hey Laserbeam, I'm one of the devs that made the debugger and the one that wrote the article.
We do have a basic stack trace view that basically all debuggers support. What's coming out in the near future is a stack trace view in our multi buffer system. In fact, you can use the "show stack trace" action while in an active debug session to expand the call stack in a multi buffer, where each excerpt is a frame. It's just not up to the quality that I and several others expect from Zed, so I didn't advertise it.
There's also a PR for a watching variables/expression that is going to be merged in a couple of days. The functionality is done, but we didn't want to add a feature so close to launch that wasn't fully tested.
Support for data breakpoints will come in the near future. I can't say when because we're planning on focusing on automatic configuration for a while, but it is a priority.
We do support simultaneously debugging multiple sessions at the same time and multithreaded debugging too. There's still more to do with it, but the support is definitely there!
laserbeam
I am VERY confident you guys have everything I mentioned either half working or coming shortly, so I'm not worried. I just saw a "the debugger is here!" announcement, then read the announcement, and saw what's still under todo... My reaction is "well, it's not here, it'll be here in a few weeks". And that's ok ^.^
Am impressed by the under-the-hood discussion though. Keep up the great work!
anthony-eid
Thank you for the positive energy and I'm glad you liked the under the hood section!
happy-dude
The blog post mentions[1] that advanced views are in development. This initial release and announcement focuses on the underlying foundation they're building upon.
> New views: While we support all the fundamental views, we're planning on adding more advanced views such as a watch list, memory view, disassembly view, and a stack trace view
100% of my debug sessions are with plain breakpoints and stepping. So it's here for me!
keyle
I agree but at the rate the Zed team is working at, we're not far off!
laserbeam
Oh yeah, of course :). My argument is they're just premature in declaring readiness.
aequitas
I have to try out the debugger yet. However I share your sentiment but for the Git feature. The basics are there but it is just not complete yet to fully replace my current git workflow. Hope they keep focus on that as well.
koito17
Nothing has been able to replace Magit for me, yet. Having a Zed UI for Git like Magit is my dream feature request.
With that said, Zed has effectively replaced all of Emacs for me, besides Magit. Additionally, typing in other editors feels noticeably higher latency than Zed :)
I've been daily driving Zed for almost a year now -- works best on TypeScript, Rust, and Go projects, in my opinion.
There's just so much functionality Zed has to build out to compete with modern editors (agentic coding, collaboration, debugging, edit prediction, task runners, version control). With that said, for pair-programming sessions with friends, Zed has been perfect since Linux gained screenshare support. However, there's a noticeable "pause in development" for collaboration in order to implement major features like Agentic Coding, and smaller-but-essential features like direnv integration, IME support (typing Japanese in the terminal used to be a clunky, error-prone task), dealing with the endless permutations of Python tooling so that Python files aren't a sea of red lines, etc.
no_wizard
Zed reminds of the days when Atom was big.
It was a good time, but it always left me wondering how long it would last as it leaned heavily on community support for nearly everything useful outside a few packages
Such a situation makes me worry about it keeping up if popularity wanes. With JetBrains for example at least I know that paying for the editor it will keep getting proper updates and support even if it isn’t the most popular (though it is quite popular currently)
hombre_fatal
Leaning on community support seems ideal because it means you've built a powerful plugin API and people can implement features.
As opposed to having a weak plugin API where all progress depends on the tiny internal team.
The latter suffers more than the first if popularity wanes.
In Atom's case, its lunch was eaten by VSCode which was similar but just better. Based on web tech but with better performance and just as powerful of a plugin API. It wasn't the fact that they let people implement plugins that killed Atom, and they would have been in an even worse situation had they not had a good plugin API.
They all lag or have lagged on supporting modern features. Even Sublime was slow to adopt LSPs and I believe it’s still a bit complicated to get it working correctly and reliably
I don't think there's an issue for data breakpoints, but you can make one for us
candrewlee
Zed is fantastic. I've been making the leap from neovim to zed lately, and it's been an great experience. Everything feels snappy, and I love how well they've integrated Vim bindings. Their agent mode is nice as well.
It's clearly an underdog to VSCode, so the extension ecosystem isn't quite there yet... but for a lot of the things I've used it for, it's sufficient. The debugger has been the big missing feature for me and I'm really glad they've built it out now - awesome work.
echelon
How is Zed with auto-completing Rust code?
I love how fast Windsurf and Cursor are with the "tab-tab-tab" code auto-completion, where nearly everything suggested is spot-on and the suggestions keep on rolling, almost automating the entire task of refactoring for you. This form of autocomplete works really well with TypeScript and other scripting languages.
IntelliJ / RustRover never got anywhere close to that level of behavior you can get in Cursor and Windsurf, neither in conjunction with JetBrains own models or with Co-pilot. I chalked it up as an IDE / model / language mismatch thing. That Rust just wasn't amenable to this.
A few questions:
1) Are we to that magical tab-tab-tab and everything autocompletes fluently with Rust yet? (And does this work in Zed?)
2) How does Zed compare to Cursor and Windsurf? How does it compare to RustRover, and in particular, JetBrains' command of the Rust AST?
WD-42
Zed is written in Rust by a bunch of Rust lovers so it's really got first class support for it.
csomar
> How is Zed with auto-completing Rust code?
I think they all use LSP, so whether you use neovim or Zed there shouldn't be a difference? (not 100% sure, but that's my basic understanding of LSP).
echelon
The LSP support for Rust has trailed JetBrains own Rust plugin, which has long since morphed into the language-specific IDE, RustRover.
RustRover has the best AST suggestions and refactoring support out there. It works in gigantic workspaces, across build scripts, proc macros, and dynamic dispatch.
The problem with RustRover has been the lackluster AI support. I've been finding AI autocomplete generally much more useful than AST understanding, though having both would be killer.
no_wizard
I know they’re actively working on this, they released a few updates to the AI extension to make it modular now, so you can pick your own model for example. Soon it will let you wire up your own agents, but if I recall correctly the reason it’s a bit slower there is lack of uniform interfaces
lionkor
It's fantastic for Rust, it's my main IDE which I've written e.g. voltlane.net in. Fantastic software, and the LLM integration is everything you need IMO (in a good way).
timeinput
I'm curious about how vimmy the vim bindings are?
Every time I've encountered a vim emulator I've found it is just close enough that my fingers are doing the wrong things so often it's frustrating. Almost to the point where I would prefer a non-vimmy editor since at least then my fingers always do the wrong thing.
esamatti
To me it has been the best "vim" that is not a real Vim. Way way better than the vscode plugin. I have used Vim and later Neovim since 2008 or so. Zed is the first non-vim I am truly happy with.
mort96
I was interested in Zed, but lost all interest when they started integrating "AI". I'm tired of "AI" everywhere.
I'll just stick with Neovim until something better comes around. Which probably won't happen until after the "AI" bubble bursts.
laserbeam
Zed was the first editor that tempted me into using AI features. It felt solid in general and AI feels mostly like autocomplete in other editors (in terms of how much it's in your face). There's definitely a place for AI models and agents in code editors, and Zed makes me feel like it's not built around them, which is great! Zed feel like "Come to us, we are making a good fast editor that also has AI." while competition feel like "Come to us, we want AI that has an editor".
mort96
I'm genuinely happy it works for you. I just don't want AI in my text editor, even if you're happy with it.
atonse
I suspect you’ll be an extreme minority.
I won’t go near a code editor anymore without AI integrated deeply.
mort96
I suspect I'm not the only one experiencing "AI fatigue" as every single piece of software grows more and more useless "AI" features I don't want and which get in the way of doing what I actually want.
And I suspect you are an extreme minority. Among senior and staff engineers I barely see them leaving behind emacs, vim and jetbrains… none of them with ai plug-ins.
atonse
Let me clarify. Things are only going in one direction.
So if you’re not in the minority now, you will be in time.
This is not a “tech bro” thing (as someone else said). There is real substance to it.
einpoklum
I suspect GP will not be an extreme minority.
OptionX
Nope, not a minority at all. Quite the opposite outside the tech bro side of things.
arandomusername
Then don't use it? It's completely optional and works perfectly fine without AI
mort96
Thanks for the tip, but I was already not using it
I went to check out neovim and noticed it's currently sponsored by two AI products! Of course, that's one level removed from actually integrating AI in your product but, still—it's getting harder and harder to avoid altogether.
mort96
Oh wow, I hadn't noticed that.
I guess it's always possible to return to Vim if Neovim starts showing signs of being steered by its sponsors.
dbalatero
My guess is that neovim wouldn't do a core integration of ai that ships with the editor. At most, maybe if there are ui interface gaps that would help make a better experience, they might expose more apis there that could be useful outside ai as well.
Plugins are relatively easy to write in nvim so I'd expect all ai stuff to come from there and be opt in.
CuriouslyC
At this rate you're going to be cooking over a campfire and living in a cave in a few years.
mort96
Nah, the AI bubble will have popped in a few years and projects will stop sprouting AI features left and right.
Thankfully for me, I guess, neovim broke my config about a year ago by changing the default color scheme in a way that I could not fix easily with confug. So I forked and built my own and will likely never update it.
rckt
I just disabled everything AI related. It's a nice editor. But I still have to jump into VSCode to resolve merge conflicts.
Yeah, but still it's not as comfortable as with VSCode or for example Meld.
foldr
The AI features in Zed are very easy to turn off / ignore. I agree that the AI features are probably taking development time away from other features that might be more useful.
norman784
I didn't tried Zed in a while, are really intrusive the AI features? Can't it be just disabled with some configuration?
deliriumchn
they are not intrusive but their entire focus changed on that instead of other features. Entire Git view feels abandoned in half done state yet they spent entire month working on AI chats, AI agents, their own AI edit (that's priced 20 per month yet they boast how light and performant it is -- why isn't it free local model then and why its priced worse than copilot?)
They're moving from "making awesome code editor" into yet another "buy our ai" product
dcow
Wouldn’t the addition of the debugger disprove this slant? Huge feature that has nothing to do with AI.
deliriumchn
debugger is very far from being feature-complete, I would call it MVP at the moment; lets see if they will iterate on that or will quickly go back to new shiny thing...
WD-42
The fact that they have released both features within 3 months of each other is mind boggling. Their development velocity is insane. These are not trivial features.
Give them some time to polish, jeez.
mixmastamyk
Copying a buffer into a network call, reading a response, writing the buffer. Not trivial per se, but table stakes for an experienced developer.
Rust probably slows them down here, but working correctly early is preferable imho.
AFAIK they added conflict resolution just recently, so it's not like non-AI features such as Git get no attention at all. And of course the debugger now.
nsonha
I'm much prefer the VS Code style when you have 2 clear sections: staged and not staged. Zed's chose the IntelliJ style which is just a bunch of checkboxes, I can see it being easier to understand for the novice, but not very intuitive from a git point of view.
norman784
Never used Git in Jetbrain IDEs or Zed (yet), but recently VS Code improved a lot the Git by making easier to stage changes in a file in a granular manner (I tried briefly edamagit extension a while ago and now use a lot gitu in the terminal, in combination with VS Code version control).
anthony-eid
We have multiple teams at Zed each with their own focus. In fact, you can see all the projects we're working on if you view our channel notes.
We're going to be adding more features to the debugger for a while
mixmastamyk
I suspect their previous “collab editing” marketing angle was probably not a big enough draw. AI features seem to be desired by more people, or at least the hype cycle currently says so.
nsonha
I think you're referring to autocomplete? It's much better than, say, 2 years ago when it was indeed annoying as hell. Having said I always turn it off and use agentic coding, which is not intrusive, only activate if you ask for it. This applies to all coding tools these days, autocomplete is no longer their focus.
mort96
I don't know, I just uninstalled Zed when I read those features got added
aequitas
I find it very easy to avoid the AI feature in every day Zed usage. Sometimes they do come in handy though. But nog often.
mort96
I don't want an editor where I have to avoid the AI features, I want an editor without AI features
Just like I want a terminal without AI features, which is why I'm no longer using iTerm2
calmoo
I didn't even notice iTerm has AI features? Where?
It's trivial to disable it. I wouldn't let that hold you back from using an amazing editor!
mort96
I just tried it out again. It seems like you can disable the chat bot integration by adding this to the config:
"agent": {
"enabled": false
}
However from the documentation[1] I can't see a way to disable the "AI" predictions button (which asks you to sign in to their online "AI" service with your GitHub account). Am I missing something?
Setting this to none should remove that button.
"features": {
"edit_prediction_provider": "none"
}
mort96
Really? That's not mentioned in the documentation, it seems like the whole "features" object is missing. Thanks anyway.
NooneAtAll3
how does editor neovim connect to debugger in the post?
nsonha(dead)
[flagged]
mort96
To be honest, I'm happy with running neovim in a terminal emulator so I'm not that far away from just wanting tools that "do nothing new". But there have been monumental changes in my time as a programmer that I've liked: language servers have been huge and are an essential part of my programming experience now, as one example.
But I think you're under-estimating the value of just being a really good version of something that already exists. There was a potential path where Zed would've been more or less something like VSCode, but actually open source, with less jank, with a smaller footprint and better performance, with excellent out-of-the-box support for a selection of programming languages without needing extensions. That, to me, would have been revolutionary, not because it would've had a list of features that's larger than other offerings, but because it would've done everything better than existing software.
Besides, it's not like "AI" is some new thing that nobody has done before. Every single new text editor that's coming out seems to be selling itself as "AI-powered". Zed is now a follower in that crowded space.
mixmastamyk
Separate tools that do one thing well, works better sometimes.
E.g. editors often integrate a terminal and file manager. I already have them open constantly, so have never used the integrated versions.
haiku2077
I used to use separate of each, but switched to the ones integrated into Zed. being able to click on a file in one and have it open one frame later in the others is very productive for me. e.g. click a link in my test runner's output to a line in a file and immediately jump to that file in the file tree and that line in a buffer.
mixmastamyk
Hmm, open tab performance hasn't been a concern of mine... since the turn of the century? (cough) Not using electron of course.
I suspect a preference here has more to do with how many monitors one has. I have multiple so prefer multiple windows. If away from my desk, having a fullscreen window split makes sense.
haiku2077
Yeah, in my office I use a single ultrawide. And I'm often programming away from a desk on a laptop.
Back in the day I had a multi-monitor setup and that was super nice with a tiling VM and a terminal/*nix based development environment.
ramon156
Zed feels like what Lapce, Helix and Neovim couldn't achieve in the time they spent.
I started using Helix back around 2021-2022 and just couldn't get over the bugs and lack of integration. It was good, but PHP support (I was working at an older company) was bad.
Neovim felt closest to a nice editor but there were some popular community-driven plugins that were very stubborn, and alternatives were just very slow. I was also just overwhelmed by the choices I needed to make for something stable.
Lapce just felt like a VSCode clone that didn't do anything special. Looked cool, but I did not feel like it was ready for a daily driver (And it still doesn't).
Zed became a favorite in a short amount of time, and I'm extremely grateful for it every day. The debugger is a nice addition.
rbits
This might be off-topic, but I really want to use Helix. I've been using Vim keybindings for a few years now but it's so unintuitive, there's still so many things I can't do efficiently in Vim. Helix just makes so much more sense for my brain. But I don't use Vim/Neovim by itself, I always use an integration with an editor like VSCode or Obsidian (Obsidian's Vim emulation isn't great, but it's good enough). Helix just isn't there yet with VSCode or Obsidian.
I wish more "Vim successors" would focus more on integrating with existing IDEs, rather than becoming one themselves. I don't want to have to set up an entirely new workflow when I change how I edit text.
That's also why I haven't tried using Neovim as a standalone IDE. It looks like I'd really like it, but I don't want to be locked in to using Vim.
haiku2077
FWIW Zed has the best Vim mode I've used outside of Vim. I do miss a few of my Vim plugins but the core is all there.
user3939382
> PHP support (I was working at an older company)
Not sure why PHP needs a qualifier like this.
pjmlp
People keep forgetting the UNIX tools they love sooo much predate PHP, follow the same worse is better mentally, and trace back to 1969, but for some strange time travel reason, they are considered modern.
Bolwin(dead)
[dead]
hu3
> ...like a VSCode clone that didn't do anything special.
Interesting way to qualify the most popular editor of human history.
quietbritishjim
They said that Lapce didn't do anything special (over VSCode). Not that VSCode is nothing special, as you seem to have interpreted it.
hu3
Fair enough. I understand what you meant now.
AbuAssar
I’m thrilled to see Zed evolve into a featured, lightweight IDE.
IMHO Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) and Language Server Protocol (LSP) are the best things happened to programming tooling in the last decade.
(I wrote this comment in another thread about the same link but didn't hit the frontpage)
eddythompson80
Ever since Linux support came out (2 years ago?), I go to check if they, finally, support “non-retina” “LoDPi” (a.k.a: a regular screen) yet, and sadly no :/
sapiogram
It's so incredibly frustrating. Text rendering is the primary feature of a code editor, but no one on the Zed team seems to use a non-retina screen.
> but no one on the Zed team seems to use a non-retina screen
This is not that surprising to me. Surely no-one wants to spend their day looking at the pixels?
colonial
I can't remember the last time I touched a hi-DPI display. They really aren't that common still, even in technical office environments - regular 1440p or 4K ~150 PPI displays work just fine.
E: Actually, I suppose my Samsung counts. But the point stands w.r.t. "real computer" displays.
haiku2077
If nice monitors were free, sure. Sadly nice monitors cost money. When I worked office jobs, hidpi displays were rarely available.
badsectoracula
I like looking at pixels as long as those pixels look good. Zed's pixels look awful.
eddythompson80
And do what the the few devices with perfectly fine 1080 or 1440p displays? Just throw them away?
My laptop display is fine. My desktop's 1440p is blurry, any external display at the office is blurry. So what? use Zed on my laptop when I'm using the built-in display, then switch editors if I'm switching monitors?
marton78
It's an ugly workaround, but if you install BetterDisplay (it's a free tool) and set your LoDPI screen to HiDPI, text rendering looks good.
girvo
Oh I'll have to try that. Zed looks woeful on my 1440p monitor when I was trying it at work, which is a shame because I quite like it otherwise.
dkersten
In what way? I e been using it on my 1440p for over a year and it looks fine. Am I missing something?
girvo
It’s blurrier, all UI elements and text, compared to every other editor and IDE on my machine
GrayShade
On my system (Linux, 4k display without scaling) the fonts look awful, but bumping up the font weight more or less fixes it.
jaoane
They don’t support windows, they don’t support regular screens on Linux… are they a Mac shop basically?
LoganDark
Yes. Originally they were Mac-only, then they went open-source and the community added support for Linux and Windows, but AFAICT they've never invested in anything but Mac
anthony-eid
The core team built Linux support and we're starting to work on Windows as well
senko
Using it with regular screen in Linux, works just fine.
Installing the 'stable' build with scoop works a treat.
lsllc
Via Scoop:
scoop bucket add extras
scoop install extras/zed
It works really well on Windows, haven't had any problems, nor with any extensions.
avarun
Most startups are
senko
Using it daily on my 1920x1200 laptop screen in Linux and works just fine.
gkbrk
Zed developers themselves acknowledge the blurry font issue [1], so either you just don't notice blurry fonts or 1920x1200 on a small laptop screen is HiDPI-enough to kinda hide the blurriness.
My desktop monitor is 1920x1080. On my computer and display; Vim, Emacs and VSCode are all able to render their fonts crisply while Zed is a blurry mess.
Are you using dark mode? To me, text looks absolutely awful in light mode, but okay in dark mode. Still noticeably worse than any other editors, though.
senko
This may be it.
I use it in dark mode and I am considerably less picky about font rendering than many people commenting on such threads.
Combined, while I can see a difference if I look closely, it doesn't bother me.
eddythompson80
Lucky you. It's very blurry. For me I open any other text editor next to it and immediately realize where that headache was coming from.
rvz
I think competent software engineers should actually read the "Under the hood" section, before they lose the core understanding on how debuggers work and are integrated into editors.
Upon reading the Rust code implementing the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) in Zed, some very junior SWEs will quickly point out that they would prefer only "self-documenting code" and would go as far as to removing all comments or even believe that "If it has comments, its probably bad code".
For sophisticated software that implements a defined protocol that is architected to be scalable in any piece of complex software, I prefer these comments that explains why a particular interface is designed the way it is and how it fits into the software (Zed) in this case if it were to be widely re-used like a plugin system.
This blog post is excellent in explaining this debugger integration in the editor and it makes me want to consider using Zed; it just needs an improved extension ecosystem.
If be surprised if Zed aren't dogfooding their own AI agents to help writing some of the Zed code. The AI often put a lot of comments on the generated code, and sometimes needs a lot of comments to produce the right code.
haiku2077
They literally do this in their AI Agent demo - they add a feature to Zed using Zed's agent.
writebetterc
It's surprisingly slow. Switching files in the tab list has a noticeable delay. Typing is higher latency than both Emacs (lsp-mode activated) and my web browser. Also uses approximately 60MiB more than my Emacs. It starts fast though!
I wouldn't complain about this stuff if it wasn't for their tagline being 'it's fast' and they're losing to Emacs Lisp (not a language amenable to being very fast) with a highly optimized C core.
I looked at their plugins, they're compiled into WASM and run in some VM. Maybe that's part of it?
nurumaik
How did you manage to make zed slower than emacs? From my experience, latency in zed sometimes even feels negative. Everything is instant: editing, lsp commands, file switching
In contrast, all my attempts at emacs ended up in dropping it due to latency issues (mostly because I work on remote machines)
writebetterc
I think you answered how you managed to induce latency in Emacs :).
GrayShade
> I looked at their plugins, they're compiled into WASM and run in some VM. Maybe that's part of it?
No. The ones I've looked just set up stuff, like launching a language server. They shouldn't be involved in typing.
I think it's related to the GPU usage. It's easy to introduce delays when you do GPU compositing, and the OS will already be doing its own.
As for emacs, IIRC they did some ugly things to update the UI directly instead of going through the normal event loop, which was causing compatibility issues later on.
frou_dh
Talking of Emacs, there is a very well designed DAP-based debugger available as the 'dape' package.
I really want to switch to Zed from Cursor but the battery usage for my Python project with Pyright is unjustifiable. There are issues for this on GitHub and I'm just sad that the team isn't prioritising this more.
vinnymac
It’s funny you mention this because I have an issue with Cursor where if I leave it open for more than a few hours my M3 Max starts to melt, the fans spin up, and it turns out to be using most of my CPU when it should be idling.
Zed on the other hand works perfectly fine for me. Goes to show how a slightly different stack can completely change one’s experiences with a tool.
lordofgibbons
I've gone full-time with Zed for the past month or so and really like it. Love the fast start times. There was a blurry font issue on linux, but that seems to have been fixed for me. Not sure what caused it.
taminka
dear zed ppl, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE configure your language detection properly wrt C and C++! every single editor on earth makes this exact same mistake where they think all C is valid C++ (it's not, at all), and mistakenly recognises C files as C++, even when there's an accompanying compile_commands.json file that specifies a C standard and even when files contain invalid C++ (but valid C)
it's a delightful little editor if it weren't for this thing...
haiku2077
You can customize the rules for detecting a language by file name/path in your settings. The problem is in cases like creating a new file the editor has to guess.
So nice to have an option that doesn’t repackage the whole damn chromium engine (again)
59nadir
I like some of their choices, but I wouldn't say that releasing your product for a minority operating system only, then following up with yet another minority operating system much later, then stuffing AI features in there when you don't even have debugger support... The list goes on; one man's "real product development" is another's list of mistakes.
They got the baseline feature set right, IMO, but probably could've spent some more time looking at the actual, real demographics of development (and who is most likely to appreciate performance as a feature and share those ideals).
bitbasher
I can't get past the fact that an IDE has a "login" button on it.
haiku2077
Jetbrains and Visual Studio Code also have login buttons.
In Zed, login is only required for internet features like some of the commercially hosted LLMs, and the multiplayer editing feature.
mixmastamyk
How prominent? Can you remove it from main window?
tall9732
Yes, add to your settings.json:
"title_bar": {
"show_sign_in": false
},
haiku2077
Not in the official builds.
90s_dev
For some reason I've found myself wanting a "lighter VS Code" lateley, which is ironic considering I used VS Code for the past 10 years because it is so lightweight. So I've wanted to try out Zed, but it's just ... weird to go back to a closed source editor, especially one that's so focused on imitating copilot, which seems like an odd feature to shift most focus on.
trostaft
Am I missing someone, or didn't they go open source last year?
It's a niche feature, but what's keeping me from switching yet is that they zed doesn't support ctrl+scroll to zoom/change font size yet.
Because I am accustomed to a non-US keyboard layout that doesn't make the regular key bindings for changing zoom easy, I got too used to doing it this way.
It's honestly looking to be a great modern IDE with almost everything I'm wishing for.
nlitened
It is funny that accidental scroll while holding Ctrl changing font size is one of my most hated features in IDEs, like who the hell ever needs to change their optimal font size to any other value. It's fascinating to me that this is a dealbreakingly important feature for someone else.
jen20
I constantly do this when navigating large files. Zoom out for context (better than a minimap), zoom in for detail. I use the trackpad for it though, not ctrl/cmd-+. I also do it constantly in web browsers, and am consistently amazed by the way that minor changes to font sizes break the layout of any website that has had a designer near it.
j16sdiz
You use them in pair programming, when you peer sit a little bit further
7bit
I often use it when sharing my screen. I like the feature quite a lot.
dmit
Live coding during a presentation or on stream is another use case in addition to the sibling comments.
sureglymop
Well it seems quite expected doesn't it. Different people and groups of people have different customization needs. I change my font size if I sit back or in a different position or use my standing desks.
senko
May I ask which layout is that? On most that I have encountered (using hr daily), + and - don't require modifiers.
sureglymop
It's a swiss french layout and the problem is mainly +. But it's also that + and - are quite far apart so the mouse wheel is just easier.
throwaway290
> To simplify the setup process, we've introduced locators, a system that translates build configurations into debug configurations. Meaning that you can write a build task once in tasks.json and reference it from debug.json — or, even better, rely on Zed's automatic configuration.
Does that work if my build is Docker based?
haiku2077
Sorta. IIRC you would need to make a version of your container that serves DAP on a port for the editor to connect to?
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs
I havent's keep up with Zed, how's the Windows version coming along? Is anyone here using it?
fancy_pantser
I've been using the unofficial builds via scoop for the last two months. It's working great so far. I use it on a Macbook as well and I haven't found any features that are missing or buggier on Win11. Really enjoying the new agent version of the AI assistant, which I use with both Claude API and devstral locally via Ollama.
It is finally at the review stage, I really hope it can get merged soon!
tomjuggler
Not Zed's fault but I'm still stuck with VSCode because Zed doesn't support PLatformIO (or rather PlatformIO doesn't support Zed).
I'm guessing that this extension support problem will continue to be a barrier to uptake for a while.
Cthulhu_
This is becoming a recurring issue; plenty of innovation being put in new and faster tooling to replace the JS-based daily drivers we've had for the past decade+, but there's a huge ecosystem of 3rd party addons to those now which is slowing adoption down; I'm also thinking of Prettier/ESLint vs Biome, the only thing stopping us from going full Biome is that we need some ESLint plugins.
That said, it's getting better; as another commenter pointed out, LSP is one of the best things to happen to this space. There should be a standard for editor plugins, too.
zamalek
> Not Zed's fault
Zed only supports language extensions, so it is in part responsible. If you're using embedded rust then PlatformIO isn't really needed; probe-rs is extremely capable and straightforward.
tomjuggler
I'm going to go ask the Zed AI now if it can port my massive 10 year old C++ project to Rust and see what happens. Gotta keep moving forward
Otherwise maybe the platformio cli might be enough
nixpulvis
I'm tempted to invest in switching to Zed full time, but there are enough small bugs with toolbars or dialog popups not working the first time that it makes me wary.
tdhz77
Love zed, wish it would work with Claude max. It’s amazing
The opengl one fails on my PC but the "regular one" (?) zed.exe seems to work. Didn't test much as I have discovered that today :-)
Andrew_nenakhov
I tried using Zed for a few months, but somehow ended up with a conclusion, that VSCode serves my needs better. Just a sum of small issues, like the need to manually re-apply coloring schemes to some files.
I've used it to install zed fine, but I haven't messed around with zed too much. I do most of my development within WSL with vscode, and zed doesn't had a great WSL2 development experience.
esperent
I'm the same. I followed a guide to set up Zed under WSL2 and got it working, but not in any way usable.
desireco42
Turbo Pascal as ideal IDE...
karunamurti
Funny thing is I created the Turbo Pascal blue yellow colorsxcheme for Zed and have been using it for the past 6 months or so.
culebron21
I wonder if they advertize the editor as the most AI-enabled, how much do they vibecode the editor themselves? /s
Jokes aside, after SublimeText as the main tool, and VSCode for Rust debugging, I'm trying this one. Now with more themes and plugins than a year ago, it can be set up to look and function a lot better.
sahil_sharma0(dead)
[dead]
yangcheng
I wish Zed can better support claude code, like offering native IDE integration. with Claude code SDK this seems doable?
einpoklum
I did not know the Zed editor before.
Now, seeing that it's a GUI application, why would I use it, given that it seems to:
1. have no menus,
2. have no toolbars,
3. be AI-focused?
thoroughburro
It has menus, a toolbar, and the AI integration is opt-in.
Unfortunately, "here" is not accurate. Not having a watch window, a stack trace view, and no mention of data breakpoints in the announcement still keeps the "beta" tag. I know those features will arrive eventually, but what is described is definitely not sufficient for 97% of my debugging sessions.
I would also have liked to see more in the announcement of multiple simultaneous debug sessions, and on how multithreaded debugging is planned. There are really cool things that can be done with multithreaded debugging further down the line that I'd be interesting in hearing about (like how RemedyBG has a DAW-like UI for freezing certain threads, or hitting one button to "solo" a thread and freeze all others).
We do have a basic stack trace view that basically all debuggers support. What's coming out in the near future is a stack trace view in our multi buffer system. In fact, you can use the "show stack trace" action while in an active debug session to expand the call stack in a multi buffer, where each excerpt is a frame. It's just not up to the quality that I and several others expect from Zed, so I didn't advertise it.
There's also a PR for a watching variables/expression that is going to be merged in a couple of days. The functionality is done, but we didn't want to add a feature so close to launch that wasn't fully tested.
Support for data breakpoints will come in the near future. I can't say when because we're planning on focusing on automatic configuration for a while, but it is a priority.
We do support simultaneously debugging multiple sessions at the same time and multithreaded debugging too. There's still more to do with it, but the support is definitely there!
Am impressed by the under-the-hood discussion though. Keep up the great work!
> New views: While we support all the fundamental views, we're planning on adding more advanced views such as a watch list, memory view, disassembly view, and a stack trace view
[1] https://zed.dev/blog/debugger#whats-next
With that said, Zed has effectively replaced all of Emacs for me, besides Magit. Additionally, typing in other editors feels noticeably higher latency than Zed :)
I've been daily driving Zed for almost a year now -- works best on TypeScript, Rust, and Go projects, in my opinion.
There's just so much functionality Zed has to build out to compete with modern editors (agentic coding, collaboration, debugging, edit prediction, task runners, version control). With that said, for pair-programming sessions with friends, Zed has been perfect since Linux gained screenshare support. However, there's a noticeable "pause in development" for collaboration in order to implement major features like Agentic Coding, and smaller-but-essential features like direnv integration, IME support (typing Japanese in the terminal used to be a clunky, error-prone task), dealing with the endless permutations of Python tooling so that Python files aren't a sea of red lines, etc.
It was a good time, but it always left me wondering how long it would last as it leaned heavily on community support for nearly everything useful outside a few packages
Such a situation makes me worry about it keeping up if popularity wanes. With JetBrains for example at least I know that paying for the editor it will keep getting proper updates and support even if it isn’t the most popular (though it is quite popular currently)
As opposed to having a weak plugin API where all progress depends on the tiny internal team.
The latter suffers more than the first if popularity wanes.
In Atom's case, its lunch was eaten by VSCode which was similar but just better. Based on web tech but with better performance and just as powerful of a plugin API. It wasn't the fact that they let people implement plugins that killed Atom, and they would have been in an even worse situation had they not had a good plugin API.
I don't think there's an issue for data breakpoints, but you can make one for us
I love how fast Windsurf and Cursor are with the "tab-tab-tab" code auto-completion, where nearly everything suggested is spot-on and the suggestions keep on rolling, almost automating the entire task of refactoring for you. This form of autocomplete works really well with TypeScript and other scripting languages.
IntelliJ / RustRover never got anywhere close to that level of behavior you can get in Cursor and Windsurf, neither in conjunction with JetBrains own models or with Co-pilot. I chalked it up as an IDE / model / language mismatch thing. That Rust just wasn't amenable to this.
A few questions:
1) Are we to that magical tab-tab-tab and everything autocompletes fluently with Rust yet? (And does this work in Zed?)
2) How does Zed compare to Cursor and Windsurf? How does it compare to RustRover, and in particular, JetBrains' command of the Rust AST?
I think they all use LSP, so whether you use neovim or Zed there shouldn't be a difference? (not 100% sure, but that's my basic understanding of LSP).
RustRover has the best AST suggestions and refactoring support out there. It works in gigantic workspaces, across build scripts, proc macros, and dynamic dispatch.
The problem with RustRover has been the lackluster AI support. I've been finding AI autocomplete generally much more useful than AST understanding, though having both would be killer.
Every time I've encountered a vim emulator I've found it is just close enough that my fingers are doing the wrong things so often it's frustrating. Almost to the point where I would prefer a non-vimmy editor since at least then my fingers always do the wrong thing.
I'll just stick with Neovim until something better comes around. Which probably won't happen until after the "AI" bubble bursts.
I won’t go near a code editor anymore without AI integrated deeply.
So if you’re not in the minority now, you will be in time.
This is not a “tech bro” thing (as someone else said). There is real substance to it.
I guess it's always possible to return to Vim if Neovim starts showing signs of being steered by its sponsors.
Plugins are relatively easy to write in nvim so I'd expect all ai stuff to come from there and be opt in.
They're moving from "making awesome code editor" into yet another "buy our ai" product
Give them some time to polish, jeez.
Rust probably slows them down here, but working correctly early is preferable imho.
We're going to be adding more features to the debugger for a while
Just like I want a terminal without AI features, which is why I'm no longer using iTerm2
Anyway, I'm happy with Ghostty since I switched away from iTerm2 and haven't paid attention to iTerm2 development much.
Furthermore, Zed Agents are currently my favorite way of using LLM's during programming
agent.enabled = false and it's gone, no?
I have a firewall, OpenSnitch, so don’t have to worry much about programs trying to connect. But definitely would prefer they don’t unless directed.
How does zed handle it?
features.edit_prediction_provider=none agent.enabled=false
There's additional config to set if inline assistance is automatic, only when the user presses a key, fully disabled, etc.
[1] https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-zed#edit-predictions
But I think you're under-estimating the value of just being a really good version of something that already exists. There was a potential path where Zed would've been more or less something like VSCode, but actually open source, with less jank, with a smaller footprint and better performance, with excellent out-of-the-box support for a selection of programming languages without needing extensions. That, to me, would have been revolutionary, not because it would've had a list of features that's larger than other offerings, but because it would've done everything better than existing software.
Besides, it's not like "AI" is some new thing that nobody has done before. Every single new text editor that's coming out seems to be selling itself as "AI-powered". Zed is now a follower in that crowded space.
E.g. editors often integrate a terminal and file manager. I already have them open constantly, so have never used the integrated versions.
I suspect a preference here has more to do with how many monitors one has. I have multiple so prefer multiple windows. If away from my desk, having a fullscreen window split makes sense.
Back in the day I had a multi-monitor setup and that was super nice with a tiling VM and a terminal/*nix based development environment.
I started using Helix back around 2021-2022 and just couldn't get over the bugs and lack of integration. It was good, but PHP support (I was working at an older company) was bad.
Neovim felt closest to a nice editor but there were some popular community-driven plugins that were very stubborn, and alternatives were just very slow. I was also just overwhelmed by the choices I needed to make for something stable.
Lapce just felt like a VSCode clone that didn't do anything special. Looked cool, but I did not feel like it was ready for a daily driver (And it still doesn't).
Zed became a favorite in a short amount of time, and I'm extremely grateful for it every day. The debugger is a nice addition.
I wish more "Vim successors" would focus more on integrating with existing IDEs, rather than becoming one themselves. I don't want to have to set up an entirely new workflow when I change how I edit text.
That's also why I haven't tried using Neovim as a standalone IDE. It looks like I'd really like it, but I don't want to be locked in to using Vim.
Not sure why PHP needs a qualifier like this.
Interesting way to qualify the most popular editor of human history.
IMHO Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) and Language Server Protocol (LSP) are the best things happened to programming tooling in the last decade.
(I wrote this comment in another thread about the same link but didn't hit the frontpage)
Github issue for context: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992
This is not that surprising to me. Surely no-one wants to spend their day looking at the pixels?
E: Actually, I suppose my Samsung counts. But the point stands w.r.t. "real computer" displays.
My laptop display is fine. My desktop's 1440p is blurry, any external display at the office is blurry. So what? use Zed on my laptop when I'm using the built-in display, then switch editors if I'm switching monitors?
https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds
Installing the 'stable' build with scoop works a treat.
My desktop monitor is 1920x1080. On my computer and display; Vim, Emacs and VSCode are all able to render their fonts crisply while Zed is a blurry mess.
[1]: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7992
I use it in dark mode and I am considerably less picky about font rendering than many people commenting on such threads.
Combined, while I can see a difference if I look closely, it doesn't bother me.
Upon reading the Rust code implementing the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) in Zed, some very junior SWEs will quickly point out that they would prefer only "self-documenting code" and would go as far as to removing all comments or even believe that "If it has comments, its probably bad code".
For sophisticated software that implements a defined protocol that is architected to be scalable in any piece of complex software, I prefer these comments that explains why a particular interface is designed the way it is and how it fits into the software (Zed) in this case if it were to be widely re-used like a plugin system.
This blog post is excellent in explaining this debugger integration in the editor and it makes me want to consider using Zed; it just needs an improved extension ecosystem.
[0] https://zed.dev/blog/debugger#under-the-hood
I wouldn't complain about this stuff if it wasn't for their tagline being 'it's fast' and they're losing to Emacs Lisp (not a language amenable to being very fast) with a highly optimized C core.
I looked at their plugins, they're compiled into WASM and run in some VM. Maybe that's part of it?
In contrast, all my attempts at emacs ended up in dropping it due to latency issues (mostly because I work on remote machines)
No. The ones I've looked just set up stuff, like launching a language server. They shouldn't be involved in typing.
I think it's related to the GPU usage. It's easy to introduce delays when you do GPU compositing, and the OS will already be doing its own.
As for emacs, IIRC they did some ugly things to update the UI directly instead of going through the normal event loop, which was causing compatibility issues later on.
https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/dape.html
The way it's designed (incl. having no dependencies) suggests that they will be angling for it to be included with stock Emacs at some point.
Zed on the other hand works perfectly fine for me. Goes to show how a slightly different stack can completely change one’s experiences with a tool.
it's a delightful little editor if it weren't for this thing...
So nice to have an option that doesn’t repackage the whole damn chromium engine (again)
They got the baseline feature set right, IMO, but probably could've spent some more time looking at the actual, real demographics of development (and who is most likely to appreciate performance as a feature and share those ideals).
In Zed, login is only required for internet features like some of the commercially hosted LLMs, and the multiplayer editing feature.
https://zed.dev/blog/zed-is-now-open-source
It's that it doesn't have an installer for Windows. That's what I was stuck on.
I could just build it... I guess.
Because I am accustomed to a non-US keyboard layout that doesn't make the regular key bindings for changing zoom easy, I got too used to doing it this way.
It's honestly looking to be a great modern IDE with almost everything I'm wishing for.
Does that work if my build is Docker based?
https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds
It is finally at the review stage, I really hope it can get merged soon!
I'm guessing that this extension support problem will continue to be a barrier to uptake for a while.
That said, it's getting better; as another commenter pointed out, LSP is one of the best things to happen to this space. There should be a standard for editor plugins, too.
Zed only supports language extensions, so it is in part responsible. If you're using embedded rust then PlatformIO isn't really needed; probe-rs is extremely capable and straightforward.
Otherwise maybe the platformio cli might be enough
https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds/releases
The opengl one fails on my PC but the "regular one" (?) zed.exe seems to work. Didn't test much as I have discovered that today :-)
Jokes aside, after SublimeText as the main tool, and VSCode for Rust debugging, I'm trying this one. Now with more themes and plugins than a year ago, it can be set up to look and function a lot better.
Now, seeing that it's a GUI application, why would I use it, given that it seems to:
1. have no menus,
2. have no toolbars,
3. be AI-focused?