Also made the same switch and very happy. Sometimes Zed (I guess due to claude code?) would hog my CPU, but that's fine by me. Works very well. Had one crash so far due to CC.
To bad I can not change away from vs code. Most chip manufacturers use the vscode + Addons approach today to give you a toolchain to Programm for your microcontroller. They (thank god) abandon there proprietary IDE attempts and concentrate on chips and compilers again. They found VSCode and now you are required to use this. I’m very unhappy with the situation and on the job hunt to get away from embedded to application programming
I used to have the same complaint, and recently swapped to 4k monitors. I thought that would solve my zed font problems, but text presentation is still bad. In zed, it feels like there is significantly more spacing between each line compared to vscode (or any other text editor).
I really love Zed, but my only issue is the Emacs keybindings they ship doesn’t seem to work as well as the VSCode Emacs extensions. Hopefully they can fix this in newer updates.
In the same boat, I try it every few months but give up because the emacs mode still isn't good enough. It's been getting slowly, slowly better though.
I have a similar issue with vim support, they have built-in support which I really appreciate but don't currently support pointing to my own .vimrc. This is unfortunately a dealbreaker for me.
I used to be a daily Emacs user (both at work and for personal projects). Since trying out Zed a little over a year ago, now I only use Emacs for Magit and the occasional IRC message through the built-in ERC client.
For VS Code users, there's actually a special feature where a subset of VS Code settings can be migrated to Zed settings. Cannot vouch for its stability, but the functionality is there.
Sorely missing a REPL for Lisp languages, but for statically-typed languages like Rust and TypeScript, Zed works pretty well. I appreciate that Zed works smoothly with Nix and Direnv, even through remote projects. I do wish the collaboration features would receive a bit more attention, though. It feels like that functionality has slowly been bitrotting, and it's always unfortunate when my friends on Linux cannot share their screen. Then there's other little regressions, like the audio bit depth being incorrect on MacBooks connected to external monitors -- they did fix this with the experimental Rodio backend, but I am not sure if that is stabilized yet.
However, AI-related features are fairly stable and it's amazing how far it has come in less than a year. That and things like the debugger UI.
Switched to Zed from Webstorm. Only issue is Zed has no vertical tab support. Did create a PR but it got rejected as it does not align with their milestones. Well, using it by monkeypatching the dev build after every upstream sync.
I'm still waiting to evaluate Zed because I work with/on my programming language which has LSP Semantic Highlighting, but Zed doesn't https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/39539 once it's merged I'll give it a go because it looks like a modern Sublime Text (which I still use). I just wish they would focus on basic editor features instead of adding AI and other non-related features.
I love Zed. I switched full time from Sublime about 8 months ago, using the preview builds, and every release has been solid. The UI design is perfect and the attention to detail is top notch - it feels comfortable, like a really ergonomic pair of slippers.
Does Zed have something similar to VSCode Dev Containers ?
That is one of the few things keeping me going on VSCode.
For example, I frequently write Ansible playbooks. And with VSCode you can just fire up the Ansible-provided Dev Container with all the dependencies. Which means you don't have to clutter up your local system with them.
It isn't 1:1 since there probably won't be ansible provided configs, but I find writing nix devshells per project to be low effort and high reward. It'll only be a couple lines if all you need is a specific version of ansible
Zed is the only editor I've been using for maybe two months or so. But I find the extensions still sorely lacking and the API not extensive enough yet either. Still, I really love the design as well as how AI was builtin, and some more of the niche differences.
This yeah I'm switching from JetBrains to Zed after being with them nearly 10 years now. I just can't justify my yearly subscription now that they've bundled AI that I can't justify paying for if I can just use Claude Code directly. At least Zed has richer Claude Code integration than JetBrains. If I even bother to renew it will be only if they announce something worth my while.
Concur that it's a great VSCode replacement! Also note on the Author's observation of it using similar keybinds: You can, easily, swap the keybinds for other common editors too; this is a big deal for transitions. Also, I love how they're doing things the right way using a fast language... and it shows in the consistently low latency.
It is not, IMO, a replacement for Jetbrains IDEs (PyCharm, Rustrover, for example). I do substitute it on my tablet sometimes, where those IDEs can be too sluggish. Unless I'm missing something with plugins I should be installing, it is not on the same level for introspection, refactoring, import adding and moving, real-time error checking, and generally understanding the code base holistically.
So, I've settled into this: Jetbrains if on a sufficiently powerful PC. (It can still bring a 9950x to its knees though...) Zed for lower-power ones.
Sublime for editing one-off files, as both JB and Zed are project-oriented.
I would love to switch but the battery draw on my mac is just too much! I like to move around to different places in my home as I work so being able to be on battery for a while is a must for me (not to mention that I do travel occasionally)
I've been frustrated by the constant nudges to use specific AI tools from within VS Code, but I made a different change. Rather than moving to a different editor altogether, I started using VS Codium. If you're unfamiliar, it's the open core of VS Code, without the Microsoft-branded features that make up VS Code.
I believe Microsoft builds VS Code releases by building VS Codium, and then adding in their own branded features, including all the AI pushes. If you like VS Code except for the Microsoft bits, consider VS Codium alongside other modern choices.
I have been using vscodium for years, hasn't disappointed until recently (rust analyzer wont pickup changes, not sure if rust or vscode issue). I tried zed once, but just didn't do the basics I needed at the time. I'll have to give it a try again
edit: zed is working much better for me now and does not have the issue vscodioum was having (not recognizing changes/checking some code till I triggered rebuild)
I can't say I've noticed any "nudges" to use AI tools in VS Code. I saw a prompt for Copilot but I closed it, and it hasn't been back.
I'm probably barely scratching the surface of what I can do with it, but as a code editor it works well and it's the first time I've ever actually found code completion that seems to work well with the way I think. There aren't any formatters for a couple of the languages I use on a daily basis but that's a Me Problem - the overlap between IDE users of any sort and assembly programmers is probably quite small.
Are there any MS-branded features I should care about positively or negatively?
Hi, I'm the author of the post. I hope it resonates with many who got tired of VSCode and found Zed.
I'd also like to add there are many small features I miss in Zed that I don't go over in the post, e.g. autodetect and respect file's indentation (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4681). But I see Zed is actively shipping the missing features, so I believe they'll improve significantly over the next year.
Have you tried using vim? Or rather nvim? If tinkering is your thing, feel free to completely do your own setup but out of the box lazyvim is pretty sane and you may not need much to get it to your liking.
But it’s very nice to easily able to extend or modify to fit your workflow. I’m just curious what people are getting out of zed that seems like vim has available.
+1 for lazyvim. I tried multiple times to switch to nvim from vscode, but lazyvim finally made it painless. love lazygit too. debugging in nvim also works like a charm.
To do this, I had to switch to Rust first which means I had to change my entire career. I love to switch to linux desktop now but before that I'm gonna need to clear some time. Which probably means I have to retire?
Vs code became unusable on a not so big monorepo on a MacBook Pro M4, which is concerning. Zed has been much smoother, even there are a couple of extensions or features that I miss.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 99.8 ms ] threadhow in the world is this possible in THE web dev editor?
For VS Code users, there's actually a special feature where a subset of VS Code settings can be migrated to Zed settings. Cannot vouch for its stability, but the functionality is there.
Sorely missing a REPL for Lisp languages, but for statically-typed languages like Rust and TypeScript, Zed works pretty well. I appreciate that Zed works smoothly with Nix and Direnv, even through remote projects. I do wish the collaboration features would receive a bit more attention, though. It feels like that functionality has slowly been bitrotting, and it's always unfortunate when my friends on Linux cannot share their screen. Then there's other little regressions, like the audio bit depth being incorrect on MacBooks connected to external monitors -- they did fix this with the experimental Rodio backend, but I am not sure if that is stabilized yet.
However, AI-related features are fairly stable and it's amazing how far it has come in less than a year. That and things like the debugger UI.
have you tried lazygit? that's my go-to. Can even run in in a panel inside Zed.
That is one of the few things keeping me going on VSCode.
For example, I frequently write Ansible playbooks. And with VSCode you can just fire up the Ansible-provided Dev Container with all the dependencies. Which means you don't have to clutter up your local system with them.
It isn't 1:1 since there probably won't be ansible provided configs, but I find writing nix devshells per project to be low effort and high reward. It'll only be a couple lines if all you need is a specific version of ansible
It is not, IMO, a replacement for Jetbrains IDEs (PyCharm, Rustrover, for example). I do substitute it on my tablet sometimes, where those IDEs can be too sluggish. Unless I'm missing something with plugins I should be installing, it is not on the same level for introspection, refactoring, import adding and moving, real-time error checking, and generally understanding the code base holistically.
So, I've settled into this: Jetbrains if on a sufficiently powerful PC. (It can still bring a 9950x to its knees though...) Zed for lower-power ones.
Sublime for editing one-off files, as both JB and Zed are project-oriented.
I believe Microsoft builds VS Code releases by building VS Codium, and then adding in their own branded features, including all the AI pushes. If you like VS Code except for the Microsoft bits, consider VS Codium alongside other modern choices.
https://vscodium.com
edit: zed is working much better for me now and does not have the issue vscodioum was having (not recognizing changes/checking some code till I triggered rebuild)
I'm probably barely scratching the surface of what I can do with it, but as a code editor it works well and it's the first time I've ever actually found code completion that seems to work well with the way I think. There aren't any formatters for a couple of the languages I use on a daily basis but that's a Me Problem - the overlap between IDE users of any sort and assembly programmers is probably quite small.
Are there any MS-branded features I should care about positively or negatively?
I'd also like to add there are many small features I miss in Zed that I don't go over in the post, e.g. autodetect and respect file's indentation (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4681). But I see Zed is actively shipping the missing features, so I believe they'll improve significantly over the next year.
But it’s very nice to easily able to extend or modify to fit your workflow. I’m just curious what people are getting out of zed that seems like vim has available.