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Claude Code: Now in Beta in Zed

(zed.dev)
677 points meetpateltech | 23 comments | 03 Sep 25 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 2.319s | source | bottom
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ZpJuUuNaQ5 ◴[03 Sep 25 16:34 UTC] No.45117752[source]▶
I am sure Zed is great and I appreciate the effort put in to create it, but nowadays I just cannot imagine switching from VSCode to something else. In my limited understanding, none of the existing alternatives offer anything (and often misses at least something) truly innovative or anything else that VSCode extension wouldn't solve. On VSCode I have about 15 different profiles setup, each with different settings and dozens of extensions based on either a technology stack or a project - it would be really difficult to find a good reason to throw it all away. The idea of switching between IDEs does not appeal to me either. I do use Neovim a little bit too, but most of that usage time was spent on configuration.
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1. pimeys ◴[03 Sep 25 16:39 UTC] No.45117835[source]▶
It's really interesting point of view. I'm one of those people who avoid using VSCode at any cost. It's slow, it's bloated, the UI is not great, and it's slowly being locked down by Microsoft.

If Zed would not exist, I would be using helix, neovim, or emacs as I did before.

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2. kace91 ◴[03 Sep 25 16:45 UTC] No.45117904[source]▶
It’s not at all slow when compared to IntelliJ products or similar. It doesn’t compete with editors, it competes with IDEs.
3. hu3 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:01 UTC] No.45118083[source]▶
Interestingly I disagree with all your points about VSCode.

It's fast, barebones by default, UI is minimal and it's Open Source enough that competitors forked from it.

I guess YMMV because there is a comment in this post from another user about Zed being sluggish.

replies(2): >>45118123 #>>45118379 #
4. pimeys ◴[03 Sep 25 17:04 UTC] No.45118123[source]▶
I tried VSCode many times in my life and just hated the experience so much. It put me away from GUI editors for years, didn't want to try any of them. So ugly and so sluggish.

Zed was the first one that put me to rethink my position. It is so snappy on my Linux workstation and I don't have any issues with it's GUI. I finally switched from vim et.al.

But I know I have "weird" opinions, I also really dislike Apple products and their software.

replies(1): >>45120101 #
5. IshKebab ◴[03 Sep 25 17:08 UTC] No.45118173[source]▶
VSCode is actually not slow. The problem is to make it useful you need to add quite a few extensions, and those can be slow. That itself wouldn't be too bad but VSCode doesn't expose any information about what is causing the slowness. You end up with "VSCode is slow and it could be due to any one of the dozen extensions I have installed", which effectively means that VSCode is slow.

It remains to be seen if Zed can avoid that though.

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6. WD-42 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:14 UTC] No.45118243[source]▶
VSCode (and all Electron based editors) have undeniable input latency. Zed is built by the same team that developed Atom and Electron and one of their stated goals is to make up for the shortcomings of these technologies.

If you don't feel that VSCode is slow, it's because you are used to it.

replies(2): >>45118419 #>>45125120 #
7. timeon ◴[03 Sep 25 17:27 UTC] No.45118379[source]▶
Even not counting the LSP, for a text editor, it eats quite large amount of RAM.
8. Barrin92 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:31 UTC] No.45118419{3}[source]▶
>If you don't feel that VSCode is slow, it's because you are used to it.

I don't think this is a fair claim. When you start doing an apples to apples comparison, that is to say make full use of IDE and auto-completion features it's difficult to see a difference given that the latency and speed of the plugins starts to dominate any millisecond difference in input latency or rendering speed.

replies(2): >>45118496 #>>45123040 #
9. manuhabitela ◴[03 Sep 25 17:36 UTC] No.45118471[source]▶
vscode is noticeably slow compared to sublime text or zed, even without any extension. You instantly notice it when switching files or typing things that trigger auto-completions.

In the end the feeling is drastically different. It weirdly makes for a more peaceful experience to have such a snappy editor.

vscode wins thanks to all its extensions, where basically every language is supported and most features you can think of are there. But it's kinda like modern react. You know better alternatives exist, like solid or svelte, but the community is so big, it stays the easier choice in the end.

replies(2): >>45120092 #>>45122936 #
10. WD-42 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:39 UTC] No.45118496{4}[source]▶
No. When a press a character key on my keyboard, it should appear in my editor immediately. All other IDE features like auto-completion happen asynchronously.
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11. SAI_Peregrinus ◴[03 Sep 25 18:02 UTC] No.45118725{5}[source]▶
> When a press a character key on my keyboard, it should appear in my editor immediately.

Seems to work the same for me in VSCode, CLion, and nvim. I don't doubt that you have issues with it (I've experienced slow editors & laggy input, it sucks) but I don't think it's inherent to VSCode. Doesn't mean it's not a bug, but if I had that issue I'd try with no extensions to verify, then binary search disabling the extensions I want until I find the one causing the lag.

12. Barrin92 ◴[03 Sep 25 18:15 UTC] No.45118853{5}[source]▶
>All other IDE features like auto-completion happen asynchronously

in the technical sense, but you as a developer don't use auto-completion asynchronously. It's not like you autocomplete and continue typing and then come back to the completion. When you complete at point you have wait. Whether that keypress takes 2 or 3 milliseconds isn't going to make a difference when the inter-process communication of your editor and its services is magnitudes slower. It's not like programming is like playing an FPS game. You're not in any meaningful sense limited by your mechanical input speed.

13. typpilol ◴[03 Sep 25 20:31 UTC] No.45120075[source]▶
You can actually open the text tools on discord and see what's taking up memory and CPU.

They also have a new feature that's experimental that lets you offload extensions to a separate extension host so they don't block on the main thread for poorly designed or performing extensions.

It's definitely not slow in its default for .

14. typpilol ◴[03 Sep 25 20:32 UTC] No.45120081{5}[source]▶
Are you telling me that it was a delay when you type in vscode? If so, either your configuration or computer is doing something wrong
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15. typpilol ◴[03 Sep 25 20:33 UTC] No.45120092{3}[source]▶
I've never once experienced delayed input typing even with a lot of extensions
16. typpilol ◴[03 Sep 25 20:34 UTC] No.45120101{3}[source]▶
My experience is the exact opposite

Vscode has never had any input delay for me

17. trenchpilgrim ◴[03 Sep 25 20:37 UTC] No.45120145{6}[source]▶
It's super noticeable on a high refresh display. VSC is like playing a video game at 20FPS.

Vanilla settings on a high end gaming PC.

18. Fraterkes ◴[03 Sep 25 22:27 UTC] No.45121061{6}[source]▶
The thing their computer might be doing wrong is just being a slightly older budget laptop, which is not a particularly rare setup.

Just try to use vscode on a ~500 dollar laptop from 2019 or something

19. Shank ◴[04 Sep 25 00:00 UTC] No.45121783{6}[source]▶
> Are you telling me that it was a delay when you type in vscode? If so, either your configuration or computer is doing something wrong

This is simply not true. There is inherent latency in any rendering pipeline, and VSCode and Atom both have input latency that is significantly higher than other editors like Sublime Text owing to a bloated rendering pipeline. You can read more about this and how easy it is to introduce latency simply by changing basic things like keyboards here: https://danluu.com/input-lag/ or editors specifically: https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/

20. Myrmornis ◴[04 Sep 25 02:41 UTC] No.45122911{5}[source]▶
If you press a key in VSCode, it does appear immediately.
21. Myrmornis ◴[04 Sep 25 02:45 UTC] No.45122936{3}[source]▶
Latencies associated with typing and switching files are imperceptible on any laptop I've used with VSCode.
22. eviks ◴[04 Sep 25 03:02 UTC] No.45123040{4}[source]▶
The difference in startup speed is measured in seconds, bit milliseconds. And difference in input speed can be dozens of ms, which is also noticeable
23. matwood ◴[04 Sep 25 08:53 UTC] No.45125120{3}[source]▶
> VSCode (and all Electron based editors) have undeniable input latency.

Start up time, sure. But VSCode was lauded as the first performant Electron based editor. I just tested VSCode, Zed, and vim and I can't see any difference from when I press a key to when a character shows up on the screen (appears instantly). I'd be curious to see the results of a blind test, and wonder if people's biases against Electron are showing up.