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    Claude Code: Now in Beta in Zed

    (zed.dev)
    677 points meetpateltech | 12 comments | 03 Sep 25 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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.
    replies(12): >>45117835 #>>45117876 #>>45117879 #>>45117909 #>>45117946 #>>45117983 #>>45118035 #>>45118193 #>>45118457 #>>45118684 #>>45119480 #>>45120315 #
    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.

    replies(3): >>45117904 #>>45118083 #>>45118173 #
    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.

    replies(4): >>45118243 #>>45118471 #>>45120075 #>>45123065 #
    1. 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 #
    2. Barrin92 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:31 UTC] No.45118419[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 #
    3. WD-42 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:39 UTC] No.45118496[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.
    replies(4): >>45118725 #>>45118853 #>>45120081 #>>45122911 #
    4. SAI_Peregrinus ◴[03 Sep 25 18:02 UTC] No.45118725{3}[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.

    5. Barrin92 ◴[03 Sep 25 18:15 UTC] No.45118853{3}[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.

    6. typpilol ◴[03 Sep 25 20:32 UTC] No.45120081{3}[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
    replies(3): >>45120145 #>>45121061 #>>45121783 #
    7. trenchpilgrim ◴[03 Sep 25 20:37 UTC] No.45120145{4}[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.

    8. Fraterkes ◴[03 Sep 25 22:27 UTC] No.45121061{4}[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

    9. Shank ◴[04 Sep 25 00:00 UTC] No.45121783{4}[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/

    10. Myrmornis ◴[04 Sep 25 02:41 UTC] No.45122911{3}[source]▶
    If you press a key in VSCode, it does appear immediately.
    11. eviks ◴[04 Sep 25 03:02 UTC] No.45123040[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
    12. matwood ◴[04 Sep 25 08:53 UTC] No.45125120[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.