i try zed every couple of months because it surfaces in my feeds somehow. every time i end up rapidly stop using it because it presents itself as a multiplayer-first experience, and while you can use it without those features, there’s no way to “hide” them from your periphery. the “sign in” (to github, apparently? that’s ridiculous - i don’t use github unless i have to) button sits at the top right, the copilot at the bottom right.
some people use these things, sure. but some people - and i’d argue despite the bubble we live in seeming otherwise, most people - do not. there has been vehement opposition to even adding the option to hide that malarkey. instead they want it to sit there like a badge implying you’re doing something incorrectly.
until zed actually respects the user first i don’t really see the point in it. i’m not a foss or “offline, old ways” maximalist, i don’t use (neo)vim, i don’t use emacs, but i do appreciate the value in not trying to drag your user(s) around into what has still not been demonstrated to be anything other than garbage actively contributing in a meaningful way to climate concerns.
these things could be plugins. another (proprietary, information security focused) rust-based app i use introduced llm functionality semi-recently, and i (and others) rather firmly told them that if it stayed in core, i wouldn’t, due to security concerns. it got shifted to a plugin within a couple weeks.
i don’t expect everyone to share this opinion, because if there wasn’t demand for those features they probably wouldn’t have been implemented. i just really, really strongly disagree that a multiplayer notepad logged into github is “the future” of programming.
I think the occam’s interpretation of this is that their target user base does want these features, and folks who strongly disagree with it are not part of the target user base. And that’s okay. The solution doesn’t need to satisfy everyone.
The nature of multiplayer is though that once a platform gains supermajority you may be forced to use it anyway because everyone else is there, like with discord or social media.
Very few people actually get to sit in a vacuum, as soon as you step outside and try interacting with the population: whatever software is the supermajority may force its way on you via network effects.
This is why despite despising facebook for so many years I had to keep my account because for many people in my life they wouldn’t try to contact me outside of that platform. Nowadays I don’t care and there’s about 95% less interactions with people I know, but that’s fine- it was a conscious choice.
If my OS embedded a “sign in to facebook” in the top left hand corner that was always visible though, I’d not enjoy such things, because I despise facebook and would feel like the cross functionality is interfering with my enjoyment of something unrelated.
which has a killer feature of not everyone being there
Ha, this is so funny, but so true. Every time I compare the discourse here to anywhere else I’m consistently so happy that I found this place and that it is what it is. I don’t even post my own content anywhere else at this point because I don’t care what anywhere else has to say outside of lobste.rs
The main reason I worry about zed being too late is because Cursor is gaining so much traction and I feel that Zed is going to have a hard time competing, which means investing my time into using Zed (as I do) is a bit of a waste of time. Cursor has a huge advantage being based on VSCode (I see that as a disadvantage for me personally, but it doesn’t matter - practically it’s an advantage) so while Zed is trying to catch up on basic features and advanced features Cursor already has tons of stuff for free and appears ahead in the advanced stuff too (presumably because they can focus entirely on the AI stuff and reap the benefits of the VSCode extension world).
I’m unsure how it’ll play out but I think it’s probably fair to say that Zed is very behind in many areas compared to Cursor, that they are going after a similar audience, and that it’s unclear how Zed is going to compete against Cursor given this.
It just takes one feature. I switched from Atom to VSCode 8 or 9 years ago because they had better support for the Go debugger. At this point VSCode didn’t even have tabs and the maintainers were opposed to the concept. VSCode just took users one by one adding features that filled a niche until they beat Atom.
Zed is in the same situation today. It feels extremely fast compared to VSCode and that’s the reason I keep giving it a try. It can’t replace VSCode yet for my workflow but it’s getting closer. I hope they’ll move in the right direction.
Hm, I used VS Code when it launched and I distinctly remember it having tabs. The earliest screenshots I can find (one from August 2016 on this page) show tabs too. Maybe you mean tabs in the integrated terminal?
Nope, for a while the editor didn’t have tabs, just “Open editors” in the sidebar. Tabs were added around June 2016. Here’s the issue discussing adding tabs: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/224
Yeah, I think Zed has the speed advantage and Cursor won’t be able to close that gap for a long time. We’ll see if it pays off, I really hope so. I kinda hate vscode lol
Finally! This is the main thing that has prevented me from switching from VSCode to Zed so far. I rely a lot on the Git integration to stage the files and chunks I’ve finished working on so far, and VSCode’s UI is great for this. I don’t know if this will be enough for me to stick with Zed but I’ll surely give it a fair try.
I’m glad they’re taking time to work on actual features and not only AI integration or other gimmicks. Gimmicks and exploration are fine once you have a solid product with all the basics covered.
i try zed every couple of months because it surfaces in my feeds somehow. every time i end up rapidly stop using it because it presents itself as a multiplayer-first experience, and while you can use it without those features, there’s no way to “hide” them from your periphery. the “sign in” (to github, apparently? that’s ridiculous - i don’t use github unless i have to) button sits at the top right, the copilot at the bottom right.
some people use these things, sure. but some people - and i’d argue despite the bubble we live in seeming otherwise, most people - do not. there has been vehement opposition to even adding the option to hide that malarkey. instead they want it to sit there like a badge implying you’re doing something incorrectly.
until zed actually respects the user first i don’t really see the point in it. i’m not a foss or “offline, old ways” maximalist, i don’t use (neo)vim, i don’t use emacs, but i do appreciate the value in not trying to drag your user(s) around into what has still not been demonstrated to be anything other than garbage actively contributing in a meaningful way to climate concerns.
these things could be plugins. another (proprietary, information security focused) rust-based app i use introduced llm functionality semi-recently, and i (and others) rather firmly told them that if it stayed in core, i wouldn’t, due to security concerns. it got shifted to a plugin within a couple weeks.
i don’t expect everyone to share this opinion, because if there wasn’t demand for those features they probably wouldn’t have been implemented. i just really, really strongly disagree that a multiplayer notepad logged into github is “the future” of programming.
if it is, that’s pretty sad.
I don’t have anybody to multiplayer Zed with but I wouldn’t really call the features very obtrusive.
Zed is my main editor and I don’t use any of those features…
I think the occam’s interpretation of this is that their target user base does want these features, and folks who strongly disagree with it are not part of the target user base. And that’s okay. The solution doesn’t need to satisfy everyone.
The nature of multiplayer is though that once a platform gains supermajority you may be forced to use it anyway because everyone else is there, like with discord or social media.
\o
I use neither discord nor social media (excluding lobsters, which has a killer feature of not everyone being there).
Sure, but the parent is quite correct.
Very few people actually get to sit in a vacuum, as soon as you step outside and try interacting with the population: whatever software is the supermajority may force its way on you via network effects.
This is why despite despising facebook for so many years I had to keep my account because for many people in my life they wouldn’t try to contact me outside of that platform. Nowadays I don’t care and there’s about 95% less interactions with people I know, but that’s fine- it was a conscious choice.
If my OS embedded a “sign in to facebook” in the top left hand corner that was always visible though, I’d not enjoy such things, because I despise facebook and would feel like the cross functionality is interfering with my enjoyment of something unrelated.
Ha, this is so funny, but so true. Every time I compare the discourse here to anywhere else I’m consistently so happy that I found this place and that it is what it is. I don’t even post my own content anywhere else at this point because I don’t care what anywhere else has to say outside of lobste.rs
The absence of Git integration was one of the main reasons I gave up on Zed. Cool that they’re working on it now, but it’s too late for me.
Why do you feel it’s too late? It’s an editor, you can try as many as you like, and even use many at once.
yep, I can but I’m not interested anymore.
The main reason I worry about zed being too late is because Cursor is gaining so much traction and I feel that Zed is going to have a hard time competing, which means investing my time into using Zed (as I do) is a bit of a waste of time. Cursor has a huge advantage being based on VSCode (I see that as a disadvantage for me personally, but it doesn’t matter - practically it’s an advantage) so while Zed is trying to catch up on basic features and advanced features Cursor already has tons of stuff for free and appears ahead in the advanced stuff too (presumably because they can focus entirely on the AI stuff and reap the benefits of the VSCode extension world).
I’m unsure how it’ll play out but I think it’s probably fair to say that Zed is very behind in many areas compared to Cursor, that they are going after a similar audience, and that it’s unclear how Zed is going to compete against Cursor given this.
It just takes one feature. I switched from Atom to VSCode 8 or 9 years ago because they had better support for the Go debugger. At this point VSCode didn’t even have tabs and the maintainers were opposed to the concept. VSCode just took users one by one adding features that filled a niche until they beat Atom.
Zed is in the same situation today. It feels extremely fast compared to VSCode and that’s the reason I keep giving it a try. It can’t replace VSCode yet for my workflow but it’s getting closer. I hope they’ll move in the right direction.
Hm, I used VS Code when it launched and I distinctly remember it having tabs. The earliest screenshots I can find (one from August 2016 on this page) show tabs too. Maybe you mean tabs in the integrated terminal?
Nope, for a while the editor didn’t have tabs, just “Open editors” in the sidebar. Tabs were added around June 2016. Here’s the issue discussing adding tabs: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/224
Yeah, I think Zed has the speed advantage and Cursor won’t be able to close that gap for a long time. We’ll see if it pays off, I really hope so. I kinda hate vscode lol
Finally! This is the main thing that has prevented me from switching from VSCode to Zed so far. I rely a lot on the Git integration to stage the files and chunks I’ve finished working on so far, and VSCode’s UI is great for this. I don’t know if this will be enough for me to stick with Zed but I’ll surely give it a fair try.
I’m glad they’re taking time to work on actual features and not only AI integration or other gimmicks. Gimmicks and exploration are fine once you have a solid product with all the basics covered.
I find the notion of doing git in your editor absurd, but I guess that makes me a minority.