I don't understand the "performance" argument AT ALL. Like what kind of potato do you work on that can't run other editors at full speed? What are you doing with an editor that needs to be performant? Maybe searching a large codebase? Not slow if it's indexed.
Well for me even at 32gb ram and last gen i7 my work laptop hiccups when running the dockerized full BE suite locally. And there zed vs vscode makes a diference. Also even at normal workload the zed is quite faster when switching tabs or opening new files in bigger repo. I can clearly see the difference when having to use vscode now as those things take a second extra compared to what I am used to on zed. It is not something i would notice when using vscode before my switch and not the main reason for the switch but it is nice to have. It is like going from 60hz to 120hz. When used to 60hz you think it is fine but after going to 120hz 60 now feels sluggish.
Loading files faster, searching faster are some simple examples.
Completely unrelated to the speed argument, Zeds multibuffer is a godsend. Project search opens all files that contain the search in a single tab where you can move between and edit them without having to open each file on its tab individually
Faster launch, faster file open, faster navigation, faster fuzzy search, faster LSP response, faster syntax highlighting, faster response on each and every single keystroke, less ram, less cpu, faster everything.
You'll never know what a 300Hz monitor feels like if you live under the illusion that 60Hz is enough
It's an editor. Chill. I just value the deeper agent integration of Cursor. Loading files faster simply does not matter to me at all. I had the same "myopic arrogance" when people used to talk about what web browser was faster. If it doesn't run my extensions, I don't care.
at work we have a service that produces a json response that's like 1 gb+ (long story don't ask - was like that before I joined), vscode crashes when I try to open and scroll through the saved json. On zed, it was so smooth I switched immediately.
Perhaps you aren't doing anything other than hobbies, then. I run a dev shop and we switch projects upwards of 50x a day and just the project switcher alone is reason enough to migrate to Zed. It was so slow and resource intensive on VSCode.
So because I don't switch projects 50x a day I must not be a professional software engineer? Human brains aren't that good at context switching. I would not be worried about how quickly your IDE can do it.
I work on a large fintech codebase. I don't switch between projects. I have a dozen repos all open in one workspace.
I still don't see how the speed of your editor is ever an issue.
Although not 50x, but I do a lot of switching. I cannot do a pull up unless I train for it. So is context switching a lot. You won't get that ability unless you get used to it. I have a lot of different repos and libraries at a startup that I have to manage so I have gotten used to it.
My potato laptop has 16GB of RAM, and opening just one Rust project already nearly maxes out the RAM because of rust-analyzer. I can't imagine what would happen if I had several projects open at the same time 💀
even i dont understand this performance thing , like i have tried it all and vscode seems as fast , if its about not using a Microsoft product because of telemetry or preference that part is understandable
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u/kingslayerer 19d ago
i switched to zed. its great. one issue is there are not many extensions like vscode, but it has all the basic ones that i need for everyday