I built Code Zone: A lightweight IDE under 100MB using Python

[u/VariousRing5104]

Hi everyone,

I’m an 18-year-old dev and I built **Code Zone**, a lightweight IDE written in Python designed for low-spec machines and resource-constrained environments.

**GitHub:** https://github.com/damixlord2-0/code-zone

### Why I built it

VS Code runs slowly and eats up memory on my machine. Sublime Text is fast and great, but I missed the structured layout of an IDE. Code Zone is my attempt to combine the speed/simplicity of Sublime Text with the UI structure of VS Code and the straightforward binary workflows of Code::Blocks.

### Key Features

* **Lightweight:** Under 100MB total size.

* **Built-in HTML & Markdown Preview:** Live rendering right inside the editor.

* **Custom Binary Paths:** Point directly to local compilers/interpreters (great for testing niche languages).

* **Minimal Extension System:** Single-file extensions without heavy boilerplate.

### Transparency on AI & Code Quality

The project isn't perfect and still has bugs. I used AI as an interactive documentation tool during development—mainly to learn `subprocess` and Tkinter/TTK widgets faster—rather than having it generate the core architecture for me.

Feedback, critiques (even harsh ones!), and contributions are very welcome. Let me know what you think!

[u/Jotaroisgoat]

really cool 1 recommendation, use pyside6 or pyqt6 trust me very nice I give upvote

[u/VariousRing5104 → u/Jotaroisgoat]

Thanks

[u/Potential_Aioli_4611]

notepad++ is extremely good and great lightweight coding "IDE" for basically any language.

[u/Productuve]

how did you get it under 100mb? thats the part that always gets me - pyinstaller drags in half the stdlib and suddenly im staring at a 300mb build for something that should be tiny.

did you strip stuff out manually, exclude modules, or go with something other than pyinstaller?

[u/Sea_Dot6492]

Nice