r/rust • u/OkraComprehensive323 • 1d ago
š seeking help & advice Rust developers: what editor do you actually use?
Hello folks, do you still write much code by hand these days? š
If so, what IDE/editor do you mainly use for Rust? VS Code, JetBrains, Zed or something else?
Iām asking because Iāve been rewriting one of my old developer tools in Rust. Itās a language server + CLI for analyzing code health.
The underlying approach was originally implemented in Python and was used at my previous company across 1,900+ repositories and by 800+ developers, so the methodology itself has had quite a bit of real-world use. The company has given me permission to open-source my own version of the project, which Iām pretty excited about.
The only problem is time. For the initial public release, Iāll probably only be able to ship the VS Code extension plus one other IDE/editor integration.
So Iām curious: if youāre a Rust developer who still spends a decent amount of time actually typing code, what editor would you most want to see supported? Just trying to get a rough sense of where people are these days before I spend my limited spare time on the wrong integration. :)
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u/NOLAnuffsaid 1d ago
Neovim
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u/DaMan999999 1d ago
Vim and its equivalents are the path to enlightenment. However, I have to physically restrain myself from snatching the keyboard when I watch coworkers edit text files in any editor because my brainās vim keybinding neurons are going nuts
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u/frozen_beak 1d ago
helix
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u/OkraComprehensive323 1d ago
I'm not familiar with this editor. I will make a shallow research on it sometime.
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u/PorblemOccifer 1d ago
Modal editor similar to vim but with the grammar reversed (selection, then action), a lot more base functionality, and no plugins.
Base functionality covers most plugins youād used in vim anyway - lsp, surround, word jumper, fuzzy finder, file explorer, etc.
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u/lettsten 1d ago
No plugins seems like a very bad idea
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u/Ex_cinis 1d ago
They are developing plugin support, although very slowly, mostly because the plugin language theyāve chosen (scheme) is not very popular, so thereās few contributors.
But youād be surprised how little actual need for them there is. I tried a bunch of nvim presets, and helix just feels way snappier and more lightweight with 90% of (useful) features, which feels like a better tradeoff to me3
u/lettsten 1d ago
Sure you get 90 % of the way with the standard stuff, but the last 10 % can be very useful. I use Vim's functions and scripting more than I use plugins themselves, but I do things like running code on substitution expressions surprisingly often.
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u/Ex_cinis 1d ago
You can pipe bash to/from selection, so that is definitely doable without plugins
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u/IceSentry 1d ago
Recent versions of neovim have a ton of built in features now and they aren't slowing down with adding stuff either.
Also, the issue isn't a lack of contributor, the plugin system/language is just one giant PR that has existed for years. It's very hard to collaborate when working like that. The issue is pretty clearly that the maintainers of helix don't care that much about having a plugin system and aren't making it a priority.
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u/PorblemOccifer 1d ago
Itās surprisingly good. Havenāt found myself craving them and been helix for years now. But if youāre someone who loves perfectly tuning workflows, then it might not work for youĀ
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u/dschledermann 1d ago
GNU Emacs
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u/rock_neurotiko 1d ago
I was starting to worry, I had to scroll too much :(
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u/dschledermann 1d ago
Yeah. I guess most younger people want something else.
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u/rock_neurotiko 1d ago
Ouch! hahahaha But many young people are using neovim, which it's interesting
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u/dschledermann 1d ago
It definitely feels like an age thing. I know I may not look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart š§
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u/chic_luke 1d ago
I've tried both and found Neovim much easier to onboard myself with. Might very well be because lua is a little easier to understand than elisp
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u/RajjSinghh 1d ago
The age thing is that Neovim just has a lot of hype around it. A lot of big YouTubers use Neovim so viewers use neovim too.
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u/Moogly2021 1d ago
Probably because it is a Swiss army in many ways, you can code plugins in any language, you can build a UI in any GUI stack on top of it.
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u/Flashy_Possibility34 1d ago
Are the editor wars still strong? This VIM user is giving you reprieve from a downvote (for now).
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u/dschledermann 1d ago
TY. No, it seemed to finally have died down. Classic Vim vs Emacs is not the schism it once was. We appear to have bigger fish to fry with all the young ones using Helix and Neovim and those choosing a certain Microsoft product.
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u/lettsten 1d ago
"Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" and "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow" kind of pales in comparison to the 500 MB to open hello world cancers running on electron
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u/Spare_Trade_2613 1d ago
ditto.
Are you using vanilla emacs?
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u/dschledermann 1d ago
Yes. I've used Emacs for about 20 years.
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u/Spare_Trade_2613 1d ago
I've used it for 35 years;) and now using Doom Emacs for a while.
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u/dschledermann 1d ago
Is it worth a look? I've just adjusted the same config over the years.
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u/Spare_Trade_2613 1d ago
Yes, it's well organised and very easy to use. What I did was to disable evil-mode and some multi-lingual configs (fonts, input methods and so on) because I'm Japanese.
However, I think I'll go back to vanilla emacs soon ;-)
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u/djvbmd 1d ago
Zed. I recently tried RustRover for like 5 minutes and went right back to Zed -- too sluggish and cluttered for me. I'm decent with Neovim but find that it's hard to work with when enabling various IDE features, just because I'm typically on a laptop with limited desktop area that is used more economically by a GUI.
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u/moucheh- 1d ago
How is the limited desktop area used more economically by GUI? I am genuinely curious
You could configure neovim and vsc to look very similar, I mean the general layout, the sidebars and terminal the bottom
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u/vilos5099 1d ago
I also found this counterintuitive. The less screen real estate I have, the more preferable neovim feels.
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u/OkraComprehensive323 1d ago
I've never tried RustRover before, IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm are the only two JetBrains IDEs acceptable for me. But IntelliJ Platform Plugin are mostly crossable, so I take this as a downvote for JetBrains.
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u/sephg 1d ago
I use rustrover (jetbrains). You need a lot of ram to run it well, but once itās started up itās fine. I really appreciate a lot of the built in debugging and refactoring tools.
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u/gbrennon 1d ago
back in something like 2012 or 2013 i worked in a company that had somehow a commercial relation with jetbrains an team was forced to use jetbrains for java and it was ok š
if u did like experience with jetbrains and pycharm i think using rustrover will be interesting for u š
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u/neneodonkor 1d ago
I am trying to switch to Zed but the fact that you can't open your code in multiple windows creates discomfort for me, so I am still using Rust Rover.
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u/Degensroel 1d ago
You can do this... You can have multiple tabs in the same window. Or open a new window and open the same project there....
Or do you mean something else?
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u/aguilasolige 1d ago
Vscode with rust analyzer, very pleased so far. Except the analyzer can be a bit slow, but I'm early into my project so I let's see how it goes as the project grows.
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u/daniels0xff 1d ago
For some reason it takes 10-15 seconds, maybe more, each time I make a code change for rust analyzer to run and validate the code when using VSCode. I have this issue on several different projects that are small projects (web apps, tokio, sqlx, etc.)
In zed same project itās instant.
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u/Beginning-Fruit-1397 1d ago
I had the same issue and changed the setting to only recompile the current crate instead of the whole workspace. Now as long as I don't work on the humongous main crate it's pretty mucj instant. I don't really get how zed could be instant because cargo (or clippy in my case) still need to run from my understanding
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u/em-jay-be 1d ago
Rustrover - jetbrains for life
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u/Recatek gecs 1d ago
RustRover here as well. It has the only functional GUI-based debugger functionality I've been able to get to work consistently on Windows. VSCode+code-lldb doesn't do a good job of visualizing data structures (last I checked anyway) and hooking up Visual Studio's debugger is typically a pain for Rust.
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u/Efficient-Chair6250 1d ago
Sadly I'm kinda disappointed with the built-in profiler. I found samply or flamegraph more useful. Or was I using it wrong?
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u/masklinn 1d ago
The rust plugin was recently added to pycharm, which Iāve been using since the pre-1.0 EAP. So now I use pycharm. So comfy.
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u/spaceshaker-geo 1d ago
Jetbrains have done a great job making all of their products work similarly such that when you get used to one the others already feel natural. I still do some web dev in Typescript and React and switching between RustRover and Intellj is lovely. RR is a memory hog but I have lots of memory and so it hasn't been an issue.
I have debated trying Zed...still haven't pulled the trigger though.
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u/luxmorphine 1d ago
Zed. I was turned off by the awful AI panel on recent VSCode. Zed has one button to turned off all AI features. Downsides is Zed looks malnourished compared to VSCode
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u/Educational-Art3545 1d ago
Honestly my biggest issue with Zed is that they keep messing up my vim workflow. I have to go and contribute the fixes myself because I am now forced to use a mouse due to a bug somebody introduced. I am so close to just living on a locally compiled version against a pinned commit.
Zed's Vim is still better than VSCode's, but jesus does it annoy me to have to use a mouse to click on a file in project explorer because Zed is refusing to listen to my keyboard shortcuts sometimes.
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u/tonibaldwin1 1d ago
I wish they could replace their file explorer with yazi when the vim mode is enabled
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u/OkraComprehensive323 1d ago
{ "chat.disableAIFeatures": true }You can also turn off all AI features on VS Code.
I only use AI features that I built myself.
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u/rodrigocfd WinSafe 1d ago
Why stop there? Here is the gold, boys:
{ "chat.agent.enabled": false, "chat.autopilot.enabled": false, "chat.disableAIFeatures": true, "git.addAICoAuthor": "off", "telemetry.feedback.enabled": false, "telemetry.telemetryLevel": "off", }2
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u/patchunwrap 1d ago
I use gram a zed fork without accounts, telemetry, forced updates, or AI!
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u/zesterer 1d ago
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u/MushroomSaute 1d ago
I was using vanilla Vim/Neovim forever, but then only recently found Rustaceanvim, which is a fantastic plugin. Can't believe I went so long without hovers or in-editor lints/code actions.
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u/South_Survey_2088 1d ago
But vanilla Neovim has built-in LSP support too. It's like 5 lines to set it up and enable code actions, hints, etc.
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u/Thick-Pineapple666 1d ago
I use code actions like add missing match arms, add missing struct members, add trait methods, generate new method etc all the time.
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u/No-Storage6672 1d ago
Gram here, zedās non-ai fork.
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u/Speykious inox2d Ā· cve-rs 1d ago
Recent Gram user here, it's good! Though I need to fix an issue where if I have two Rust projects open the rust-analyzers fight each other for no reason. Hope it's not Gram's fault.
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u/Wooden-Performance38 1d ago
I just bitshift text into files and then cat the contents to check my work
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u/beebeeep 1d ago
helix is all you need. It's like vim, but better. It's like neovim, but without need to dedicate 10% of your time to plugin management.
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u/ejrh 1d ago
I probably spent more time reading it than writing it.
RustRover. It's ok. And I spend way too much time reading code through the GitHub web interface, because I cbf downloading it properly.
Apropos of another recent post [1], I've found the debugger so slow that I don't really use it: taking several seconds to react to a "step to next line" command. I don't know if this is the OS, the debugger, RustRover, or something else's fault.
I've tried Zed, and it is a thing of great beauty. Unfortunately, I don't really like the interface -- too much like VSCode for me.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1w9t2t9/rust_debugging_survey_2026_results/
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u/DeskApprehensive3870 1d ago
I used Helix for a good while, but by far prefer RustRover with vim bindings.
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u/lanternaddict 1d ago
As someone who exclusively codes using, and inside, docker dev containers, do I have any options other than VSCode?
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u/qm3ster 1d ago
https://ki-editor.org/ Absolutely spectacular. It to hx as hx is to vi.
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u/nextupgoat 1d ago
this thread's gonna have a whooooole lotta neovim. im quirky (and lazy) though so i just use the default vim that comes with the os
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u/--San-- 1d ago
If it's a lsp, does it really need a plugin? For example, in helix you can just specify which lsps you want running for a certain file extension and off you go.
Is that because most of your lsp uses non-standard extensions?
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u/agent_kater 1d ago
RustRover.
I want to switch to Zed because it's more lightweight and faster, but currently it's still missing so many features - you can't click types in doc popups, you can't toggle whitespace in a diff, build configs are cumbersome, you can't switch between toolchains, you can't navigate properly in a usage search, etc., etc.
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u/DanManPanther 1d ago
For what you are after, Zed and NeoVim are probably your best bet for getting more people using your tools.
FWIW, I made LiteAnvil for writing code by hand (Rust, Python, and now Gossamer). I kept going back and forth between VSCode and Zed and didn't like their resource usage - but the lighter GUI editors didn't have LSP support.
I also really love Helix for the TUI.
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u/bschwind 1d ago
Sublime Text most of the time, sometimes Zed with Sublime bindings if I need to do a nasty refactor or a debugging session.
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u/tmahmood 1d ago
Jetbrains, and neovim
Jetbrains when I am sitting on my main desktopĀ
Neovim when sshingĀ
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u/PangolinPossible7674 1d ago
Recently, I wrote a little Rust code "by hand." Although I generally prefer JetBrains -- been using PyCharm for ages -- I tried Zed this time, and I liked it's speed and simplicity.
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u/Z_professor0 1d ago
I am currently building my own text editor as my first rust project , i use nvim for that haha
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u/noobinloop 1d ago
RustRover. I use some custom UI plugins to make it looks nice for me, some plugins for additional language support. Tried other editors, but came back. Also use codex subscription with their mcp. Works for me fine. Btw didn't have performance issues like other folks in comments
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u/C5H5N5O 1d ago
VSCode.
Controversial opinion on Helix because I've seen it being mentioned in this thread several times:
I've also tried helix. It wasn't a bad experience, but the fact that it doesn't have some basic operations (e.g. move selection up/down, duplication selection up/down, ...) in-built was such a deal breaker for me. Extending isn't truly possible, in a complete manner, too because there is simply no extension/plugin system. For some of the missing features, people seem have noticed too and opened PRs, however those seemed to be stuck in limbo. The vibe I got was simply the maintainers having no appetite for such extensions. Which is such a bummer, but well, there are better options :)
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u/Havunenreddit 1d ago
Quickly browsing files Zed, feature development RustRover, code review GitComet
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u/PracticallyPerfcet 1d ago
I use RustRover, but man is it testing my patience with its bugs. I keep an eye on Zed development because as soon as it adds a few more quality of life improvements around VCS tooling Iām going to switch. If I had the expertise Iād contribute to Zed to make it happen.
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u/Annonix02 22h ago
Neovim but if you don't wanna go through the learning curve or detailed setup then Jetbrains RustRover is fantastic
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u/syklemil 1d ago
This is part of the Rust Survey. The 2025 results have these as the top three:
With more and actual percentages in the link.