I'll try it once Linux support kinda works
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Don't understand why they made it mac only, I don't think mac users are even aware of other apps than what Apple tells them.. :)
It seems that a lot of their responses have been along the lines of: "Well, it's because I have a Mac. Good luck if you don't!"
I understand that, sure, but they would have had a lot more support for this editor if it was for Linux. Now I barely ever hear about it at all in the news.
Hot take: but I think it makes sense. If anyone would pay for a closed source editor it's mac developers hence it made sense to chose that as your first platform to support, especially considering that they are a small startup. I don't use mac either but I think they made the right choice from a business standpoint when they were still closed source.
It is open source
Hence the wording, right decision back when they were closed source :)
it only went open-source last week
Well yeah, I guess mac users are more used to paying for things, that's true.
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A code editor developed for mac is a massive no go. as in forever.
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Me as I read through the main page: this keeps getting better.
Goes to download it
oh…
Like, for real, wtf
Don't worry! I was also frustrated by the fact that there is only a macOS version available, but after a little digging, I found this on their FAQ:
Q: What platforms does Zed support?
A: As of now, we only support macOS.
[...]
As a general timeframe, you can expect us to begin work on supporting these platforms [Linux and Windows] after Zed is open source, but before version 1.0. Any news will be posted to our platform-tracking issues.
See also this issue. It seems like they have already begun making a Linux version.
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I looked for it in nixpkgs yesterday and was confused as to why it wasn't there 😮💨
I’m using Pulsar now which is just Atom but updated.
It's excellent as an all-purpose IDE.
A bit of gratuitous self promotion but just to let people know if you liked Atom and are still using it or maybe you migrated to a new editor and still miss Atom, it was forked as Pulsar which is entirely community-led and is seeing a lot of active development to bring it up to date. We also have a lemmy community at [email protected]
Thank you for your work on Pulsar.
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I was kind of put off when I saw collaborative mode, office channels bla bla. I guess because there is no point in trying to combine slack with a code editor. Do the code editor and do it good and that would be enough. When it is like this though, it feels like they are trying to throw in some popular stuff into the mix because it will help marketing.
Idk, without a good collaborative mode there's really not much you can do to differentiate yourself from existing options. Without some feature like that it's hard to think of a reason to build yet another text editor.
maybe a couple years ago but for instance I think AI is definitely becoming more realistically applicable with each iteration. It could definitely be used more to remove some of the boiler plates in coding, like simple unit tests etc.
Also there are IDEs which are very good for their specific languages but I feel like it is hard to find a reliable editor that has core IDE capabilities for many languages (like go to function definitions, code linting etc). I even started using VIM because of this but I just can't get used to modal editors and feel like there is no point in using VIM if I am only using %5 of its capabilities.
As far as I've seen many code Ai assistants operate over the LSP framework and work in most editors, and maybe a chat window that's pretty easy to add to most editors via a plug-in. Adding something like live collaboration is a bit more legwork
What features do you feel are missing from something like vscode? I'm a long time vim/neovim user but most of my co workers use vscode for everything with no complaints. I've actually been pretty jealous of stuff like jupyter integration.
If you can't get used to vim, it might be worth checking out something like Helix it's editing model is a bit different and clicks better for some people.
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Road to Linux might be interesting to all linux users
So... after 9 years the guy finally realized that web technologies aren't good for something that should be fast and handle large files. And he seems to be aiming towards some collaborative / cloud money grab.
... and he goes on to use Metal of all things, instead of Vulkan/MoltenVK, smh. I wouldn't expect the Linux version to see the light of day anytime soon.
Well I guess he did it because it’s easier 😂 I don’t even get why this project exits, the gains over Sublime Text are minimal and people tend to go with VSCode because it’s free or some Jetbrains product for serious work because it’s way superior than all the other options.
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It's a code editor with no Linux version. It can go on the shelf next to Arc, the browser "for tech people."
Can confirm that’s it’s very fast. Just lacking plugins at the moment.
I will watch it with great interest
I hope it gets there. I was a sublime user until vs code's integrations got so far ahead that the productivity gains outweighed the slowness, but I really want it to be faster.
Do zed plugins have to be written in rust? If they do then that will slow community contributions since it's not as popular as JavaScript for vs code.
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Sounds exactly like atom... until they killed atom
Atom was never fast
Exactly.
Atom being open source was why I switched to it from Sublime.
Atom's shitty performance was why I switched away to VS Code.
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I have it installed on my work laptop and give it a try every few updates. I really like it. The vim emulation is pretty fleshed out and it definitely feels a lot faster than VScode.
I believe it's kind of out of scope of the project at the moment, but I'd really love to see debugger support. It's the only thing keeping me on VS code
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How does it compare against Lapce?
Lapse is going the extensions-for-features route, cross platform from the start, is more buggy atm, slower progress (doesn't have 3 dedicated experienced devs) but is more accepting of community support.
Zed, similar goals and rust backend, probably has some monetization goals (eventual offering of live sharing code service), and Zed isn't afraid to hardcode features. Like... very hard hardcoded features, to the point that I'm kinda concerned about it. This 5min clip of Theo looking over the source code shows it pretty well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOYp6-k9HhE&t=1533
The Atom/Zed devs write the most well-documented code I've ever read. Clear variable names, perfect comment-explainations when needed, etc. I wish they would join up with Lapse.
Can you be more specific on these concerning hardcoded features?
If you're asking about specific names of features, its just the ones seen in that video clip. It seems like a pattern of very not-modular-ness.
If you're asking why that pattern is concerning as an end user: Zed claims to be "a lightweight text editor". But hardcoded support for a particular javascript library, as well as hardcoded support for a particular formatter, feels a lot more like a opinionated IDE packed with features designed for the specific workflows of the creators. Even if there's no runtime cost, there is a technical cost for open source contributors. These little not-modular things can really bloat the codebase and make it hard to contribute.
More importantly, if Zed does add plugin support in the future, its going to require a major code refactor. Which makes forks and outside contributions especially hard.
From a lock-in perspetive: if something better than tailwind comes out, and we were daily driving Sublime 3 with no extensions, its no big deal to switch to the new thing. There wasn't any hidden favoritism to begin with. But in Zed, not only will it feel bad to use the unsupported new thing, but also the team behind the-new-thing can't realistically fork and add support either. They just have to hope the Zed devs decide to support it.
If their website said it was a fast low-overhead opinionated IDE I'd be fine because I'd know the kind of lock-in I was getting into.
Maybe it will be more stable and have more features than Lapce. I think so because I tried Lapce yesterday, and it was so buggy on my machine. But no doubt Lapce is a solid alternative to VSCodium and it has all the features that I want but it lacks customization and is buggy for me. I am still not sure for Zed though because I didn't tried it yet and waiting for Linux support.
All those features + vim mode, damn can't wait 🤤
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