[coldtea]

What exactly is phenomenal and novel about Zed? I've tried it a couple of times for a week or so, didn't see the point, and moved on every time.

And I'm not luddite swearing by vi or something, I use VSCode and Idea, and have used Sublime for many years, Xcode on/off for some Obj-C/Swift dev, Eclipse for 5-6 years in the 2000s, and vim for everything cli/lightweight since forever.

Is the GUI tech what's supposed to be novel? I couldn't care less about that backend in my everyday editor use as long as the editor is fast enough. Which on modern hardware, even Idea is.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good editor still.

[ricardobeat]

Currently on this machine: using 900MB of RAM, including all language servers, with nine open projects - that is pretty phenomenal. VSCode could barely keep one open with the same memory.

The perception of 'fast' is very subjective. To me having a smooth, jitter-free UI, low input latency, and instant startup, all matter a lot.

[coldtea]

It's amazing that a gig of ram is considered lightweight for having 8 project dirs open in an editor, which normally means 8 tree views and a few open file tabs per project :)

[ricardobeat]

Even more amazing that 10GB for the same purpose is considered acceptable. ± 100MB for window, project files, LSP servers, ASTs etc is something very few editors can achieve - I'm pretty sure Zed beats both Emacs and Neovim in memory consumption.

[Dylan16807]

"Including all language servers" is a big part of that. I hope.

[psychoslave]

I’ll stick to my butterflies.

[nosrepa]

Good 'ol C-x M-c M-butterfly

[Zetaphor]

I understand wanting your software to be well optimized, but at no point in my years of using VSCode have I ever actually had to care about how much RAM it's using. I have 32GB, I'm going to use it.

[bigstrat2003]

I, too, would like to use my RAM. And I would like to be able to use it on the things I deem important, not to subsidize the laziness of devs who reach for Electron.

[coldtea]

>I, too, would like to use my RAM.

I'd like to BETTER use my RAM, and have faster programs to boot (as programs who overuse RAM also are slower than more optimized ones).

[chamomeal]

I made the mistake of buying an 8 GB macbook air m3 a while ago, thinking it would be enough. I wasn't accounting for docker or vscode. It REALLY lags. The vim mode plugin will regularly lag on nearly every keystroke, until I kill everything and restart.

On the topic of vim, the built-in vim mode in zed is really good. The helix mode is great too!!

[jimbokun]

Maybe use it to run a small local LLM + Zed instead of just VS Code?

(I’m probably off on how much memory it takes to run a small LLM, but still.)

[PurpleRamen]

VS Code is also offering significant more ability than Zed at the moment. If you want to sell RAM-usage as a phenomenal benefit, then you should compare it with similar editors, like Sublime or (Neo)Vim.

[bluecheese452]

But why have 9 open projects?

Like the vast majority of the time I have one. If I want to switch projects I close and then reopen.

On the other hand if it was smoother on one large project that would be an advantage.

[OccamsMirror]

My experience with Zed differed. On Linux I found it to be very memory hungry.

[pjmlp]

A side effect of Electron crap, before Zed many editors and IDEs on Atari, Amiga, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, Mac OS, NeXTSTEP, were written in fully native code.

[feelamee]

I heard that Zed has very impressive collaboration features. I tried them a little and they really look well (like discord, but directly in editor). But this was very superficial look

[theteapot]

VSCode extensions and the ecosystem is a security time-bomb. Zed looks to be doing things better.

[TiredOfLife]

Zed literally downloads random executables and runs them by default without asking

[theteapot]

What?! Really?! Link? I'm not a Zed user. That comment was based off a few minutes of research, and I guess a small dose hopium of a VSCode user and understanding what a shit show the extensions setup is and wanting someone to do better.

[drdaeman]

Yep, it pulls stuff from at least npm, it’s not a secret - check the source code.

Actually it pulls latest versions (checking registry then installing that exact version, not sure why they sidestep normal resolution algorithms) no matter what .npmrc may say, so min-release-age breaks almost everywhere it integrates with JS/TS ecosystem (most visibly, Copilot). I probably should’ve filed an issue.

It also installs Go packages but I haven’t looked into that.

[nopurpose]

Recent example I looked at: https://github.com/nilskch/zed-jj-lsp, which downloads jj-lsp if not found in the system. I have seen other extensions doing similar for convenience, but can't remember names to give concrete links.

[Intralexical]

Copying my own comment below, with GH links and my (non-AI) summary after skimming:

> https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7054

> https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12589

> TL;DR: Mix of language tooling, unsigned proprietary blobs, corrupted and/or GLIBC-dependent files, redundant copies of already-installed executables. The Node packages especially are able to run scripts on install. Personal preference aside, might also create issues with security laws, certifications. All without user consent.

> Issues opened in January and June 2024. They've been rejected, closed, and opened a couple times since then. No changes directly improving this yet as of April 2026.

So... If you want broad language support via LSP servers, then you're going to have to bring in other ecosystems, and Node/Typescript is a big one that doesn't always have alternatives. [0] That's not a Zed-specific problem.

IMO the real issue with Zed is the "runs them by default without asking" part. Plus the questionable practices with binary blobs and the cavalier attitude in the discussions, when I can just use an editor that... Doesn't do any of that.

[0] https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/impleme...

[panzi]

What are they doing with proprietary binary blobs? I thought it's open source.

[TiredOfLife]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40902826

[asyncze]

Yes, this is annoying. When doing editor testing, I always also have to open the activity monitor and force quit all extra processes started by Zed.