Pretentious title! Good start! I have nothing to add to this discussion. I just
like this editor and wanted to write something here that will remind me to use
it again in a while when/if it becomes available for Linux.
TLDR: I think this code editor is very cool and has a massive potential. I
hope they don’t mess up with adding a plugin ecosystem to it!
Out of morbid curiosity, I started using the Zed editor on
my Mac. Zed is a high-performance, multiplayer code editor developed by the
creators of Atom and Tree-sitter. Written in Rust so it has to be blazingly
fast! 😊 It's a joke, calm down.
Over the past year, I have switched between Helix
editor and VS
Code, but for the last couple of months, I have
been using Helix exclusively.
I've been genuinely impressed by Zed. When you open a file, it automatically
detects its type and downloads the corresponding LSP (language
server). The list of
supported languages is not extensive, but it's still impressive. It's a great
example of how to create a product that stays out of your way.
C code on a light theme.
For C development it downloaded clangd and setting
up missing dependencies in code was rather easy. For this project I use
SDL2 for rendering terminal emulator. It’s a hobby
project, don’t worry about it.
If you are going to give this a try and you are using C, I suggest checking two
files in the root of your project folder. If you don't have them, create them.
compile_flags.txt
-I/opt/homebrew/include
-I/opt/homebrew/include/SDL2
Easy way of checking what the appropriate includes for a specific library is to
use pkg-config and in my case pkg-config SDL2 --cflags-only-I. But this is
nothing new to C/C++ devs. Just a noter for people who are using Visual Studio.
.clang-format
ColumnLimit: 220
BasedOnStyle: Mozilla
I prefer Mozilla coding style for C so you can set that up.
They really have something special here. Although there is no version available
for Linux yet, I will stick to Helix. This impressive piece of engineering is,
above all, an amazing example of craftsmanship.
They have a bunch of amazing integrated functionalities like live desktop
sharing, code sharing in a live coding session. There is a lot of pretentious
marketing speak there but the product is still amazing!
For me the speed and the simplicity of the product was the most impressive
thing. You get that: it just works feeling. A rare thing in 2023.
They also managed to add Github Copilot
in a non obtrusive way. To me, everything feels very intentional and
specifically selected. It's minimal yet maximally effective.
It is a perfect balance between VS Code, Jetbrains IDE’s and something like VIM
or Helix.
I just hope they DON’T add plugin support and keep it like it is. They as a
vendor should add stuff to it with great deliberation and thought. And this way
the product will stay fast and focused. That’s my two cents.
Amazing job!