why.. why change editor , Visual Studio Code can do it all. Big ole sledge hammer of an editor. Ready for to install any number of extension ready to take a chunk of ram to only run half speed. It’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be VsCode has pushed editor to be more than getting text on screen. VS code has been out since 2015, I started with Atom and quickly moved to Visual Studio Code. It has been my primary way I created code, and what I use daily for work.
I like to take a look around form time to time and see what competitor to Visual Studio Code. The one that peeks my interest and really like is ZED. Built from the ground up, so NOT A FORK VS code, Keep the market diverse. Written in RUST, so fast and performant is the name of the game. Extension are there and growing. Ability to have all the all the AI option and coding capability, and it’s free.
Zed is refreshing and snappy. the VIM keybinding are pretty good, I’m no expert but i seems to capture the features that I use. Use it for my daily driver and stay current with the updates. Speaking of updates like most of 2025 Zed got AI, I use it but not to the extent of others. but anyway Zed has it and does pretty well. Ohh one other thing is that the internal editor terminal is uses Alacritty, which is one of my terminal that I use.
If you are VS code power user then it could cause you some trouble switch, to be honest you would have trouble switching to anything. There is one issue I have is that I work in a mono-repo, nested repos and the workspace isn’t as clean or nice to work with as the VS code. DO WHAT YOU WANT, if it keeps you in the code. My concern is that don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. As in wanting to keep competition alive and not have one company rule the developer ecosystem.
Don’t like VS code
- terminal is not fun or fast
- too much there, overwhelming
- gear toward Mouse
- Slow and likes it’s memory
- old news, 2015
Zed makes it
grn-> rename all instancescrtl + r-> open AI- multibuffer: find all repo and replace all instances
cmd + shift + L - collaborative panel -> connect to people in the editor
- Native support for debugging
- cross platform , windows linux and mac
- Good docs
- snippets
- task, editor scripts
- good vim, helix mode like a vim