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You can now disable all AI features in Zed

zed.dev

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Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#151

Post by jeffbee »

senbrow wrote: post #90

Total nitpick, but: Why would you name an option "disable_ai" with a default value of false instead of calling it "enable_ai" with a default value of true? Are there some mechanical semantics I'm missing here that make this beneficial? Negative booleans (ie that remove or suppress something when true) are generally a source of confusion and bugs and should be avoided like the plague in my experience.

IMHO flags like this should always reflect the planned steady state. If you plan for a feature to be on in general, then the flag should be a disabling flag that eventually goes away.

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#152

Post by roguecoder »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #137

Why is a code editor negging me? "Even if you're skeptical [of genAI], these tools are quickly becoming part of how software gets built." Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. I am thankful Zed added this feature and most of the post seems reasonable, but it's still the height of weird that they feel compelled to say this— obviously it's not how software gets built by the people who are avoiding…

Especially given the recent study that found people felt more productive while objectively getting less done.

It's like saying, "marijuana is rapidly becoming a part of how people get through their day, but we understand not everyone wants to spend their day high."

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#153

Post by vouaobrasil »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #128
guluarte wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i use nvim and arch btw

I hand write all my code directly in binary.

I do that too, and then execute it by hand as well, looking up every instruction on paper and changing the registers on paper as needed.

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#154

Post by debugnik »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #34
neoden wrote: post #24

Sadly, I came back to using VS Code recently. There's a lot to like in Zed but imo that decision to write their own rendering framework is unfortunate, because of ridiculous problems in Linux still not resolved like poor font rendering, especially on low-DPI screens, or visible lags of UI which is being developed to be blazingly fast. So far, VS Code is faster for me.

+1 I've explored Atom when it was the hot thing, and more recently, an IDE called Lapce, which is built in Rust and doesn't use Electron. They've been great, but the lack of an ecosystem stares glaringly right at your face. I don't like Electron apps but VSCode gets the job done. I have my entire set of plugins and things installed here and now the productivity that I get off this setup even exceeded my long-loved Je…

> VSCode fork that can work with any VSCode plugin

Technically yes, but if you care about legally, you can't use extensions from Microsoft's marketplace, which excludes Microsoft's own closed extensions such as WSL/SSH/devcontainer remoting and Pylance. It ships with Open VSX instead.

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#155

Post by johnfn »

int_19h wrote: post #96
alternatex wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not alone. The only reason I struggle to onboard to Zed is the design. They're doing an incredible job with the editor, but I have never seen a more bland design in any IDE. It's genuinely so bad that it affects my productivity in it. I'm a fan of Visual Studio and VS Code dark themes, I don't need anything special.

Isn't "bland" design precisely what you'd want from an IDE? To help you focus on the code and all that? It's been a while since I last looked at Zed, so I just started it again, and it ... looks like your average macOS app? Which to me sounds pretty much ideal.

Nothing wrong with bland, but a well-designed IDE does a good job using the UI to allow you to parse information as fast as possible. For instance, compare the autocomplete popover in Zed to VSCode. The VSCode popover:

- Has icons. These are so useful for parsing information quickly!!

- Shows the type information in a different color than the field name. There is spacing between the type name, and the type is smaller.

The Zed autocomplete popover is a solid wall of (almost entirely) monochrome text, all the same size. It is significantly harder to parse. I use the autocomplete popover probably thousands of times a day. These subtle things make a big difference.

Is the Zed popover bland? Yes. Is the VSCode popover flashy? Not really, it's just utilitarian - clearly designed by someone who understood how important every detail is.

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#157

Post by zzo38computer »

nlitened wrote: post #141
senbrow wrote: post #90

Total nitpick, but: Why would you name an option "disable_ai" with a default value of false instead of calling it "enable_ai" with a default value of true? Are there some mechanical semantics I'm missing here that make this beneficial? Negative booleans (ie that remove or suppress something when true) are generally a source of confusion and bugs and should be avoided like the plague in my experience.

It's good and predictable that all boolean settings to be false by default (when not set). And the default behavior is the one that is compatible with older version — changing the defaults is a breaking change that should usually be avoided.

Yes, this is especially useful if the boolean settings are stored in a bit field, in my opinion. In the case of Zed, according to the article, it uses JSON, but if a program uses a bit field instead then it would make sense.

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#158

Post by S04dKHzrKT »

cookiengineer wrote: post #103
guluarte wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i use nvim and arch btw

> i use nvim and arch btw ^ Has C# projects on github. Don't think that statement is true. I use vim, kitty, and arch btw

> ^ Has C# projects on github. Don't think that statement is true.

Why?

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#159

Post by Hamuko »

cgag wrote: post #29
neoden wrote: post #24

Sadly, I came back to using VS Code recently. There's a lot to like in Zed but imo that decision to write their own rendering framework is unfortunate, because of ridiculous problems in Linux still not resolved like poor font rendering, especially on low-DPI screens, or visible lags of UI which is being developed to be blazingly fast. So far, VS Code is faster for me.

Doing their own rendering is one of the most attractive things about it imo. I am on macos though.

Text rendering is awful on macOS too. I can’t even consider switching from Sublime Text because of it.

Re: You can now disable all AI features in Zed

#160

Post by scbrg »

anttiharju wrote: post #148
vouaobrasil wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, "enable_ai" doesn't imply that all AI features are really turned off. Without context, it might imply that some basic AI features exist and "enable_ai" just enables further features. "disable_ai" is unambiguous.

My pet peeve is CGO_ENABLED compiler option in Go. It's set to 0 or 1 to enable/disable (can never remember which mapa to which) If it was just CGO=true or CGO=false I think so much confusion could have been avoided. I think similar thinking applies here. It's convoluted to disable something by setting ai_disable=true because I read it like: setting false true instead of just setting boolean.

This follows a convention that was well established and felt pretty ancient when I learned about environment variables in the nineties (i.e. 30 years ago). Variables that are flags enabling/disabling something use 1 to enable, and 0 to disable. I'd not be surprised if this has been pretty much standard behavior since the seventies.

This is not unique to Go.

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