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Sequoia backs Zed

zed.dev

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Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#211

Post by sjtgraham »

aranelsurion wrote: post #125
toastercat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

There was a time around ST2 when it felt like everyone was using it and it could've become The Editor, then something happened and it's been left in the dust. I wasn't even aware but apparently even fourth version of ST was released, and that was in 2021. I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed it?

and before that was TextMate.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#212

Post by kjgkjhfkjf »

I enjoy the responsiveness of the Zed editor compared to VSCode, but I am concerned that it is a VC backed enterprise.

For example, I don't like that I am forced to look at its "Sign In" UI, and that they have refused attempts to remove it. [0]

Zed has some much more annoying bugs, and I am not excited to help fix them given the position of the code owners.

[0] https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12325

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#213

Post by dcre »

zeddyyrud wrote: post #210

> Having said that, I don't think an editor should be VC backed. It just means that we will now see AI crapola being stuffed into this editor in the next few days.

Have you heard of Zed before just now?

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#215

Post by kelnos »

efficax wrote: post #100
markus_zhang wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might HAVE to learn EMacs (prefer over Vim) because I think eventually everything else will be tainted by mandatory AI features and/or subscriptions.

Zed is fully open source. Fork it. The code is pretty nice, too, easy to understand.

I really dislike the dismissive "fork it" response. You do know how much time and work it takes to maintain your own fork of something, right? It's great that it's possible, but to expect most people to do something like that is absurd.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#216

Post by hdjrudni »

Yeesh. With every announcement, I get less and less interested in Zed. I've yet to use it because Windows has been on the "soon" list forever.

"Fast" is what got me interested. All this other stuff sounds like "we want more money"

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#217

Post by chamomeal »

tiffanyh wrote: post #191

With so many new AI editors popping up, it feels like the Zed team is in a tough “lose/lose” spot. If they stick to their current path—focusing on craftsmanship and letting their world-class talent build the best editor—they risk falling behind giants like Cursor. Cursor seemingly came out of nowhere and is already doing $300–400M annually, rivaling JetBrains (who took 20 years to get there) in just two years. With t…

I hadn’t thought about it that way but it’s an interesting point. The cursor folks probably have 99% of the work already done for them, for free, funded by Microsoft, probably in perpetuity.

And on top of that, since it’s essentially just vscode, it costs users almost zero effort to make the switch. It’s the perfect crime!!

I hope zed does well though. I love their blog, and all of the cool open source stuff they’ve made. I recently heard they added a “helix mode” which might be enough to get me to switch from vscode…

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#218

Post by failiaf »

for those who just caught the headline, the real gem here isn't the investment, but what zed's doing different: rather than using git for version control, they're announcing deltadb which incrementally stores all changes as crdt [1] while being interopable with git.

this feels pretty important; git is definitely not the right primitive for version control with ai and that pain is obvious with existing solutions. zed seems to be going all in on collaboration with realtime, git, and now something in between and it'll be interesting to see where they end up-to me three solutions feels overcomplicated but that may be necessary given how teams work now.

- [1]: https://zed.dev/blog/crdts

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#219

Post by AstroBen »

mstade wrote: post #171
aranelsurion wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time around ST2 when it felt like everyone was using it and it could've become The Editor, then something happened and it's been left in the dust. I wasn't even aware but apparently even fourth version of ST was released, and that was in 2021. I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed it?

I don't get this Sublime is dead nonsense. It's still being updated and works great. It's been my editor of choice for years and I happily pay for my license. I'd probably pay more if they asked me, it's tremendous value for money in my opinion.

Eh.. I gave ST4 a go earlier this year and moved away from it due to plugins I wanted not being updated for years, and no longer working. That really feels on the cusp of being dead to me

There needs to be a critical mass of people using it for things that aren't core to stay updated

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#220

Post by jonas21 »

toastercat wrote: post #139
aranelsurion wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time around ST2 when it felt like everyone was using it and it could've become The Editor, then something happened and it's been left in the dust. I wasn't even aware but apparently even fourth version of ST was released, and that was in 2021. I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed it?

Yeah, as others already mentioned, I think they sat on their laurels for a bit too long and let VSCode overtake it. For what it's worth, I went from ST3 -> VSCode -> ST4, and have been happy since. I've found that I prefer my text editor with minimal extensions, and with Sublime Text's LSP Plugin, I'm pretty content. The performance and customizable UI make it more worth it to me than VSCode.

I think it's less that they sat on their laurels and more that a team of 2 had trouble keeping up with the dozens of well-paid folks working on VSCode. Which suggests that perhaps a shareware model did not work out so well for them.
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