[HN Gopher] Zed Decoded: Async Rust
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Zed Decoded: Async Rust
        
       Author : ingve
       Score  : 151 points
       Date   : 2024-04-09 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (zed.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (zed.dev)
        
       | epistasis wrote:
       | There's a _ton_ of really good Rust content on the Zed blog. As
       | somebody new to Rust, I 've learned a lot from it. For example,
       | how they do ownership in a GUI setting, in a language for which
       | even writing a doubly-linked list is a challenge:
       | 
       | https://zed.dev/blog/gpui-ownership
        
         | diarrhea wrote:
         | Is the content also useful if one isn't interested in GUIs at
         | all?
        
           | epistasis wrote:
           | IMHO, yes, but ultimately only you can be the judge!
        
       | cptroot wrote:
       | This was a really neat dive into GPUI. The discussion about main
       | thread vs background thread was interesting, especially as it
       | relates to choices the rest of the async ecosystem has made.
        
       | mamidon wrote:
       | How are these guys funding a startup for the Nth text editor?
       | 
       | If they have the guts to try this full time I suppose there's
       | really no excuse for me not having a go at my own thing.
        
         | simonerlic wrote:
         | To be fair, this isn't just a random group of people - they're
         | the people who made Atom, Electron, and Tree-sitter.
        
           | alberth wrote:
           | Additionally, it's also not yet another "text editor".
           | 
           | It's very clear the differentiation of Zed will come in the
           | form of the collaboration functionality it will have.
        
             | fori1to10 wrote:
             | And speed. Startup time is instantaneous, in comparison to
             | VS code say.
        
               | wmf wrote:
               | The same team that "erased" native editors is now selling
               | us the solution to the problem they created.
        
               | hobs wrote:
               | How much are you going to pay for the 5 seconds per day
               | you open up your editor? Most people dont even close it
               | in the first place.
        
               | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
               | Presumably speed is an overall important factor for the
               | creators -- not just startup speed -- and I'd imagine it
               | translates into speed elsewhere, such as input latency
               | and UI responsiveness.
        
               | metabagel wrote:
               | I haven't tried this software, but I imagine it's more
               | about having the UI keep up, so you can stay in the flow
               | state.
        
               | hansonkd wrote:
               | Is raw code output so large that your editor can't "keep
               | up" really something to optimize for? For me personally I
               | write as little code as possible. you don't get bonus
               | points for number of lines you write.
        
               | Starlevel004 wrote:
               | Straight up not true. Running my local copy it takes 5
               | seconds for the window to appear.
        
               | maxbrunsfeld wrote:
               | If this happens with Zed 0.129 or later, could you open
               | an issue? We had a problem at one point where there was a
               | delay in macOS verifying our app's code signature because
               | we weren't attaching the code signature correctly.
        
           | mamidon wrote:
           | Oh undoubtedly they'll make a nice editor; I just think it's
           | a tough thing to monetize when there's so many 'good enough'
           | free editors around.
        
             | agrippanux wrote:
             | Their plan is to make really elegant team-based shared
             | coding features baked right into the editor - think a
             | mashup of VSCode + Slack, and then charge for that, likely
             | as a monthly subscription. It's not a bad idea if it can
             | increase team velocity but the requirement would be enough
             | people on the team live within it to justify the cost.
             | 
             | I drove Zed for about a month, its very performant and a
             | joy to use, but the lack of a remote development feature is
             | massively prohibitive and I went back to VSCode as a
             | result.
        
               | nicce wrote:
               | There are way too many other features missing as well to
               | do anything serious to be fair. All the things you would
               | like proper IDE to do to increase your productivity.
               | 
               | Let's see in couple years.
               | 
               | The biggest problem is to get those initial features
               | decent so that you can extract the value from
               | crowdsourcing the missing things like VSCode does.
        
               | metabagel wrote:
               | What do you mean by "remote development feature"?
               | Debugging remotely, a la gdbserver?
        
               | dj_gitmo wrote:
               | Not the OP, but what I assume they are referring to is
               | the ability to work on a remote host. For example if I
               | have a Mac but I am working on a remote Linux box, VSCode
               | will allow me to easily work sync with a repo on the
               | remote host. It will also seamlessly handle port-
               | forwarding for web dev.
               | 
               | IMO this is the best feature of VSCode.
        
         | mamidon wrote:
         | In the FAQ they indicate they raised funds from investors.
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | They meant how are they going to fund it long-term.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | They say:
         | 
         | > Rather than selling you a proprietary editor, we'd much
         | prefer to sell you services that seamlessly integrate with your
         | editor to make you and your team more productive. Zed Channels
         | is one example of such a service. It's free for anyone today,
         | but we intend to begin charging for private use after a beta
         | period of experimentation. Providing server-side compute to
         | power AI features is another monetization scheme we're seeing
         | getting traction.
         | 
         | But I'm with you. I can't see paying-for-shared-editing
         | working. There are too many people using other random editors.
         | 
         | AI? Yeah maybe. I've paid for Copilot. But now they have to
         | fund an AI research team as well.
         | 
         | I really really hope they succeed but I'd probably still bet
         | against them.
        
           | autoexecbat wrote:
           | Interviewer: What editor do you use?
           | 
           | Interviewee: Vim
           | 
           | Interviewer: Sorry, we use Zed here
        
       | 38 wrote:
       | mac only: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394
        
         | simonerlic wrote:
         | I don't mean to reply-guy this thread, but it builds on Windows
         | (and Linux)
         | 
         | https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/docs/src/dev...
        
           | drcongo wrote:
           | It's fine. Every time Zed gets a mention on here _someone_
           | finds it incredibly important to post the words  "Mac only"
           | without checking, even when, as with this thread, the topic
           | has absolutely nothing to do with running Zed or what
           | operating systems it can run on.
        
           | 38 wrote:
           | > git submodule update --init --recursive
           | 
           | > Install Visual Studio
           | 
           | LOL submodules and Visual Studio? no thanks I am not in the
           | mood to punish myself today.
        
             | yogorenapan wrote:
             | That's just how things are on Windows. Building just about
             | anything requires Visual Studio (not the UI but the tooling
             | that comes with it. E.g. msbuild and C++ headers)
             | 
             | You won't have to do this on Linux or if you use a pre-
             | built exe
        
           | thomastjeffery wrote:
           | It's pretty frustrating to read so much about a thing, only
           | to find out it's only supported on a niche platform that I
           | don't have access to.
           | 
           | The fact that that isn't totally the case is a great thing to
           | hear, and I would love to have learned this fact _sooner_. It
           | would go a long way for Zed 's team to at least mention it on
           | the Downloads page.
        
             | meepmorp wrote:
             | macOS isn't a niche platform
        
             | itishappy wrote:
             | > Download for macOS (Apple silicon) Requires macOS 10.15+
             | 
             | > Download for macOS (Intel chip) Requires macOS 10.15+
             | 
             | > Download for macOS (Universal binary) Requires macOS
             | 10.15+
             | 
             | there are no other buttons...
             | 
             | https://zed.dev/download
        
           | satvikpendem wrote:
           | It builds but is it usable? I thought it used many macOS-
           | specific APIs like Metal for GPU rendering.
        
             | Starlevel004 wrote:
             | It's usable in the sense that it runs properly.
        
         | scientist4397 wrote:
         | Available in AUR
        
       | pornel wrote:
       | gtk-rs also supports Rust's futures on top of GTK's event loop,
       | and you can .await dialog windows and button presses.
       | 
       | https://docs.rs/glib/latest/glib/struct.MainContext.html#imp...
        
         | jenadine wrote:
         | I guess every rust toolkit supports that by now. Eg, Slint:
         | https://docs.rs/slint/latest/slint/fn.spawn_local.html
        
         | __s wrote:
         | Back in 2012 I threw together something like this for managing
         | UI dialogs in C#. For all the hate async/await gets about being
         | an over optimization, it's good to see people find use for it
         | as an ergonomic tool outside of concurrency
        
       | imron wrote:
       | > Where other applications use tokio or smol, Zed uses thin
       | wrappers around GCD and crates such as async_task
       | 
       | This is an amazing idea.
        
       | extr wrote:
       | Zed is super nice. As soon as they iron out some of challenges
       | with python development I'll switch from VS Code.
        
       | brianzelip wrote:
       | Informing article. We are rooting for Zed, keep up the great work
       | y'all!
        
       | haolez wrote:
       | Slightly related, but does it support Linux already?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-04-09 23:00 UTC)