[HN Gopher] Leaving Neovim for Zed
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Leaving Neovim for Zed
        
       Author : mxstbr
       Score  : 157 points
       Date   : 2024-08-18 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stevedylan.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stevedylan.dev)
        
       | tengbretson wrote:
       | I've found Zed's vim mode to be great for learning vim without
       | having to give up all of my muscle memory built up from using
       | vscode for so long.
        
       | squidsoup wrote:
       | I'm currently using VS Code with the Neovim extension. Has anyone
       | migrated to Zed from Code? Curious what your experience has been.
        
         | saghm wrote:
         | I've used VS Code for my Rust development for several years,
         | and I tried out Zed for a couple weeks earlier in the summer.
         | The integration with `rust-analyzer` wasn't super smooth
         | though, so I've switched back for now but would consider trying
         | it again when it's more mature.
        
         | MrJohz wrote:
         | I've tried it a few times, and each time there's been something
         | missing that was too irritating to live without - stuff like
         | git integration, or extensions that I use a lot. It's nice, but
         | I don't really notice the speed much once the application is
         | open and running, and so I just ended up back at vscode every
         | time.
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | When I hear about zed, I have to think for a bit to realize it is
       | not zed.exe that came with Zortech c v1.0 for MS-DOS :)
        
       | bww wrote:
       | I've also recently switched (largely) from Vim to Zed and I also
       | think that Zed is in many ways great.
       | 
       | At the same time it's been pretty frustrating to use an editor
       | that is spending so much time building AI integrations, REPLs,
       | and so fourth when basic things like cut and paste and common Vim
       | motions still have so many bugs.
       | 
       | I'd love to see them prioritize getting the basics solid first.
        
         | jph00 wrote:
         | Yeah I feel the same way. The fact that Zed uses the system
         | clipboard as the default register in vim mode, for instance,
         | made it impossible to use in practice for me -- having every
         | yank replace my clipboard was a bit of a nightmare!
        
           | jack_pp wrote:
           | And then there's me that configs vim to use the system
           | clipboard by default
        
             | metaltyphoon wrote:
             | Same. I can't stand not having A clipboard for the entire
             | OS
        
               | Jenk wrote:
               | The `+` register is the system clipboard in vim already.
               | What you're referring to is remapping the `+` register as
               | the _default_ register (in place of the  'unnamed'
               | register, which is accessed explicitly as the `"`
               | register) for some operations - typically yank and paste.
        
       | riz_ wrote:
       | I'm wondering if the author ever tried one of the many neovim
       | distributions, which solve a lot of the problem they're
       | describing. All of the plugins and integrations necessary are
       | already set up to create a nice fully featured IDE-style
       | environment. E.g. LazyVim, AstroVim or NvChad
        
         | wyclif wrote:
         | After years of using Vim as a keyboard assassin, then Neovim
         | (with a custom config initially based on kickstart.nvim), about
         | a month ago I started using LazyVim. After test-driving the
         | default config for just a few hours, I found myself nodding my
         | head and saying to myself, "Yes, this is the way."
         | 
         | I had seen some of the other "Neovim as IDE" projects but after
         | looking at them carefully, I decided that LazyVim is generally
         | the most polished one out there. Folke deserves a lot of
         | credit.
         | 
         | The breakthrough for me was realising that it's a totally
         | acceptable tradeoff to let other developers who know what
         | they're doing, keep up with the bleeding edge plugin scene, and
         | have generally good opinions make decisions about configuration
         | so I can get real work done and not spend time getting bogged
         | down in ricing and config files.
        
         | linsomniac wrote:
         | The article specifically mentions following chris@machine, so I
         | would assume that LunarVim was on their radar. But I agree, it
         | seems odd that it wasn't mentioned in the article.
        
       | AlexErrant wrote:
       | I die inside whenever I use `\<` and `\>` for word boundary
       | regex. Neovim has no plans to change this either. I'll likely
       | switch eventually so I don't have to know two flavors of regex.
       | One is hard enough.
        
         | dgellow wrote:
         | Only two?! *cry in posix BRE, posix ERE, PCRE, JS regexp, .NET
         | regexp, emacs regexp*
        
           | AlexErrant wrote:
           | ...you just made me realize I know (some of) the differences
           | between JS and .NET regexp, in addition to vim and PCRE.
           | 
           | Profanity.
        
         | frou_dh wrote:
         | I gather that in really old regex syntax the word boundary
         | syntax used to be like this:
         | [[:<:]]foo[[:>:]]
         | 
         | ...so it could be worse!
        
         | orbisvicis wrote:
         | Use `\v` then `<` and `>`, and you can make it default.
        
         | oktoberpaard wrote:
         | I just add `\v` (very magic) to make it interpret regex more
         | strictly. I've just tested it and you don't need to escape
         | these anymore to match word boundaries.
        
         | djaouen wrote:
         | Use \b lol
        
           | arp242 wrote:
           | That doesn't work in Vim. Or rather: it matches the backspace
           | character, which isn't what you want.
        
             | djaouen wrote:
             | Damn. My apologies, then.
        
       | bibanez wrote:
       | I used Zed on Linux and liked it a lot... until I couldn't write
       | a space in english layout (still worked on alternative layouts).
       | Strange
        
       | twp wrote:
       | If you want true Neovim in VSCode check out                 https
       | ://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode
       | -neovim
       | 
       | You get a real, actual VIM (no half-assed bindings), and all the
       | bells and whistles that come with VSCode.
        
         | agumonkey wrote:
         | they emulate the whole command / move / location layer in js ?
        
           | Quiark wrote:
           | I think that's the usual approach for Vim mode in other
           | editors. But this extension in particular:
           | 
           | > This extension uses a fully embedded Neovim instance, no
           | more half-complete Vim emulation!
        
           | AprilArcus wrote:
           | No, they run a headless neovim process in the background and
           | sync its state with vscode
        
           | wis wrote:
           | To add to what sibling commenters have said, you can also
           | configure this extension to use a specific Neovim binary on
           | your system, and you can also configure it to use/load the
           | same Neovim config you use when you use Neovim in the
           | terminal. That's what I do.
           | 
           | It's really the better (Neo)?vim extension in my opinion, but
           | it has a lot less installs than the other popular extension,
           | called just "Vim" (6.656M installs vs. 400K installs) that
           | extension AFAIK actually emulates Vim in JavaScript, I used
           | it for about a year in 2018, before the other extension
           | "VSCode Neovim" was released in 2019 and remember not having
           | a good experience using it then (to compare, the extension
           | "Vim" was released in Nov. 2015).
        
         | agosz wrote:
         | Can I use the VS Code C++ extensions still?
        
           | twp wrote:
           | Yes, vscode-neovim makes VSCode's editor be Neovim. It works
           | very well with other VSCode extensions. For example, you can
           | type `gd` to go to the definition of a C++ identifier.
        
         | awongh wrote:
         | I feel like using this extension is a little buggy. Especially
         | around undo / redo actions being captured in "format on save"
         | type actions that happen thanks to jslint or other tools.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | I initially loved Zed.
       | 
       | But as their focus has shifted to building Collaboration & AI
       | features, and still haven't yet nailed just being a good/great
       | base editor, its become less useful to me.
       | 
       | I still have a lot of hope for Zed.
       | 
       | But for the time being, I've switched back to my old editor & IDE
       | ... and I'll try Zed again at a much later date.
        
         | sph wrote:
         | To paraphrase an old quote, "every new text editor grows until
         | it is bloated with collaboration and AI features."
         | 
         | Thank god we still have vim and Emacs.
        
           | User23 wrote:
           | Emacs[1] has been bloated with collaboration (gnus, etc) and
           | AI features (doctor, lisp in general) for decades!
           | 
           | [1] Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping
        
             | ninkendo wrote:
             | -rwxr-xr-x  1 root          24 Oct 29  1929 /bin/ed
             | -rwxr-xr-t  4 root     1310720 Jan  1  1970 /usr/ucb/vi
             | -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  5.89824e37 Oct 22  1990 /usr/bin/emacs
        
           | linsomniac wrote:
           | Except, as I understand it, the collaboration features were
           | one of the primary things they wanted to do with Zed. So this
           | isn't a case of bloat. The first blog post on the site is
           | "How CRDTs make multiplayer text editing part of Zed's DNA".
        
       | jasoneckert wrote:
       | I explored Zed on macOS when it was posted here previously, and
       | my impression was that it was a fast and fully-featured editor.
       | 
       | However, it's not as ubiquitous on *nix systems as editors such
       | as vi/vim. And for those of us who work with various
       | infrastructures and deployment constraints, it's much easier to
       | focus our efforts on an editor that is also ubiquitous. And
       | vi/vim fits that mould.
       | 
       | In other words, while Zed is a vi-able alternative, I doubt most
       | vi/vim users will switch to it exclusively.
        
       | tipsytoad wrote:
       | Just another +1 that if you're going to give vscode a fair shot,
       | it's _much_ better to go with vscode-neovim than the standard vim
       | extension. You can even map most of your config right over.
       | 
       | E.g. (mine) https://github.com/tom-
       | pollak/dotfiles/tree/master/nvim
        
       | beginnings wrote:
       | I started using Zed in the last month and I had a feeling it
       | would end up taking a lot of Neovim users. Neovim gets a lot of
       | users who need better performance than VSCode, like me, but the
       | config is such a pain and there was a gap in the market for a
       | blazingly fast GUI editor which Zed looks like filling.
       | 
       | Supermaven still has some issues on Zed, but apart from that its
       | been rock solid and ive fully switched from Neovim.
        
       | irusensei wrote:
       | I tried leaving vim for Helix but turns out it's not curated at
       | my employer's site so I'm back to using vim. Zed would be even
       | worse considering it's a desktop app.
       | 
       | There is the option of using vscode but I'm one of those aliens
       | who absolutely dislike that program.
        
         | Lyngbakr wrote:
         | > Helix would be even worse considering it's a desktop app.
         | 
         | Helix is a terminal app.
        
           | irusensei wrote:
           | Sorry I meant to say Zed. Edit fixed.
        
       | kristiandupont wrote:
       | Over the summer I got an interest in Kakoune and Helix and
       | discovered a number of extensions for VSCode that enable modal
       | editing(1), but not VIM-style per default. I got excited about
       | this and ended up writing my own extension instead.
       | 
       | At this point, it supports most of the VIM subset that I care
       | about, and I have added a number of new motions and modes that do
       | clever things based on the AST. I am kicking myself for not doing
       | this sooner and I think I need to write up a blog post about it.
       | It's surprisingly easy.
       | 
       | 1. e.g.
       | https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DCsunset...
        
         | dcre wrote:
         | That's very interesting. Very cool to look at the source and
         | see how simple it is. I may have just answered my own question,
         | but I'm curious why you prefer this over the popular vim or
         | neovim extensions, which have quite good coverage of vim
         | features, and the neovim one even lets you use real neovim
         | plugins because it is powered by a real neovim instance.
        
       | jchw wrote:
       | Neovim has felt frustrating. I still sort of manage a Neovim
       | configuration, but have been gradually moving to Zed as well.
       | (Similar reasons overall.)
       | 
       | I think everyone has their own personal list of gripes and wants
       | for a text editor. Here's some issues that I think many people
       | will immediately be struck by:
       | 
       | - Zed does not yet support EditorConfig. https://github.com/zed-
       | industries/zed/issues/8534
       | 
       | - Zed does not yet support auto-detecting indentation in the
       | current file. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/4681
       | 
       | - Zed does not yet support configuring indentation in the current
       | file. (edit: clarified wording) https://github.com/zed-
       | industries/zed/issues/4867
       | 
       | - The core editing experience is still less polished than Monaco.
       | Example: Selecting a block of spaces and striking "delete" may
       | lead to an uneven number of characters being deleted. It seems to
       | interact poorly with indentation.
       | 
       | - No settings UI (yet?).
       | 
       | As a Linux (and specifically NixOS) user, there's also a few
       | other problems that I would love to have solved:
       | 
       | - Zed can't be configured to not auto-update, which can simply
       | never work on immutable distros or e.g. inside of Flatpak. It
       | just tries and fails, wasting bandwidth. https://github.com/zed-
       | industries/zed/issues/9224
       | 
       | - Zed can't re-use all already-installed language servers yet, so
       | some language servers can't be used on platforms where the auto-
       | download feature can not work. https://github.com/zed-
       | industries/zed/issues/4978
       | 
       | - Zed doesn't really integrate well with direnv. VSCode is in the
       | same boat, but Vim is not. https://github.com/zed-
       | industries/zed/issues/4977
       | 
       | Overall Zed has been very nice. It definitely _feels_ like it 's
       | still pre 1.0, but it is a _very_ strong pre 1.0 to me. I am a
       | bit weary on the focus on collaboration and AI features so soon,
       | but I do realize that people actually like these features, so
       | hopefully it 's not a sign that the core editing experience is
       | going to be neglected.
        
         | beginnings wrote:
         | On indentation, most files are going to be autoformatted by the
         | LSP, and there are tab_size settings in the languages section,
         | needing specific file settings seems like an edge case.
         | 
         | As for collaboration and AI features, I have no use for them
         | personally, but I think that's their avenue for future
         | monetization, so I can't really complain that they are
         | focussing on that when I get an amazing piece of software for
         | free.
        
           | jchw wrote:
           | > On indentation, most files are going to be autoformatted by
           | the LSP, and there are tab_size settings in the languages
           | section, needing specific file settings seems like an edge
           | case.
           | 
           | Wow, absolutely not!
           | 
           | Just so we're clear, when I say "per-file" settings, I don't
           | mean in the configuration. I mean _at runtime_ overriding the
           | indentation settings for an open file.
           | 
           | This is needed for many, many cases that I definitely don't
           | consider edge cases.
           | 
           | - Configuration files: Loose configuration files might be in
           | a bespoke format with no language server to begin with. JSON
           | and YAML files can have pretty much any indentation style,
           | and in many cases when editing configuration files there will
           | be no "project-specific" files to read from. I use my editor
           | of choice to edit configuration files in various places
           | including just in my home directory.
           | 
           | - You are not necessarily allowed to fully reformat files in
           | a given project, even if the project has inconsistently-
           | formatted files. Some LSPs are cooperative with this and
           | won't change the indentation, since not all languages have a
           | canonical format. Auto-detection is _very_ important here.
           | 
           | - Even when an LSP is being used, that doesn't mean Zed is
           | synced up with it. The Nix LSP will use whatever nixfmt
           | binary you are using. I'm using nixfmt-rfc-style, which uses
           | 2-space indentation, but the default in Zed seems to be
           | 4-space indentation for Nix files, which means that without
           | configuration it will be out-of-sync. (Generally this would
           | be better to just configure globally but I'm just trying to
           | say that having an LSP in and of itself doing formatting is
           | not a panacea.)
           | 
           | In almost any editor I can think of, from Vim, to Visual
           | Studio Code, to IntelliJ, to Notepad++, to kwrite, to
           | gedit... I can at least override the indentation style if it
           | is wrong for some reason. In Neovim I use vim-sleuth, and my
           | indentation settings in Vim are very rarely incorrect no
           | matter what file I'm editing where.
           | 
           | Modern text editors can and should do better than this, and
           | almost always do; being able to change the current
           | indentation settings is something most editors support
           | _before_ supporting most other basic functions. It 's not a
           | weird edge case, it's just flat-out a missing basic feature.
        
             | beginnings wrote:
             | They probably should have the option to change the tab size
             | on an open file, but my point is, why wouldn't you have
             | autoformatting on for YAML and JSON? You have a preference
             | for indent size, and you want the same for every file,
             | barring an edge case.
             | 
             | "languages": { "JSON": { "tab_size": 4 }, "JSONC": {
             | "tab_size": 4 }, "YAML": { "tab_size": 4 } }
             | 
             | Edit: Yeah I see your point when you are not in control of
             | the project and have to stick to someone elses style, I
             | guess that only seems like an edge case to me, but could be
             | normal for other people. In that case you would want a
             | convenient way to override your formatting settings, like
             | an auto detect indent button that only applies to the
             | current open file.
        
       | keb_ wrote:
       | Echoing similar sentiments that I'm optimistic for Zed to become
       | more polished and stable.
       | 
       | Till then, Sublime Text 4 is still the best non-terminal text
       | editor I've ever used and I continue to daily drive it. Sure its
       | paid and non-FOSS, but its incredibly performant on Linux and
       | Windows and its LSP extension + Sublime Merge fill the gap left
       | by VSCode for me. Well worth the price tag IMO.
        
       | 38 wrote:
       | no windows
       | 
       | https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394
        
       | djaouen wrote:
       | I have a few default keybindings coming from Spacemacs/AstroNvim.
       | In case anybody finds them useful, you can find them here:
       | https://github.com/danieljaouen/dotfiles/blob/main/topics/ze...
        
       | llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
       | Does Zed support remote/containers development now? It was the
       | major blocker for me when i tried it, so i had to retreat back to
       | VSCode. I'm not sure if programming is a social activity so their
       | focus on collaboration is a little odd to me.
        
         | corntoole wrote:
         | The remote editing features are in preview:
         | https://zed.dev/docs/remote-development
        
       | RandomThoughts3 wrote:
       | I'm going to somehow misuse this discussion to ask for the
       | readership help about something: I don't understand the appeal of
       | VSCode or more exactly I don't understand the appeal of the text
       | editor propped with plugins to be a semi-IDE so I guess that
       | would also include Neovim with plugins.
       | 
       | In my career, I have used text editors including vim which I
       | still very much enjoy and both Eclipse and IntelliJ when I used
       | to code in Java which I also enjoyed.
       | 
       | VSCode seems to me to be as slow than a full IDE - too slow to be
       | a nice editor - while having less features and an inferior UI to
       | a full IDE. I don't get it. Is it because so many languages don't
       | have a good IDE so people have come to accept the subpar
       | editor+plugin experience?
        
         | paradite wrote:
         | The reason is simple: You write Java.
         | 
         | People using VS Code are writing JavaScript/TypeScript/Python
         | that doesn't need full IDE features. And VS Code is much faster
         | than Eclipse / IDEA kinds.
        
           | RandomThoughts3 wrote:
           | I have written Ocaml, Java, C, C++, Ada and Python
           | professionally in my career. I either used an editor or an
           | IDE. I had a plugin for eMacs when doing Ocaml but the
           | experience was really subpar (that was before Merlin - yes,
           | I'm that old).
           | 
           | I'm sorry but having used both. VSCode is not faster than
           | Eclipse. It's far less good at writing Java however.
           | 
           | You are not really answering my question by the way. So
           | people are indeed using VsCode because there are no proper
           | IDE for JS and TypeScript?
        
             | meiraleal wrote:
             | > You are not really answering my question by the way. So
             | people are indeed using VsCode because there are no proper
             | IDE for JS and TypeScript?
             | 
             | Yes, that's it. There are plugins for everything and mostly
             | works. Not the biggest fan of it anymore tho so looking for
             | my next IDE or develop one for my liking using AI.
        
             | dalmo3 wrote:
             | > I'm sorry but having used both. VSCode is not faster
             | 
             | When you project your own experience over everyone else's
             | it doesn't seem like you genuinely want to understand.
        
         | shepherdjerred wrote:
         | I love IntelliJ, but VS Code has much better support for
         | frontend technologies and TypeScript.
        
         | gosub100 wrote:
         | It's a fair question, my guess is that it's a great beginners
         | IDE for multiple languages. You can quickly get up and running
         | with all major languages, and it was one of the first products
         | Microsoft made multiplatform and free. I'm neutral about it, it
         | works fine for getting the job done. I'm a bit disappointed
         | that it's ssh plugin craps out over 200MB of detritus on each
         | remote machine it connects to. But the ability to edit remotely
         | is a neat feature.
        
         | dcre wrote:
         | One answer may be that it's not that slow for everyone. It
         | could vary with the kind of computer you're running it on, or
         | what languages you're using it for, or the size of the
         | codebases.
         | 
         | I've seen people complain all the time about how slow VS Code
         | is, and I haven't really had that issue on an M1 Mac, at least
         | not since some major perf work in VS Code a few years ago. And
         | I know what a fast editor is -- I've used Helix and minimally-
         | configured Neovim for years.
        
         | Zarel wrote:
         | Heh, I saw this thread just recently:
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1euwht3/webstorm_is...
         | 
         | Most discussions I've seen, including that one, say that VS
         | Code is slower than most lightweight text editors but faster
         | than most IDEs (including WebStorm which is IntelliJ). I don't
         | personally have experience with IntelliJ, but in my experience
         | VS Code is very noticeably faster than Eclipse.
         | 
         | That linked thread also mentions that compared to IntelliJ, VS
         | Code has better remote development, a less cluttered UI, better
         | support for multiple languages in one project. And _many_
         | people mention the better performance.
         | 
         | Personally, running an open-source project with a lot of
         | contributors who are young or from third-world countries, it
         | also matters a lot that VS Code is free.
        
         | imron wrote:
         | For me, VSCode is not a _great_ editor. It feels cobbled
         | together and often provides a worse development experience
         | compared to language specific IDE
         | 
         | HOWEVER..
         | 
         | It has a killer feature if you are doing remote development.
         | 
         | It (mostly seamlessly) presents the remote (ssh, docker, wsl)
         | as if it was local, and I've yet to see another editor do it as
         | well and as cleanly.
         | 
         | So much so that when doing remote development I'm prepared to
         | put aside VSCode's other shortcomings for the superior remote
         | development experience.
         | 
         | For local development I still use vim+terminal, but if I'm in a
         | situation where development needs to be done on a remote
         | machine, the VSCode vim bindings are good enough that I'll
         | probably be using VSCode.
        
       | jgb1984 wrote:
       | Most of the negatives mentioned (fragility, bugs, plugins
       | breaking often) are specific to neovim. It's one of the reasons
       | why I am and will always keep using vim instead of neovim. Vim is
       | a much more mature ecosystem, less chasing the newest "plugin du
       | jour", my vimrc is stable, based on a few dozen plugins which are
       | feature complete and rock solid stable.
        
         | Fethbita wrote:
         | Do you mind sharing that list of plugins you use? I have never
         | used plugins with vim/neovim and only used them vanilla up to
         | this point but interested in checking out the plugin ecosystem.
        
           | jgb1984 wrote:
           | This is a copy paste from the relevant part of my vimrc. Keep
           | in mind I mainly develop in python.
           | 
           | Plug 'alvan/vim-closetag' Plug 'ap/vim-buftabline' Plug
           | 'davidhalter/jedi-vim' Plug 'dense-analysis/ale' Plug
           | 'dstein64/vim-startuptime' Plug 'itchyny/lightline.vim' Plug
           | 'junegunn/fzf', { 'dir': '~/.fzf', 'do': { -> fzf#install() }
           | } Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim' Plug 'junegunn/vim-peekaboo' Plug
           | 'machakann/vim-swap' Plug 'markonm/traces.vim' Plug
           | 'mhinz/vim-signify' Plug 'preservim/nerdtree' Plug
           | 'preservim/tagbar' Plug 'romainl/vim-cool' Plug
           | 'simnalamburt/vim-mundo' Plug 'tpope/vim-characterize' Plug
           | 'tpope/vim-commentary' Plug 'tpope/vim-fugitive' Plug
           | 'tpope/vim-repeat' Plug 'tpope/vim-rhubarb' Plug 'tpope/vim-
           | sensible' Plug 'tpope/vim-speeddating' Plug 'tpope/vim-
           | surround' Plug 'vimwiki/vimwiki'
        
         | sph wrote:
         | neovim is what happens when the javascript kids decide to
         | "improve" one of the best editors ever created. The entire Lua
         | ecosystem standing on 50 unstable plugins that provide the
         | entire kitchen sink, yet do not even have a 1.0 version is
         | nightmarish.
         | 
         | Follow any guide and either everything breaks, or you get an
         | hodgepodge of automagic popups, stuff that autodownloads, flash
         | messages and useless features that are completely antithetical
         | to the slim, minimal philosophy of vim.
         | 
         | At least the original vim is still around, and the js kids are
         | allergic to parens so there's an alternative.
        
           | sgarland wrote:
           | I am not a JS dev, and still prefer nvim. If you're careful
           | with plugin choices, you can get nice QoL features and still
           | be stable. I can't think of a time when I've had nvim crash.
           | 
           | You're correct that random guides are generally garbage, but
           | by reading plugin docs (gasp), you can generally get stuff
           | working without much fuss.
        
         | chbint wrote:
         | I was about to make a very similar comment. I won't say I'll
         | never switch to neovim, for a lot depends on future vim/neovim
         | development, and unexpected things happen.
         | 
         | But I do agree that vim's stability is priceless. It's been
         | years without any need for major changes in my vimrc, and
         | without any trouble with the plugins I use.
         | 
         | I'm sympathetic with the author, though. Whenever you need to
         | change, finding an alternative that "just works" always makes
         | things easier and you can quickly get back to being productive.
         | I'm not so sure that I wouldn't go down a similar path if the
         | vim ecosystem collapsed.
        
         | adamors wrote:
         | Not sure what this fragility is. I've been using Neovim from
         | the very first days, and it's been stable throghout.
         | 
         | Granted I have a 10+ year old vimrc and rarely add new plugins,
         | but saying Neovim is fragile is nonsense. Don't install every
         | new plugin perhaps?
        
           | mjoin wrote:
           | Same. Neovim and plugins I use have been remarkably stable
           | from the start
        
       | deagle50 wrote:
       | Has Zed started hiding the mouse cursor when typing? If not, I'll
       | wait.
        
       | commercialnix wrote:
       | I'm still down to seriously consider Zed, but this is one of the
       | most inorganic posts I have ever seen.
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | I love the smell of freshly cut astroturf
        
       | poetril wrote:
       | I'm actually in the opposite camp, I had left VSCode for Zed
       | about 6 months ago and used it exclusively at work/personal
       | projects. I've customized it extensively, and loved its approach
       | to Vim integration. But in the last two weeks I've made the
       | switch to Neovim (using a customized LazyVim [0] setup). I really
       | like Zed but as others have pointed out they are not prioritizing
       | features around REPL's, AI, and collaboration while many core
       | features are lacking. Vim Cut/Copy and paste being bugged, and
       | html tags not closing drove me crazy over time.
       | 
       | I think Zed is wonderful, and would perhaps go back to it after
       | it matures a bit. For what's its worth the friction going from
       | Zed -> Neo vim was quite seamless, and I'd expect going the other
       | way would as well.
       | 
       | 0: http://www.lazyvim.org/
        
         | wyclif wrote:
         | Big fan of LazyVim here. The default config does everything I
         | need it to do.
        
         | linsomniac wrote:
         | A couple years ago I got really tired of maintaining my own vim
         | configs, like the author of this piece mentions (plugins and
         | updates causing problems). I just wanted to get out of the
         | business of maintaining my own configs, so I decided to try a
         | bundle, and eventually ended up on LunarVim, with a small
         | handful of "dealbreaker" config changes. As opposed to a basic
         | vim and then a bunch of plugins and custom configs.
         | 
         | I've been pretty happy with it, but other options are worth
         | checking out (SpaceVim, NvChad, LazyVim, AstroVim).
         | 
         | LunarVim has finally deivered a working LSP/TreeSitter which I
         | always only got half working or would break once I had it
         | working, in my self-managed configs.
        
       | meiraleal wrote:
       | It is great to see new editors gaining traction after VSCode took
       | most of the market.
        
       | noncoml wrote:
       | Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.
        
       | tecoholic wrote:
       | I tried Zed just yesterday and sadly my experience wasn't "just
       | works". It just works if you haven't used any of the Neovim
       | configs/distributions. But for someone who already uses LazyVim,
       | LunarVim..etc., it's kind of meeting the expectations.
       | 
       | The issue for me was with the Docker LSP. I have a codebase where
       | a Dockerfile is a Jinja Template. Zed's syntax highlighting broke
       | at the first curly braces. Both my Doom EMacs and LazyVim seem to
       | have no problem with it. I couldn't work beyond that point.
        
         | magnio wrote:
         | > I have a codebase where a Dockerfile is a Jinja Template.
         | 
         | Jesus
        
           | tecoholic wrote:
           | Trust me. I feel the same way.
        
         | seabrookmx wrote:
         | Is it named Dockerfile or Dockerfile.jinja?
        
           | tecoholic wrote:
           | It's named Dockerfile. However, I suspect if it's named
           | jinja, the Docker parts won't be syntax highlighted!?!?
        
       | koiueo wrote:
       | It was a great sales pitch until the Linux and Apple comparison.
       | 
       | I can't take seriously someone, who says that Apple's stuff runs
       | smoother (unless we are talking about useless animations).
        
       | sghiassy wrote:
       | Honestly, I don't understand when someone says VSCode is slow
       | because it's built on Electron. Are they talking about the 3
       | extra seconds on cold start? Is that really something to scoff at
       | considering all its benefits??
        
         | sgarland wrote:
         | Depends how often you're opening / closing it, I suppose. I
         | work in an nvim + tmux environment, and am frequently opening
         | and closing single files across disparate directories, so it
         | does matter to me. I can spawn a new pane (or split existing),
         | open nvim, and be editing before VSC has finished launching.
        
           | seabrookmx wrote:
           | You can open files from disparate directories within the same
           | VSCode instance though.. you don't need to launch a new
           | instance for each one.
        
         | skydhash wrote:
         | For what it does, it's slow. I used Jetbrains IDEs and I
         | understand the slowness because of all the linting and
         | indexing. But I bear with it because they are tailored to the
         | language that they support and provide you with great
         | utilities. VSCode tries to be the kitchen sink and it's not
         | great at either. And it's not just code editing, every
         | interaction with the interface feels slow. If I have 12 cores
         | and 32 GB of ram, slowness for the same thing I was doing on
         | codeblocks with a P4 and 1 GB of ram is the last thing I would
         | accept.
        
       | replete wrote:
       | I tried out Zed and really like it, but its still lacking things
       | like EditorConfig support, so project switching sucks. Has strong
       | potential to replace vscode entirely if they don't get carried
       | away with fancy features
        
       | robertlf wrote:
       | A good article, but you really can't see the screenshots at all.
        
       | tasuki wrote:
       | > Every now and then I would update a plugin [...]
       | 
       | Why would you do that? I keep my plugins pinned at whatever old
       | version I happened to use first...
        
       | trostaft wrote:
       | Seems like the guy's website got hugged?
        
       | nelsonfigueroa wrote:
       | I like Zed too and use it on a daily basis. I've always wanted to
       | take the opposite journey where I leave Zed/Sublime for Vim.
       | While I have always to become a Vim expert, I never put in the
       | time. There just hasn't been a situation in my career where I
       | wish I could type faster than my thoughts. But maybe I'm just a
       | scrub in this field.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-18 23:00 UTC)