I'd be interested to know how much data DeltaDB accumulates over time - because the level of granularity is so high - and are they going to want to use that data as training data?
I miss some of his old posts that he took down from his website, in particular the one on learning statistics, that was a great one.
I don't want chat with coworkers in my IDE, nor do I feel the pains they describe with conversations spread between tools. It's not a top 5 problem
What I also have not used is vim emulation, though I have a vim background
As mentioned elsewhere, Zed is still very configuration-dependent to get the full power of it, and a lot of its functionality is never discovered for that reason
What pushed me to try it was Ollama integration which is not an afterthought, then I realized I loved it _way_ more than SublimeText, especially on performance, at first, then everything else once that won me over
I have ~10 running instances at any given moment, and >99% of the time never feel any lag, whatsoever
Another unexpected benefit is that terminals, code editor panels, and assistant chats, get to be sized and fit wherever you want, so it is also kind of a window manager... I often have more terminals open in Zed than in the Window Manager of the OS itself
I give lots of feedback to Copilot in the hopes it makes the agents better in the long-run. I want them to read my code and train on it, along with the interactions with copilot, which is the next frontier in (post) training
I currently have 19 instances of Sublime Text open, each to a separate folder containing a mix of C++ and Python code bases (some tiny some huge). Like ~8 of those have the clangd LSP plugin enabled. I don't think I've ever experienced lag in Sublime. KDE System Monitor is reporting 2.0 GiB of ram being using by sublime currently.
The clangd LSP plugin in Sublime isn't perfect, and it does occasionally break, and rarely spikes in CPU usage for no reason (although the editor always remains responsive). But, if I ever switch away from Sublime Text, I cannot imagine it ever being due to performance reasons.
The issue is again people, they don't wanna change their _archaic_ workflow, stuck with inefficient -copy/paste- loop to the chat (ie. Slack) and back.
The story in the article went a bit too far that I agree, but I guess that is their north-star vision. Current implementation allows you to "join" a workspace session shared by someone, edit the same or different file, follow/watch a certain person, as well as have a chat (without requiring copy-paste) about certain piece of code. (both written or via voice)
If something, large enterprises generally don't support smaller and ambiguous licenses. Therefore, if Zed will allow enterprise licensing (ie. via on-prem license server or volume ordering, SSO, whatever) that would increase their adoption quite well...
[2] https://genocide.vc/meet-shaun-maguire/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/technology/sequoia-capita...
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Pointing out that Zed has taken money from a company that openly supports one of the biggest genocides in recent history is not a "political battle".
He seems to be saying he spent $350k making this. I guess it's some tooling for writing parsers.
He has this to say about Zed:
> Zed: Founded by Atom’s dev team, Zed was the rewrite that Atom always wanted to be able to do but couldn’t when Microsoft bought Github and made the executive decision to kill a product it might otherwise have had to compete with. Unfortunately Zed decided to do that rewrite in Rust. This has slowed their iteration speed, caused much of their dev effort to go to cross-platform support instead of innovation, cut them off from being able to offer their experience on the web, severely limited their hackability, and generally made theirs a niche tool for enthusiasts. What’s worse, their reliance on LSP — a product which believes that the presentation layer should be the primary abstraction layer — means their product is forever doomed to look like a VSCode knock-off. [1]
We're approaching the problem by drawing from browser design. We want to see an editor with a DOM API for code documents. BABLR is a parser framework meant as a direct answer to Tree-sitter.
A standardized DOM for code would provide a universal way of changing code documents using scripts and would allow many different code-oriented tools to interoperate naturally where they never could before.
It's not clear to me how you could substantially replace the capabilities/benefits of what LSP provides with BABLR either.
- Our core and grammars are relatively tiny and can easily be loaded into any web page as a syntax highlighter, except actually a bit more: more like being able to embed ASTExplorer directly into your docs page or blog post to help people understand code examples.
- We support runtime extensibility of languages, e.g. TS can extend from JS at runtime. Tree-sitter only supports static linking, so every shipped language extended from their JS grammar contains a complete copy of the JS grammar.
- Our grammars are much easier to debug. They're written as plain scripts, and they can be run and debugged in exactly the form they're written in.
- We can parse inputs with embedding gaps. An example of such an input would be the content of a template tag before interpolations have been applied. Parsing after interpolation opens the door to injection attacks, but parsing before interpolation allow safe composition of code fragments using template tags.
- We emit streaming parse results on the fly, and can parse infinitely long data streams with ease or syntax highlight. within large single-line files without freezing up
- Tree-sitter is half an IDE's state solution: "just add text buffer". Our solution is the whole thing. One stop shop. IDE in a box.
- CSTML lets us do round trip serialization of any tree and also gives our trees stable hashes. Tree-sitter could trivially represent its parse results as CSTML if it cared to, giving it competitive compatibility with BABLR. A rising tide lifts all boats.
- While they're setting out to make version control for the first time now, we're already basically as powerful as git thanks to the combination of hashed trees, immutable data, and btree amortization within nodes for maximum structural reuse of data.
- Did I mention you don't have to deal with this? https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-typescript/blob/m...
- We can probably literally just run the Javascript source code for Tree-sitter grammars on our runtime. The only problem is the C lexers, but C lexers are one of the great annoyances of tree-sitter anyway since any context in the grammar requires you to hand-write the lexer
Having said that, I don't think an editor should be VC backed. It's the obvious pragmatic choice to get a team together to support a thing, but I'm concerned by it.
Here I am on my free-as-in-freedom operating system, making commits with my free DVCS tool in my free programmable text editor, building it with my free language toolchain, using my free terminal emulator/multiplexer with my free UNIX shell. VC backed tools like Warp and Zed that seek to innovate in this space are of zero interest to me as a developer.
Please please please, get paid rather than holding on too tightly to making things free forcing future enshittening.
You can pay for Zed today if you'd like - https://zed.dev/pricing - and also the editor itself is open-source under the GPLv3 license. So if at any point in the future Zed changes direction in a way you don't like, you are perpetually free to build the version you liked from source (or make a community fork and take it in a different direction).
I'd also much rather have a means of paying a single flat fee to indicate my support than yet another subscription which is misleading because I have zero interest in the AI components of Zed.
Since switching from Emacs last year, I have absolutely loved how this editor has evolved, and I am looking for any way to directly support the effort. I have been a Zed Pro subscriber for quite a while now, and I have started trying to contribute to the codebase, but I really wish there were monetization options beyond making a spread on Anthropic API pricing.
You don't have to give me any more features than what's in the free editor. I would gladly pay up to $300 just to have a "license".
So here's my ask: let me pay for it without paying for AI! None of my use cases will stress your servers; I have `"disable_ai": true` in my settings.json. Give me a $5/mo "support the devs tier" or a $10/mo tier with some random app quality-of-life features and I'm there. I specifically want to pay for good software without paying for AI to signify the value proposition that still exists there cause I don't think a VC would believe me otherwise.
Zed is fast, easy to configure (so far, maybe some hard parts I haven't run into yet), works well with the languages I care about via LSPs, and the collaboration features are compelling. I want to pay to support that, I don't want to pay for an LLM feature I don't care about that ends up distracting from the progress on the things I want to see maintained or improved.
If I'm wrong I'd love to know, but I think that we need to start talking about what funding really implies more honestly. It's traditionally met with unabashed enthusiasm and congratulations, which I totally understand, but it's a mutual exchange, not an award or a grant. I absolutely believe that everyone wants to make good on their promises, but promises made to users are not legally binding, and the track record for upholding those has not been great. Plus, as a user, I want to pay for software, but nothing feels worse than paying, then watching enshittification unfold anyways... When this happens, the investors should send you a nice postcard thanking you for paying back some of their money.
Can $20/mo sustain a text editor company with a massive multimillion dollar valuation? Well, we'll see. Good luck Zed Industries, we're all counting on you.
To clarify, I use AI agents, but I absolutely hate them submitting code in my editor. Chatting is fair enough and useful, but I need to turn off the auto-generating code part.
it's a software company. they sell software.
It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.
Although at least to me, Sublime Text 4 feels like a "finished" product.
I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed 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.
1. Everyone else is building on Electron.
2. People still sleep on or dunk on Rust. There's a great deal of negativity here on HN for the language.
3. There's only so much Rust talent out there.
As a user, most IDEs/Editors currently show in _eager_ way. For example, VSCode by default shows ghost-text as well as Amazon Q extension too. Usually disabling those disables the AI completion completely.
Meanwhile I like Zed's approach that you can trigger completions with Alt+Space, not burning through your "tokens" in free-tiers. They also provide a free-tier completions, as well as _next-edit suggestions_.
*) Next-edit suggestions: When you edit some piece of code repeatedly, it suggest to do similar on the next few instances, with context awareness, quite nice feature saving several keystrokes every single time.
Any data to backup this?
As mentioned in other comments, it actually outperforms window management in general in many/most cases. Radically flexible and almost never gets in the way
The modern Sublime Text is Sublime Text. There is way too much "extra" in Zed to compare it. If anything, it's a new IntelliJ.
It's funny how often people buy into the marketing and say "blazing fast" without actually questioning it. FWIW, I still prefer Zed because its LSP integration and vim mode are better than Sublime's.
Like any company now is "global leader in X market".
I know it probably didn't, but I wonder if part of Sequoia's decision to invest had anything to do with these false claims?
Let me guess: DeltaDB is free to use as long as we host your data and have free range on training AI based on your editor interactions.
My read was that they are pulling a Linus Torvalds with the Linux->Git move where both are innovations on their own, but work great together ( without dystopian universe instantiation )
CRDTs mentioned: https://zed.dev/blog/crdts
that said atuin is excellent
VCs operate from the goal of xtreme high user market share as the problem..
As frameworks get better, the audience using the IDE changes...
Both are misaligned before even meeting and it will get worse once VC money control is added.
My bias, I am a flutter framework user and MS VSCode user.
I have a light fork that tries to nullify this, but I don't think I've managed to catch all the instances.
Other than that, it's a very nice editor in my opinion.
{ "server_url": "", }
I comment out that JSONC line periodically when I feel like cherry-picking updates
I hate this pattern in software so much.
You know where this goes.
RIP Zed, you had a good run.
Also how on earth do you handle conflicts?
This sounds most similar to IntelliJ's local history tracking, but that is local only which makes sense.
Still, more IDEs is always good so I wish them luck and will wait and see. (As with Zed - I keep trying it but it's still very alpha quality so I always end up back in VSCode.)
I understand people's concerns about VC funding, but I think building quality products takes capital. The funding is still relatively small, especially when you compare it to players like Cursor, etc. And I think Zed is a much, much better product!
Zed being OSS is a gift to the community, and I suspect DeltaDB will be as well. And as others have said, Nathan (CEO) is a delightful human.
Congrats, Zed!
Hate cancel culture as much as the next techbro, but since y'all point out they're "a delightful human", it'd be interesting to see how Nathan then responds to concerns raised in some quarters: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604
This means the company is funded, development will continue, zed will continue to improve. An IntelliJ style license (for example) is an acceptable trade-off from my point-of-view
So at some point Zed will likely need to pursue monetization more aggressively than IntelliJ does now.
One of the reasons I find LLMs don't increase productivity much is that I can't switch branches to multitask while it's processing. Context switching isn't always useful but there's still lots of opportunities for rapidly experimenting or ticking off a couple small bugs quickly while AI takes the first pass on something more complicated.
Each "branch tab" could have a sort of TODO list or plan.
Git worktrees are great for this. I built a little tool to make them more ergonomic: https://steveasleep.com/autowt/
You really don't need every LLM vendor to build their own version of worktrees.
It is a godsend on quickly debugging the why of things. If anyone knows how to replicate the same functionality with the same number of clicks in zed, id happily switch back to it.
there is also inline-blame, both are native (ie. no plugins required)
Well done I suppose to the Zed founders as they're on the Sequoia gravy train now. But as others have noted this puts an inevitable clock on the enshittification no matter how hard the team crosses their heart and truly believes otherwise (or not, I mean maybe this IS the gameplan).
Hopefully Zedless [0] gets some community steam behind it.
Zedless: Zed fork focused on privacy and being local-first - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44964916
Zed for Windows: What's Taking So Long? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44964366
"total funding to over $42M"
the enshittification it'll take to extract $400m of value out of a text editor will be dismal
Still missing some key features to get parity for python with PyCharm, and git features need more love, but pace of development has been blistering. Kudos to the team for building something really solid.
I don't use the agentic stuff though -- I have a ClaudeMax subscription and use CC or more recently opencode (the only non-CC that works with a ClaudeMax sub); I don't want to pay another sub for Zed and the free model use that comes with Zed runs out very quickly (understandably so, no complaints there). If I could connect my ClaudeMax sub to it then I'd maybe use it, though CC and opencode are pretty good.
The code completion is decent and I especially like the "subtle" mode saves a lot of backspacing (no, dammit, that's not what I wanted!).
I understand Zed needs to make money, but VC backed, especially Sequoia, doesn't inspire any love, tbh. I don't care what platitudes VCs say about independence their love for the product etc., they need their 10x return and if it means enshittification, so be it, they don't really care.
decentrality•7h ago
Seems to solve a real problem which is growing rapidly, both in the old way and in the new way ... if it can overcome _slop_ in LLM chats, and the sheer enormity of code/data ahead. Trying to picture how coherence will survive.
With claims/hype/concern floating around that >90% of code will be LLM-generated within 3-6 months, with the insinuation/tone [1] that the same amount of code will be written by humans as now ( at least at first ) but LLM code will radically grow to dilute the space ( as is happening ) ... seems like DeltaDB being done right/well is going to be do-or-die on whether coherence remains possible!
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-...
Groxx•5h ago
>I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% of the code.
They're going to keep saying it because it's a juicy sound bite and they're sales people. That doesn't make it any more true than "9 out of 10 dentists recommend our socks" or how we surely have all had flying cars for decades now.
verdverm•4h ago
The thing wrote at least 80%, so we aren't far off in this anecdotal instance. There are citizen devs who are building fun things for themselves where the AI does 100%
It made me realize these things are more capable than I knew, though they still do dumb stuff reliably. But, it is easy to undo those changes, so the productivity boost remains
adastra22•4h ago
decentrality•4h ago
Despite the article being salesmanship hype ( at WEF no less ) we are now in the time mentioned, and can feel this
The idea that the code is GOOD or even being used is not necessary to be saying that it exists, strewn everywhere
yubblegum•1h ago
https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...