Can Zed Beat VS Code?
Let me start with the conclusion: No.
Zed, yet another new text/code editor.
It officially went open source on January 24th this year. In less than three months, it has already reached 30k stars on GitHub.
As Zed's slogan says: "Code at the speed of thought".
From actual experience, Zed is indeed smoother than VS Code.
⬇️ Zed
⬇️ VS Code
The official website also provides typing performance comparison:
To input the letter z and display it on screen, Zed only needs 58 milliseconds, while VS Code needs 97 milliseconds.
Zed is 1.4 times faster than VS Code.
In terms of input performance, Zed wins.
The second core feature Zed promotes is multi-user collaborative programming.
To be honest, I can't think of good practical use cases for this feature yet.
So far, Zed is merely a decent text editor.
You could even say Zed hasn't made any substantial breakthroughs - it's a self-indulgent product.
Zed's advertised high performance doesn't represent a quantum leap, making it hard to impress users.
The gap between "58 milliseconds" and "97 milliseconds" isn't that significant.
Any actual developer knows that the bottleneck in programming isn't typing speed.
As for multi-user collaboration, this scenario currently seems unfriendly.
For document collaboration, domestic products like Feishu Docs and Tencent Docs are leaders that would crush Zed.
For code collaboration, Git is obviously the mainstream solution.
Zed is too young. It hasn't even implemented basic markdown preview yet.
VS Code set the standard with its open-source, plugin-based ecosystem that attracted a massive following.
While Zed also has a plugin mechanism, how many contributors can we expect?
The book "Rework" mentions that people who fail in their first startup have the same probability of failing in their second.
Zed's team previously made the Atom editor, and now Atom exists in name only.
The team failed with Atom, and their comeback with Zed still isn't enough.
Zed will likely capture a portion of users, but won't become a domain success.
How can Zed break through? The most important thing is to go with the flow.
Think about VS Code's timing: the prosperity of the internet drove open-source development, Eclipse was outdated, JetBrains was expensive, frontend specialization was emerging and urgently needed lightweight editors - these were all momentum for VS Code.
Currently, Zed's best momentum is obviously the AI direction.
But Zed clearly lacks sufficient support, only having Copilot code completion and Chat capabilities.
VS Code not only has these features but implements them more comprehensively.
The Zed team should think about what kind of editor they want to make that adapts to the current AI trend and creates new opportunities.
If they continue to be satisfied with insignificant performance improvements and vertical collaboration, continuing to compete in vertical tracks, then I wish them luck.