I love the spirit of Zed. From the principles to the low-level implementation details, it all screams "good taste". It's immensely interesting as an object of study (the code is great, from GPUI all the way up).
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.
pbiggar · 1m ago
Not just a VC, but Sequoia is certainly a choice after their partner's public Islamophobia just last month!
The problem with accepting VC money is they will eventually demand a return on their investment, which means that the forces that drive enshitification will eventually come for Zed in some form. I suspect that we'll see more and more features locked behind a paid subscription and the open core of the editor will become neglected over time.
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.
parentheses · 27m ago
Note to Zed: I prefer paid products to enshittened ones.
Please please please, get paid rather than holding on too tightly to making things free forcing future enshittening.
rtfeldman · 7m ago
We're working on it! :)
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).
fragmede · 9m ago
I mean, eventually, sure. It took Uber around 15 years to get to profitability. ChatGPT came out in 2022, so get your predictions for 2037 in now.
pton_xd · 23m ago
> To make this possible, we're building DeltaDB: a new kind of version control that tracks every operation, not just commits.
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.
k_bx · 6m ago
I don't know what's DeltaDB, but if it will be able to show when a commit is simultaneously a refactoring and a change of code being refactored (moved into another module) – I would love to see that! At the moment if you refactor you punish the people reviewing the code, which reverses the motivation for cleaning things up.
decentrality · 3h ago
DeltaDB sounds of being a >git innovation for coding itself, and would fulfill Zed's promises in Nathan Sobo's debate/discussion with Steve Yegge recently.
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!
For anyone not clicking through the link: it's from 5 months ago, predicting 90% of today's code will be from LLMs.
>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 · 18m ago
I had a week where I embraced and went deep on ai first coding (not vibe, that'd be crazy)
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 · 7m ago
By sheer volume, that 90% number might be right.
decentrality · 3m ago
I agree. The level of dilution is becoming obvious and a big problem... code is becoming predominantly disposable
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
rirze · 6m ago
Cool, I basically get the same effect with "code snapshots" with using jj so I wonder if this will be different.
kordlessagain · 1h ago
Am I the only one that associates "Zed" and "development" with Zed Shaw? I don't think he has anything to do with zed.dev, unfortunately.
poetril · 1h ago
You’re not. Everytime I see him on Twitch I have to do a double take.
mandeepj · 52m ago
It’s sounds very similar to Google wave, if anyone remembers that, but for code.
tzury · 16m ago
That came back as Slack and other similar products
esafak · 47m ago
This sounds interesting. Which aspects?
mandeepj · 40m ago
“ never-ending stream of conversations”
witx · 27m ago
> we've been building the world's fastest IDE
Any data to backup this?
yurishimo · 9m ago
You can try it out. I would say it’s aiming to be a more modern Sublime Text, which is a win to be considered in the same category imo.
fredgrott · 4m ago
The problem I see is the VC involvement...
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.
Dowwie · 40m ago
Zed defaults don't seem to capture the full value of what it offers. For instance, edit predictions via tab completion are documented yet I've never experienced them. I need better settings, I guess.
eorri · 2h ago
I think they're tackling a real problem that is revealing itself via agentic coding, and I think they've positioned themselves in an interesting spot.
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?
markus_zhang · 51m ago
OK they touched Unity and now Zed. I’m sure it’s going to be good.
ewf · 1h ago
feels like we are giving up privacy for productivity.
laweijfmvo · 1h ago
wouldn’t be the first time a massive investment from someone like sequoia sparks the death of a previously great tool/service
verdverm · 28m ago
Yea, this announcement makes it less likely I will try Zed
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
decentrality · 9m ago
For the record: I have never used the collaboration aspects of Zed
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
esafak · 47m ago
If you're using it for work, it's the company's problem.
fidotron · 1h ago
Who at Zed played League of Legends during an investor call then?
We should never forget how idiotic Sequoia have been.
conartist6 · 1h ago
That brings them to 120x the amount of money I've invested in the same problem, and still they're only just announcing that they're intending to start trying to do something that I've already done better
esafak · 48m ago
Can we see?
fkyoureadthedoc · 24m ago
It's apparently this but I can't really say that I get it: https://bablr.org
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]
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/technology/sequoia-capita...
it's a software company. they sell software.
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).
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.
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-...
>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.
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
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
Any data to backup this?
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'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 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
We should never forget how idiotic Sequoia have been.
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]
1. https://docs.bablr.org/architecture/prior-art/#ides