Why I switched from VS Code to Zed after 8 years
30-second read
A long-form switch story from a senior dev. Hacker News splits three ways: Zed enthusiasts confirming the speed gains, VS Code defenders pointing at extension ecosystem gaps, and a vocal minority arguing both miss the point — the editor is no longer the bottleneck.
▲ For
- Zed's keystroke-to-pixel latency is genuinely lower; multiple commenters report it 'feels' faster in a way that Electron-based editors can't match even with Copilot's UI disabled.
- Collaborative editing is built in, not bolted on — pair programming Just Works without Live Share session juggling.
- GPU rendering means large files (10k+ lines) scroll smoothly where VS Code stutters; useful for log triage and generated code.
▼ Against
- Extension ecosystem is still 1/100th the size of VS Code's. If you depend on a niche language server, custom linter, or company-internal extension, you're stuck.
- Remote development (SSH, dev containers, WSL) is markedly less mature; the VS Code remote story is still best-in-class for most teams.
- Several long-time VS Code users say the speed difference is real but irrelevant — they're bottlenecked on LSP, not on the editor, and Zed's LSP integration isn't yet faster than VS Code's.
? Still unknown
- Whether Zed's open-source pivot will survive long-term commercially — the company needs a revenue model that isn't just 'AI features'.
- How Zed will handle the Copilot/Cursor/Windsurf wave — the thread is divided on whether AI-native editors will eat both Zed and VS Code in 18 months.
- Whether the Windows port (still beta) will reach parity in 2026.
→ What it means
- Editor choice is becoming a real conversation again after a decade of VS Code dominance. Expect more switch stories on HN in the coming months.
- VS Code's response will likely be incremental performance work, not a rewrite — the Electron lock-in is too deep.
- If you're evaluating editors today: Zed for greenfield Rust/Go/TypeScript work on Mac/Linux; VS Code if you depend on extensions, remote workflows, or Windows.
“ Notable quotes
We didn't write a new editor to be marginally faster. We wrote it so that AI agents can edit code at the same speed a human can read it.— nathansobo
I switched, lasted 3 weeks, switched back. Speed is real, ecosystem isn't. Try before you migrate your whole team.— throwaway42_dev
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