After over a decade using Vim/Neovim, the author experimented with Zed, a new electron-based editor. While appreciating Zed's native performance, smooth scrolling, and collaborative features, the author found the Vim mode lacking compared to their highly customized Neovim setup. Specifically, plugins and keybindings didn't translate seamlessly, hindering their workflow. Although impressed by Zed's potential, particularly its speed and built-in collaboration, the author ultimately returned to Neovim, finding its flexibility and familiarity more valuable than Zed's current advantages. They remain optimistic about Zed's future and plan to revisit it as it matures.
Shantanu Goel, a long-time Vim/Neovim user with over a decade of experience, recounts his initial exploration of Zed, a collaborative code editor built using Rust and WebAssembly. Having deeply ingrained Vim habits, he approaches Zed with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism, eager to see if it can live up to the hype and potentially offer a compelling alternative to his established workflow.
Goel begins by acknowledging the impressive performance of Zed, particularly its speed and responsiveness. He highlights the near-instant startup time, a stark contrast to his experience with increasingly complex and sometimes sluggish Neovim setups. This immediate responsiveness extends to general usage, with smooth scrolling and quick operations, even with large files. He attributes this performance to Zed's architectural foundation, built on Rust and leveraging WebAssembly.
Despite appreciating Zed's performance, Goel encounters several friction points stemming from his entrenched Vim muscle memory. He details his struggles adapting to Zed's different modal editing approach. While superficially similar to Vim, subtle variations in command execution and keybindings create a learning curve. Specifically, he mentions the necessity of using "Escape" to exit insert mode, as opposed to other viable Vim options like "Ctrl-[", a nuance that disrupts his ingrained workflow. He also notes the different behavior of the "." (dot) command, which repeats the last action, and observes that it doesn't always function as expected in Zed compared to his Vim experience.
Further, Goel explores Zed's built-in collaboration features, which are a core selling point of the editor. While recognizing the potential of real-time collaborative editing, he expresses reservations about its practical implementation. He finds the collaborative experience somewhat cumbersome, particularly in managing shared cursors and navigating the presence of multiple users within the same document.
Beyond the collaboration aspects, Goel also examines Zed's plugin ecosystem. Coming from the rich and extensively developed Vim plugin environment, he finds Zed's offerings comparatively limited. He acknowledges that Zed is still in its early stages of development, and therefore anticipates growth in this area. However, the current lack of comprehensive plugin support presents a significant obstacle for a user accustomed to the extensive customization and functionality offered by Vim plugins.
Finally, Goel concludes his initial assessment of Zed with a balanced perspective. He recognizes the editor's promising performance and the innovative potential of its collaborative features. However, he emphasizes that, for a seasoned Vim user like himself, overcoming deeply ingrained habits and adapting to a new editing paradigm presents a significant challenge. He remains open to further exploration of Zed as it matures, particularly as its plugin ecosystem expands, but for now, he intends to stick with his well-established and highly customized Neovim environment. He implies that Zed might be more readily adopted by users who are not already heavily invested in the Vim ecosystem.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43307809
Hacker News users discussing their experience with Claude Code generally found it impressive. Several commenters praised its ability to handle complex instructions and multi-turn conversations, with some even claiming it surpasses GPT-4 in certain areas like code generation and maintaining context. Others highlighted its strong reasoning abilities and fewer hallucinations compared to other LLMs. However, some users expressed caution, pointing out potential limitations in specific domains like math and the lack of access for most users. The cost of Claude Pro was also a topic of discussion, with some debating its value compared to GPT-4. Overall, the sentiment leaned towards optimism about Claude's potential while acknowledging its current limitations and accessibility issues.
The Hacker News post "I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days" (linking to a 2011 tweet about an internal Google coding tool) sparked a discussion thread with several insightful comments. Many commenters noted the historical context of the tweet, highlighting that it originated in 2011 and referred to an internal Google tool, not the more recently released Anthropic Claude.
Several commenters expressed a sense of nostalgia, remembering the internal Google tool fondly and reminiscing about its capabilities. They pointed out features like its code search, documentation integration, and refactoring capabilities. One commenter mentioned how valuable such a tool is internally at Google, enabling developers to easily navigate and understand the company's massive codebase. They also expressed a wish for similar tools to be publicly available.
A recurring theme in the comments was the difficulty of building and maintaining such comprehensive code analysis and assistance tools. Commenters discussed the challenges of scaling these tools to handle the complexity of real-world codebases and the ongoing effort required to keep them up-to-date with evolving languages and frameworks.
Some users discussed the various attempts to create similar tools outside of Google, acknowledging both successful projects and those that have fallen short. They mentioned tools like Kythe, which aims to provide a standardized platform for code analysis, and other open-source efforts aimed at replicating some of the functionality of internal Google tools.
The discussion also touched upon the importance of code intelligence tools for developer productivity and how they can significantly reduce the cognitive load associated with navigating large and complex codebases. Commenters speculated on why more tools of this caliber haven't emerged publicly, suggesting factors like the high development cost and the challenge of effectively monetizing such tools. There was also a discussion on how companies often keep these kinds of powerful internal tools proprietary to maintain a competitive advantage.
Finally, some users drew parallels between the capabilities described in the tweet and more recent advancements in AI-powered coding assistants, like GitHub Copilot and the aforementioned Anthropic Claude, highlighting the progress made in this domain over the past decade. They wondered how these tools compared to Google's internal tools and expressed hope for even more powerful and accessible code intelligence tools in the future.