Hypothesis

No More JetBrains Products for Me

Transition to Zed: The author has switched to Zed (v1) as their primary code editor, praising its sane defaults, fast and responsive performance, great integration with the VS Code ecosystem, and tasteful AI integration.
The JetBrains Breakup: For years, the author paid ~$85/year for CLion and appreciated its UI, default settings, and powerful debugging tools. However, they decided to cancel their subscription because the IDE became frustratingly slow.
Specific Technical Frustrations: - Creating a new file triggers a tedious popup and loading screen.
- Startup and project-switching times are exceptionally sluggish.
- Remote development features intermittently disconnect on older hardware.
- Constant, unexpected re-indexing cycles exhaust CPU and RAM resources.
- The massive on-disk installation footprint makes it unsuitable for older machines.
Impact on Developer Flow: These combined performance regressions created friction, causing the author to hesitate before opening the editor and ultimately disrupting their ability to enter a productive flow state.

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Hardware and Environment Variables: Several commenters argue that complaints about JetBrains being slow usually depend on older hardware or a bloated setup packed with third-party plugins. Users with modern machines (like Apple Silicon) report cold start times of just a few seconds, noting that JetBrains IDEs are meant to be kept open all day rather than spun up per file.
The Pushback Against AI and Bloat: A major pain point among long-time subscribers is JetBrains' aggressive push toward AI features. Commenters express frustration over persistent AI companion sidebars, the "minimalist" new UI (which some claim mimics VS Code and has poor icon contrast), and overall SaaS feature creep meant to justify subscription fees rather than improve core performance.
The Text Editor vs. Full-Scale IDE Debate: A core disagreement centers around whether it is fair to compare Zed to JetBrains. Proponents of JetBrains argue it is a full-featured IDE with deep indexing and tooling capabilities that a lightweight editor like Zed may never natively match. Conversely, others counter that those features are useless if the resource-heavy footprint disrupts a developer's flow state or causes crashes.
Alternative Workflows: Many developers mention abandoning full IDEs altogether in favor of highly optimized, lightweight text editors backed by the Language Server Protocol (LSP). Solutions like Neovim, Emacs, and Helix are praised for offering powerful code intelligence and debugging with a fraction of the memory and CPU overhead.

programming IDE JetBrains Zed

I switched from VSCode to Zed

Original author switched from VSCode to Zed in December and now uses Zed as the primary editor for Python and Go.
Main reason for leaving VSCode was increasingly intrusive AI features (Copilot prompts, inline terminal suggestions) and perceived increase in crashes and slowness.
Author still likes VSCode overall but feels rapid AI integration harmed stability and usability, and hopes it becomes less intrusive in the future.
JetBrains IDEs were rejected as feeling too heavy, and Vim/Emacs as too time‑intensive to configure; Zed was attractive as a modern, lightweight Rust-based IDE.
Transition from VSCode was smooth: similar UI, mostly compatible keybindings, and ability (unused by author) to import some VSCode settings.
Zed felt significantly faster and more responsive than VSCode, with no glitches or crashes over a couple of weeks, restoring a sense of “joy of programming”.
Initial Zed setup was minimal: adjust fonts, theme, disable inline git blame, and enable autosave; Go worked out of the box.
Python setup required more work because Zed uses language servers and defaults to Basedpyright instead of Pylance (which is VSCode-only and closed source).
The author hit unexpected strict type-checking because projects with a [tool.pyright] section in pyproject.toml effectively force Basedpyright’s recommended mode.
Attempting to set typeCheckingMode in Zed’s settings.json did not help; the fix was explicitly setting typeCheckingMode = "standard" inside each project’s [tool.pyright] config.
Another issue was delayed type diagnostics across files, fixed by setting "disablePullDiagnostics": true in Zed’s Basedpyright initialization options.
Virtualenv handling and other Python-specific behavior worked smoothly; the author also tried the new ty language server, found it good, but stayed with Basedpyright to match CI’s Pyright.
Zed is now the author’s default IDE: fast, stable, familiar, with enough extensions despite a much smaller ecosystem than VSCode.
The main missing feature is a powerful side‑by‑side git diff viewer comparable to GitLens.
Zed’s AI features are present but easy to ignore; paid plans for AI edit predictions seem like a reasonable way to fund development while keeping the core editor free.
The author views Zed as a serious competitor that pressures VSCode to improve, especially around AI integration and performance.
The post ends with sharing a minimal settings.json showcasing autosave, disabled inline blame, VSCode keymap, fonts, light theme, and customized Basedpyright LSP options.

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A VS Code team member acknowledges that AI-related features sometimes ignore the “disable” settings but states they try to ship fixes quickly and appreciate feedback.
Several commenters recommend VSCodium as a way to get the open‑source VS Code experience without Microsoft’s telemetry and aggressive AI integration, while clarifying that both VS Code and VSCodium build from the same upstream repo.
Many users express frustration with VS Code becoming bloated, unreliable, or “enshittified,” particularly around Copilot and complex configuration/remote setups, and are looking at Zed or classic editors as alternatives.
Emacs and Vim/Neovim advocates argue that investing in these longstanding editors avoids churn and AI/UX regressions, with some describing decades-long Emacs usage and others praising Neovim plus LSPs as a lightweight yet powerful setup.
Sublime Text is often cited as the spiritual predecessor of Zed in terms of speed and snappiness, with some saying Zed is the closest modern successor focused on performance.
Zed users highlight positives like fast AI/MCP integration, good Nix/Direnv support, and pleasant design, but note pain points such as font rendering on low‑DPI or non‑GPU setups, Linux packaging gaps, missing REPLs for Lisps, and weaker debugging/extension ecosystems compared to VS Code or JetBrains.
Some comments mention concrete bugs and annoyances in Zed, including format‑on‑save occasionally deleting the first line of Python classes, unwanted newline insertion at EOF, and missing small quality-of-life features (e.g., indentation autodetection, drag‑and‑drop markdown link insertion).
A few developers describe hybrid workflows: using JetBrains IDEs on powerful machines, Zed on lower‑power devices, and Vim/Neovim or Sublime for quick one‑off edits, emphasizing that Zed is not yet at JetBrains’ level for deep refactoring and code understanding.
Several participants discuss Zed’s business model as an AI “reseller”: core editor remains free while Pro users pay for pooled tokens across multiple AI providers, which some see as a relatively benign and sustainable way to monetize.
There is concern that Zed’s extension ecosystem is still small and that Rust-based extension development may limit growth relative to VS Code; suggestions include better guidance for porting VS Code extensions and addressing collaboration/chat self‑hosting and security concerns.

Zed VSCode IDEs Python

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