Moving from an editor as dominant as VS Code isn’t something you do often – it usually takes a specific kind of frustration to jump ship. With VS Code, I justified the occasional lag and heavy RAM usage for the sake of the massive extension library.
I tried to switch to lighter alternatives before, but I always went back the moment I needed a specific debugger or a niche UI theme. However, after a week with Zed, something changed. I have finally achieved the weightless coding workflow I was looking for. Now, returning to VS Code feels sluggish and heavy by comparison.
Excellent performance
Rust + GPU advantage
When I first heard that Zed was built in Rust and rendered via the GPU, I will admit I thought it was mostly marketing fluff. After all, I was used to electron apps like VS Code. But once I actually started typing in Zed, the difference was massive.
In VS Code, scrolling through a 5000-line file always felt like the editor was stretching to keep up. In Zed, it’s instantaneous. There is zero jitter. It makes the act of navigating a codebase feel tactile and responsive in a way I didn’t realize I was missing.
Because Zed is written in a memory-safe, high-performance language like Rust, it doesn’t need a heavy virtual machine or a Chromium instance running in the background just to show me text.
I can quit Zed and reopen it in the time it takes to blink. Even with a dozen tabs open, Zed rarely crosses the 300MB mark. It means my build tools run faster, my browser doesn’t lag during local testing, and my laptop battery actually lasts through a session at a coffee shop.
For the first time, my editor feels like a lightweight tool rather than a heavy platform I’m forced to manage.
Native Git support and Debugger
Fly through your workflow
In VS Code, the Git integration always felt like a separate app running inside a window. I would click the source control icon, wait a beat for it to refresh, and then hunt through a tiny sidebar to stage my changes.
In Zed, Git is everywhere. Because it’s built in Rust, the diffing is instantaneous. And for the longest time, lightweight editors meant no debugger. You were expected to just use console.log or jump back to a heavy IDE. Zed broke that cycle for me.
The native debugger support (that leverages the Debug Adapter Protocol) means I get the power of VS Code’s debugging – breakpoints, call stacks, and variable inspection – without the Electron bloat.
If I had to pick one feature that makes it impossible for me to go back to VS Code, it’s the multi-buffer. When I search for a function name, Zed opens a multi-buffer. This is a single, continuous document that contains snippets of every file where that search item appears.
This isn’t just a read-only list. I can type inside that and make changes across five different files at once.
Agentic AI
Bring your own key
When I first started using AI in VS Code, it felt like I was constantly managing it. I had three different extensions installed, a sidebar that I had to manually feed snippets into, and an autocomplete that would fail because it didn’t really know where it was.
In VS Code, I was used to Copilot – a tool that essentially tries to finish my sentences. It’s helpful, but limited. In Zed, it works differently. Instead of just getting a line suggestion, I can open the Assistant Panel and have a conversation with the entire codebase.
One of my biggest gripes with other AI-integrated editors (like Cursor) is the subscription lock-in. Zed takes an open approach. I can plug in my own Anthropic or OpenAI API keys and only pay for what I actually use.
If Claude 3.5 Sonnet is struggling with a logic puzzle, I can switch the chat to GPT-5 or Gemini 3 with two clicks.
The inline assistant is where the built-in nature really shines. The AI interaction feels as lightweight as typing a comment. It predicts my next edit – not just my next word – using their Zeta model. It makes the transition between human coding and AI assisting feel like a fluid motion.
Transitioning from VS Code
The extension myth
When switching from VS Code, my biggest fear was the loss of my extension library. I had 20+ plugins in VS Code, ranging from essential language servers to nice UI tweaks. But as I settled into Zed, I realized I didn’t actually need many of them.
Zed comes with things that actually matter. Themes, Git integration, and high-performance Language Servers (LSPs) for TypeScript, Rust, and Python are either built-in or a single click away in the Extensions menu.
Overall, I stopped spending my weekends maintaining editors and started just using it.
Configuring the perfect dev environment
Is Zed perfect? Not yet. There are still niche plugins I miss and occasional bugs that remind me it’s the ‘new kid on the block.’ But for the first time in years, I’m not looking for a way back to VS Code. The trade-off is worth it. Switching editors is always a pain, but when the tool actually matches the speed of your brain, it’s a pain that pays off every single time you hit a key.
If Zed doesn’t work for you, check out Cursor. It’s another robust VS Code alternative worth checking out.