Developer switches from CLion ($85/yr) to Zed after chronic slowness, abysmal startup times, repeated reindexing, and large disk footprint made programming feel painful.
Key Takeaways
CLion’s core feature set is praised – debugger, UI, defaults – but JVM overhead causes stuttering, CPU/RAM exhaustion, and sluggish file creation on older hardware.
New file creation requires a loading popup; project switching and startup involve splash screens; remote development disconnects on slow machines.
Zed v1 on Linux (Wayland flickering recently fixed) offers fast editing, sane defaults, VSCode extension compatibility, and non-intrusive AI integration.
Author treats instant editor open and flow-state entry as hard requirements; any friction that delays coding is disqualifying.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters split on the IDE-vs-editor framing: Zed lacks deep refactoring, debugger, and language-specific tooling that JetBrains products ship out of the box; Neovim+LSP+DAP users push back that the gap is smaller than claimed.
JetBrains AI assistant drew independent criticism: forced upsell ads triggered one user to cancel mid-subscription, and commenters note the bundled AI delivers noticeably worse results and higher latency than hitting providers directly.
Zed’s VC backing and past resistance to an opt-out AI flag raised trust concerns; the disable_ai flag only shipped after community pressure.
Notable Comments
@jordand: Zed required significant community pushback before shipping disable_ai flag – flags it as a mandatory feature and a trust signal worth watching.
@ajxs: Zed requires Vulkan support; 2011-era ThinkPad x220 with Intel HD graphics is locked out entirely.
