Zed: Building a New IDE from Scratch

April 29, 2025 (8 hours ago)

In the world of software development, the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is arguably the most crucial tool in a developer's arsenal. For years, we've seen the rise and dominance of powerful, feature-rich IDEs built on various technologies. However, a new contender is emerging that's taking a fundamentally different approach: Zed. What makes Zed stand out, and why is the fact that it's being built from scratch such a big deal?

The Current Landscape: Powerful but Problematic?

Many popular modern code editors and IDEs, such as Visual Studio Code and Atom (Interestingly, some of the creators of Atom are now building Zed), are built on frameworks like Electron. Electron allows developers to build desktop applications using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), which is fantastic for cross-platform compatibility and leveraging existing web development skills.

However, this convenience often comes at a cost: performance. Electron apps can be resource-intensive, leading to higher memory usage, slower startup times, and occasional lag, especially in larger projects or on less powerful machines. While these tools have become incredibly sophisticated and indispensable, their underlying architecture can sometimes be a bottleneck.

Enter Zed: A Rust-Powered Renaissance

Zed takes a brave and challenging path by being built from scratch using the Rust programming language. Rust is known for its performance, memory safety, and concurrency features. Building an IDE from the ground up in Rust is a massive undertaking, but it offers the potential to overcome the limitations often associated with Electron-based editors.

So, why is this "from scratch" approach a big deal?

Unparalleled Performance: By writing directly in a performant language like Rust and having direct control over low-level operations, Zed aims to be significantly faster and more responsive than many existing IDEs. This means quicker startup times, smoother scrolling, faster search, and more fluid interactions even with massive codebases.
Native Feel and Efficiency: Building natively (rather than on a web-based framework) allows Zed to integrate more deeply with the operating system. This can result in a more "native" look and feel, lower resource consumption, and better overall efficiency.
Tailored Architecture: Starting from scratch means the Zed team isn't constrained by the architectural decisions of existing frameworks. They can design every part of the IDE specifically for the task at hand, potentially leading to a more optimized and coherent system.
Innovation Potential: Without the baggage of legacy codebases or the limitations of general-purpose frameworks, the Zed team has the freedom to innovate on core IDE concepts, from collaborative editing features to how language servers and extensions are handled.

Key Features and What Makes Zed Exciting

Beyond the performance benefits of being built in Rust, Zed is focusing on several key areas:

Collaborative Editing: Real-time collaboration is a core feature, designed from the ground up to be seamless and robust, akin to modern document editors.
Built-in Language Server Protocol (LSP) Support: Deep integration with LSPs allows for powerful code intelligence features (autocompletion, diagnostics, go-to definition) that are fast and reliable.
A Focus on Simplicity and Speed: While powerful, Zed aims to maintain a clean and intuitive user interface, avoiding unnecessary clutter.

Why It's a Big Deal

Zed being built from scratch in Rust isn't just a technical curiosity; it's a significant development for the entire developer community:

Raising the Bar for Performance: Zed has the potential to set a new standard for IDE performance, pushing other tools to improve their own speed and efficiency.
A Different Paradigm: It offers an alternative vision for what a modern IDE can be, one that prioritizes speed and responsiveness without sacrificing powerful features.
Validation for Native Development: Its success could inspire more developers to explore native development for complex desktop applications, moving away from reliance on potentially heavier cross-platform frameworks for performance-critical tools.

Conclusion

Building an IDE from scratch is an immense challenge, requiring expertise across various domains, from text rendering and parsing to operating system interactions and network programming. However, the team behind Zed, with their experience from projects like Atom, is taking on this challenge head-on using the power of Rust.

While still under active development and not yet fully feature-complete compared to established giants, Zed represents an exciting frontier. It's a bold attempt to redefine the modern IDE experience by prioritizing raw performance and a tailored architecture. Whether it fully succeeds or not, Zed has already sparked valuable conversations about the future of our most essential developer tools and demonstrates the compelling advantages that can come from building critical software from the ground up. It's definitely a project worth watching closely.