Comment by 201984
4 days ago
Comment from the author: https://lobste.rs/c/wmqvug
> Since someone mentioned forking, I suppose I’ll use this opportunity to advertise my fork of Zed: https://github.com/zedless-editor/zed
> I’m gradually removing all the features I deem undesirable: telemetry, auto-updates, proprietary cloud-only AI integrations, reliance on node.js, auto-downloading of language servers, upsells, the sign-in button, etc. I’m also aiming to make some of the cloud-only features self-hostable where it makes sense, e.g. running Zeta edit predictions off of your own llama.cpp or vLLM instance. It’s currently good enough to be my main editor, though I tend to be a bit behind on updates since there is a lot of code churn and my way of modifying the codebase isn’t exactly ideal for avoiding merge conflicts. To that end I’m experimenting with using tree-sitter to automatically apply AST-level edits, which might end up becoming a tool that can build customizable “unshittified” versions of Zed.
> relying on node.js
When did people start hating node and what do they have against it?
For Zed specifically? It cuts directly against their stated goal of being fast and resource-light. Moreover, it is not acceptable for software I use to automatically download and run third-party software without asking me.
For node.js in general? The language isn't even considered good in the browser, for which it was invented. It is absolutely insane to then try to turn it into a standalone programming language. There are so many better options available, use one of them! Reusing a crappy tool just because it's what you know is a mark of very poor craftsmanship.
> When did people start hating node
You're kidding, right?
Maybe they've just never seen a dependency they didn't like.
It shouldn't be as tightly integrated into the editor as it is. Zed uses it for a lot of things, including to install various language servers and other things via NPM, which is just nasty.
You might not be old enough to remember how much everyone hated JavaScript initially - just as an in-browser language. Then suddenly it's a standalone programming language too? WTH??
I assume that's where a lot of the hate comes from. Note that's not my opinion, just wondering if that might be why.
JavaScript is actually fine as the warts have been documented. The main issue these days is the billions of tiny packages. So many people/org to trust for every project that uses npm.
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I guess some node.js based tools that are included in Zed (or its language extensions) such as ‘prettier’ don’t behave well in some environments (e.g., they constantly try to write files to /home/$USER even if that’s not your home directory). Things like that create some backlash.
Slow and ram heavy. Zed feels refreshingly snappy compared to vscode even before adding plugins. And why does desktop application need to use interpreted programming languages?
For me, upon its inception. We desperately needed unity in API design and node.js hasn't been adequate for many of us.
WinterTC has only recently been chartered in order to make strides towards specifying a unified standard library for the JS ecosystem.