Comment by the__alchemist
10 days ago
I am confused by this without context. I have not heard of blade, but am aware that Zed built its own GUI library called GPUI. Having used Zed, this is a vote of confidence: The crate ecosystem is historically filled with libaries which try to be The future of X in rust but are disconnected from practical applications. GPUI by nature is not that; it's a UI lib built to a practical and non-trivial purpose. It sounds like Blade is a cross-API graphics engine, by one of the original gfx-HAL (former QGPU name) creators?
I have not used GPUI beyond a simple test case, but had (prior to this news?) considered it for future projects. I am proficient with, and love EGUI and WGPU. (The latter for 3D). I have written a library (`graphics` crate) which integrates the two, and I use for my own scientific applications which have both 2D and 3D applications. Overall, I'm confused by this, as I was looking forward to using GPUI in future applications and comparing it to EGUI. I have asked online in several places for someone to compare who's used both, but I believe this to be a small pool.
I was not sure of the integration between GPUI and WGPU, which can confirm EGUI and WGPU have great integration. But I only care about this because I do 3D stuff; if I were not, I would be using eframe instead of WGPU as the backend.
Unrelated, off-topic, but I'm also not sure where to ask this: Am I missing something about Zed? I have tried and failed to get into it. I really want to like it because it's so fast [responsive], but it seems to lack basic IDE functionality in Python and Rust, like moving structs/functions, catching errors dynamically, introspection and refactoring in general etc. I thought I might be missing some config, but now lean that it's more of a project-oriented text editor than true IDE in the fashion of JetBrains. But I have been unable to get a confirmation, and people discuss it as if it's an IDE or JB alternative.
Zed competes mostly against Visual Studio Code. Not against Jetbrains.
I do love jetbrains for its nice-to-have features (eg highlight a few lines in the middle of a spaghetti function -> right click -> extract to new function) and was paying for it out of my own pocket for several years; but had to switch to vscode for a couple of required features that jetbrains was missing (remote dev over ssh, and devcontainers); and now switched to zed for being "like vscode but faster"
Zed can "extract function" for Rust code. I guess, it depends on the language server you use? Since vscode and zed use the same there is not distinction between them.
Maybe, but I switched from IntelliJ to Zed. And eventually stopped paying for Jetbrains products.
I am one plugin away from moving to it directly instead of vscode. I really like it. It’s fast. It gets updates seemingly daily. I’ve never had it crash. It integrates LLMs well. It’s everything I wish vscode was if it were native.
Lucky you. It still crashes quite often for me and it drives me nuts that my Claude code history is lost every time…
But love the project and been using it for almost 2 years now though
Debug log says what about the crash?
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I used to feel this way, then a week or two ago, after an automatic update, it started hanging. All. The. Time for me. Launching the app now frequently takes 30 seconds before it shows me the “load a git repo” screen.
Speed was its main advantage, before. It has become nearly unusable.
The price of extraordinarily rapid iteration, I suppose.
FWIW I think I was experiencing the same hangs as you, and they seem to have resolved on their own now. Worth checking again just in case
I appreciate the info! Are you able to talk me through how to move a struct[class]?
I installed Zed a few days ago and have been trying to get acquainted myself.
It has far less built-in features for refactoring than other editors you might be coming from. It's handled at the LSP level, get the LSP for your language and hit cmd+ to see what it can do. I'm not working in Python or Rust at the moment (Elixir), but I'm sure they have some good extensions.
I don't get the question. albeit in vim I use just the navigation things and selectors and s/../.. to replace stuff I am probably using something like 1% of it's power.
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What is the plugin you are waiting on?
Not OP but I can’t leave jet brains until a double shift search everywhere is implemented.
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> It sounds like Blade is a cross-API graphics engine, by one of the original gfx-HAL (former QGPU name) creators?
My understanding is that wgpu has a lot of constraints and complexity imposed on it by all the backends it has to support (especially WebGPU) and that Blade is meant to be a much simpler closer-to-metal api for people who want more control (and know how to not shoot themselves in the foot)
> I would be using eframe instead of WGPU as the backend.
Do you mean using egui-wgpu directly rather than through eframe? The default backend of eframe is wgpu (it used to be glow/opengl), and you can still use callbacks to directly render whatever you want with wgpu in an eframe app
> EGUI and WGPU have great integration
Can confirm, it was stupid simple to integrate egui into my wgpu gamedev project
> Am I missing something about Zed? I have tried and failed to get into it.
I also tried Zed after getting annoyed at Helix a few times, and thought "oh cool, this is like vscode but fast and even has a helix mode!" but then didn't find any killer features worth abandoning the synergies of having an all-in-terminal-workflow over
I appreciate the details!
> Do you mean using egui-wgpu directly rather than through eframe? The default backend of eframe is wgpu (it used to be glow/opengl), and you can still use callbacks to directly render whatever you want with wgpu in an eframe app
I apparently don't know how eframe works... had no idea it used a GPU at all or WGPU under the hood... I assumed it was just the default you use if making a 2d-only program.
Re zed... I think I am too addicted to IDE functionality to be comfortable without. I had assumed Zed could do it, but have now concluded it can't. And/or I can't figure out how to use the LSP features reffed here, or they are well-hidden.
Cool, I haven't seen `graphics` before when I was looking for a simple UI/3D visualization option after rend3 has been abandoded. Have been considering bevy/egui too but seems more effort to learn
> as I was looking forward to using GPUI in future applications and comparing it to EGUI. I have asked online in several places for someone to compare who's used both, but I believe this to be a small pool.
I have yet to learn GPUI, but I have used Egui and really like it. I was turned off of GPUI from being forced to have to install Xcode to use it on macOS, which is a major bummer, in my opinion.
Iced.rs is also neat[0].
0 - https://github.com/iced-rs/iced
Iced indeed seems very neat. Egui is developed by a single person and so is Iced. The difference is that Egui has been quite stable whereas Iced has gone through several rewrites, as far as I can tell. It's why I didn't dive into it more, even though I like how Iced looks and focuses on the Elm model.
The Iced developer is quote open regarding his goals, which is appreciated. So while it's a nice library, it's a hard one to adopt.
https://book.iced.rs/philosophy.html