Zed

Zed is the code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter, and it's the first serious threat to VS Code in years. Built in Rust with GPU-accelerated rendering, it feels like typing in butter. Multiplayer editing is built in from day one — real-time co-editing without plugins or screen sharing.

VS Code is the ecosystem king with extensions for everything. Neovim is the customization extreme. Cursor is the AI-first fork of VS Code. Zed wants to be all three: fast, collaborative, and AI-native, with $32M from Sequoia backing that bet.

If you value speed and collaboration over extension count, switch now. The CRDT-based multiplayer is genuinely impressive — think Google Docs for code. AI features are progressing fast with the Agent Client Protocol.

The catch: the extension ecosystem is still young. If your workflow depends on niche VS Code extensions — specific language support, debugger integrations, proprietary tool plugins — you'll feel the gap. Linux support landed but macOS is still the first-class experience.