Developer Voices

Building the Zed Text Editor (with Nathan Sobo)

Jun 5, 2024

Nathan Sobo talks about building Zed, a text editor in Rust, focusing on UI design, performance optimization, and collaboration features. He discusses challenges in editor development, using Rust for Zed, high frame rate rendering, WebAssembly, and testing concurrent networking code. The podcast explores innovative features like TreeSitter, Language Server Protocol, and future visions for Zed, including open-sourcing components and CRDB integration.

01:23:51

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Episode guests

Nathan Sobo

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Zed editor leverages Rust for performance and aesthetics.

Z utilizes Segment Trees for efficient text transformations.

Z prioritizes real-time collaboration with CRDTs for effective teamwork.

Deep dives

Building a New Text Editor: Z with Nathan Sobow

Nathan Sobow, a developer behind the Atom text editor, has embarked on creating a new editor called Z. Atom faced challenges after GitHub's acquisition by Microsoft, leading to its decline. With Z, Nathan aims to leverage his Atom experiences to design a faster and more visually appealing editor using the Rust language. The choice of language is crucial, as Rust prioritizes performance while maintaining aesthetics.

Intro

2min

Exploring Text Editor Development Challenges and Decision-making

19min

Using Rust for Developing the Zed Text Editor

2min

Design Principles and Performance Optimization in UI Framework

4min

Exploring High Frame Rate Rendering in Text Editors

2min

Building a Text Editor with WebAssembly and Rust

18min

Challenges and Solutions in Testing Concurrent Networking Code with Rust

2min

Achieving Distributed Editing with SumTree Structure

9min

Innovative Features and Future Visions for the Zed Text Editor

21min

10.

Exploring Open Source Projects and Contributing to the Zed Text Editor

4min

I’ve often wondered how you build a text editor. Like many software projects, it’s a simple idea at the core with an almost infinite scope for features. How do you build a solid foundation to expand on? Which features matter for launch? And how do you hope to satisfy the needs of every programmer, working in every language?

My guest for this episode is Nathan Sobo. He’s tackled this problem once before with the Atom editor, and he’s back older & wiser with Zed - a new editor written completely from scratch in Rust. It has a modern UI, a wide spread of language support, and a completely different way of looking at team collaboration. But with so much ambition, what are Zed’s priorities, and what’s been left for a future version?

Zed Homepage: https://zed.dev/

Segment Trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segment_tree

Ropes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(data_structure)

Rust Executors: https://rust-lang.github.io/async-book/02_execution/04_executor.html

More about Roc: https://youtu.be/DzhIprQan68

More about TigerBeetle: https://youtu.be/ayG7ltGRRHs

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

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Developer Voices

Building the Zed Text Editor (with Nathan Sobo)

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

Building a New Text Editor: Z with Nathan Sobow

Architecting Editor: Data Structure in Focus

Enhancing Real-Time Collaboration with CRDTs

Collaborative Editing and Anchors in Text Fragments

TreeSitter and Language Server Protocol for Extensibility

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts