Why hackers moved from JetBrains IDEs to Zed
1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“but since Zed I havent really opened any of those IDEs in a long time”giancarlostoro, 2026-04-29original comment ↗
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JetBrains IDEs vs Zed
| JetBrains IDEs | Zed | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 0 | 12 |
| Hackers who criticize | 1 | 2 |
| Moved away from it | 1 | 1 |
| Moved to it | 0 | 10 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of JetBrains IDEs
“The only problem I have is with JetBrains IDEs, which seem to have shaky support.”vladvasiliu, 2025-12-25original comment ↗
Praise for Zed
“I've also customized Zed's UI to optimize for reading and reviewing code”throw2ih020, 2026-07-10original comment ↗
“Zed + Terminal threads (love this!) + Remote machine”throwaway888abc, 2026-06-05original comment ↗
“We started using LLMs heavily at work this year and I switched from Vim to Zed to help with that.”vinc, 2026-05-26original comment ↗
“I've been very happy with Zed, and that was before it had as many features as it does now.”insane_dreamer, 2026-05-19original comment ↗
“I switched from VSCode to Zed, which has a helix mode built-in and it works very well.”16bitvoid, 2026-05-13original comment ↗
Other moves from JetBrains IDEs
Other moves to Zed
- VS Code → Zed (5)
- Vim → Zed (2)
- JetBrains → Zed (1)
- PyCharm → Zed (1)