What are people using instead of VS Code?
I relatively recently reinstalled my OS (distro-hopping to Fedora KDE) and as I was installing my various everyday programs, I began to wonder whether there were any solid competitors to VSCode in the space other than IntelliJ products (which I strongly dislike compared to VSCode already). I've used VSCode for a while, but I've definitely noticed my experience with the app getting a little bloated and overwhelmed. But I'm not keeping my finger on the pulse of new IDEs, so I don't know if there's anything new (or at least a solid alternative of some sort) out there that people are switching to.
I'm on Linux, so nothing Mac-exclusive. I know VSCode's extension library is probably hard to match given its popularity, but I'd hope for an alternative that at least has potential to have extensions to cover lesser-known languages and file formats for me. I liked the look and feel of VS Code when I switched to it years ago, so I'm all for apps with similar vibes, but I'd like something that feels faster and more focused.
Please don't recommend vim. I've already heard of vim, and if I wanted to switch to it I would have already.
There’s Zed which sounds like what you’re looking for.
In the terminal there are other options than Vim/Neovim, such as Helix or Ki, but it sounds like you’re looking for something more graphical.
I also landed with Zed on Fedora, and experience is good. But I stopped using its agent in favor of external agent, because models I use cannot understand tools available to them. They spend a lot of tokens trying to write to file, eventually giving up and rewriting whole files. There is not such a problem with different agent using same model.
My only Linux gripe is that Zed doesn't have momentum scrolling.
One thing to note, is that Zed's Go-To-Definition or similar functions don't appear to work that well, as it fails to find the particular place in the project it's defined.
Personally I use this feature alot when working on bigger projects (or modifing some existing applications code lol) as it helps me understand the code logic so its kind of a shame
It's a gorgeous code editor otherwise, and its loading time and snapiness is just a bliss
I will say, its possible that it does actually work and i have just not configured it properly as it has a slightly enigmatic config if you try to modify from the config file
Switch to Zed. Don’t get left behind.
Neovim, Emacs, Sublime (paid but has an eternal trial period that pops up to remind you to pay now and again) and VSCodium (an open source version of VSCode that removes a lot of bloat and telemetry from VSCode) are the usual suspects that I see mentioned. Helix is a newer one that I appreciate.
Honestly though, I don’t do much coding these days, so I scrape by with micro editor in my terminal. I think I’d probably either learn Helix better or settle on some configuration of Neovim and use that if I ever got the notion to do something more robust than tinker with custom tools and scripts for my own personal use.
Be aware that with VSCodium that any of the Microsoft extensions will not work. It took me a few minutes to realize that they were gatekeeping the C/C++ extensions.
Yes, they are in the "extend" phase with their "open source" project.
Same with TS if I'm not mistaken
Like what? It works fine for me in Codium.
Must be mistaken then
I think you can still install them manually. Or copy the extensions config json over was something I saw mentioned.
I tried out kickstart.nvim and stuck with it for a long time with no customizations. The first time you run nvim after switching your init.lua, it will take a few minutes to set up libraries and language servers, but after that it feels just as quick as normal nvim without the effort of setting everything up yourself.
Nowadays with the amount of server work I do, I just use regular vim and netrw commands.
I made the switch to Helix after VSCode started pushing way too much Copilot/AI on me.
I was looking at various (neo)vim distributions but they all seemed a bit too janky and painful to use to me. Helix has slightly different motions that actually work for me better, and has sane enough defaults, all I needed to do was to set up some language servers.
If you don't want a terminal based editor, I hear mostly good things about Sublime Text, there's also an attempt to revive and continue Atom, called Pulsar which could be interesting.
For info, VSCode has a single setting to disable all Copilot/AI features.
Unfortunately they just added some in-line Ask for Edits popup that is not controlled by that toggle. This is exactly why I stopped using it. Microsoft really can't be trusted imo.
I find VS Code's AI internal implementation quite interesting even if the UI push it in your face.
The Copilot UI is actually not that coupled with GitHub Copilot (although parts of it still is - they often said in the docs that they will work on remove that). Internally, VSCode has a "Language Model Chat Provider API" which Copilot is one of them. Many other providers do provide alternative provider implementation (and Copilot allow for custom API key as well), so you can switch to your chosen provider.
There is also a Language Model API, which allow extensions to submit request to the provider, so that any extension you install in VSCode can utilize your LLM provider without providing API keys to every extensions. Of course, there are people who built an OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible API server in VSCode so that you can use in any LLM tools. I tried and it seems that you do get the Copilot billing for it (eg. GPT 4o is unlimited even when using the emulated API outside of VSCode).
Oh, I don’t really appreciate AI and LLMs in my life at all but thanks for the indepth explanation, maybe someone will find it useful :)
VSCodium doesn’t have any of that AI stuff if you find yourself needing a gui ide.
Previous discussion can be found here.
For what it's worth, I settled on Zed. It fits my needs, runs native, and is only a little unstable. I hope the stability improves as it matures.
I had an inkling someone would've asked this here before, thanks for the link!
IntelliJ really cannot be beaten for Java development. Sure, it’s a big hulking beast that takes up too many resources but it has a lot of features that are easy to discover if you’re interested, such as database connectivity and even UML diagramming.
I really like Panic’s Nova on MacOS. It’s ultra snappy and very Mac-like, but last I checked it doesn’t really play well with a lot of things I tend to need or want. I bought it a while back because I was dicking around with the Playdate SDK and it was great for that, but when I did another lua project using LÖVE, it didn’t have the means to debug it - kind of important for gamedev! But to be fair I haven’t payed for an upgrade in years at this point so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it vastly improved.
If you’re just looking for a fast “code-like” experience, then Zed is pretty good. I’m not personally, but in its credit I still have it installed and it’s pretty good for what it is. I probably would have switched over if not for needing some VS Code exclusive extensions.
I've never worked with Java, so that probably is a factor in why I dislike it. An internal tool at my last workplace was written as an IntelliJ plugin and it was always a pain to get working and the slowness of starting PyCharm did not help with my first impressions.
I've downloaded Zed and it feels snappy so far, but I need to probably actually work on a new project to get a sense for if I like it yet.
I believe intelliJ was created for Java, it is written in Java. I've never used anything that even comes close for it specifically with Java.
I have yet to find anything else that refactors as well as intelliJ, though it used to be pretty useless for JavaScript. Language does matter, I had an easier time with Go in Doom Emacs.
And a lot of Kotlin! All new JetBrains code is supposedly written in Kotlin, excluding some public-facing APIs.
That’s good to hear. I really like Kotlin, I dislike Java enough to leave it off my resume.
I'm mostly (hobby) programming in Zig, and also recently decided to move away from VsCode. I'm still checking stuff out, but currently I'm using Kitty as terminal with Flow Control as editor, nnd as debugger, and I just started to checkout lazygit, which looks good, but I'm not sure I'll need it for my very simple git use.
Very happy with flow as my daily driver (outside of work), especially since the 0.7 release.
Sublime Text has been super performant and rock solid for me for over a decade now. I use vim and emacs sometimes, but Sublime might just be my daily driver for life.
+1 to Sublime Text; also a happy customer for >10 years. Some of my key considerations:
It's not cheap, but to me it's been worth every penny. I'm a little less thrilled with Sublime Merge, but that's mostly because their UI decisions for representing git objects don't resonate with my typical workflows.
Yeah i still use the CLI for everything git. But quite a few friends seem to love Sublime Merge, so I always recommend it to anyone who wants a git GUI. IMO you're just better off using the CLI with a decent mental model, though.
When I got tired of Visual Studio Code I switched to Emacs. So I guess that's my recommendation. See some of my previous comments on Emacs if interested:
Emacs is the most extensible text editor and provides great interfaces for just about every text-based work you can imagine, not just writing code.
However, it does have a very low "introduction velocity". If you switch to Emacs, you will spend a lot of time extending (configuring) Emacs. That's a very rewarding experience, but it might not be what you want to spend time on. You don't have to abandon VSCode immediately for Emacs. You could ease yourself into Emacs/wane yourself off VSCode, that's what I did, but the process of switching to Emacs is still... well, a process.
Beyond Emacs, it's hard to make a confident recommendation for anything else, because my other recommendation would have been Neovim. Without knowing why you don't want to use Vim, it's hard to make other recommendations. Do you not want a terminal text editor? Do you not want a modal text editor? Do you just not like Vim specifically?
So I will cautiously recommend Helix and Kakoune as other terminal-based, modal text editors that are like-not-like Neovim. I don't know as much about Kakoune, and it seems less popular than Helix these days, but both editors use their own modal editing "languages" that are supposedly easier and better than Neovim's. At least for Helix, it also has more/better default features baked into the editor, but it is not as extensible as Neovim. I would say Helix has a high "introduction velocity" compared to Neovim or Emacs.
Other than those:
C-cto copy,C-xto cut,C-vto paste,C-sto save, etc), but it's pretty barebones.No need to abandon either one! Going kind of the opposite way as you, I've been using Emacs since mumble mumble cough, and in the last few months I've been experimenting with VS Code as an environment for driving agentic coding at work. It's all ultimately just text files, so there's nothing to be lost from switching back and forth and using whatever works best for a given task. In my case, I kind of see myself as starting to develop a workflow of VS Code specifically for agentic coding, and Emacs for artisanal coding and everything else (Magit, Calc, Org notes, ...).
I want to get into Emacs (because I use a custom org-mode app on my phone) but it is soooo ugly to me.
Do you happen to have any recommendations or resources on making it look nicer (= like a "normal" gui app in X - that often isn't X anymore, but you know what I mean)?
I mostly just use it with the toolbar and menu turned off, plus some custom color and font theming. So I'm not really one to talk.
But a couple of interesting looks that have crossed my radar:
Emacs is as ugly as you want it to be. Take a look at Doom Emacs for example.
I think the primary packages I use that make Emacs look nicer are doom-modeline and ef-themes.
Here is my config for doom-modeline:
(Note that I use the elpaca package manager for Emacs, so you won't be able to copy this code directly into your own
init.el.)My ef-themes config includes a lot of custom code specific to my system, so I'll just say that I use
ef-springas my light theme andef-dreamas my dark theme.(Also, for any Neovim users who happen to read this, there is a ef-themes.nvim plugin for Neovim.)
For code syntax highlighting, be sure to adjust
treesit-font-lock-levelto some (integer) value from one to four. That controls how much stuff in code syntax is actually highlighted, with level one being very sparse highlighting, and level four (my preferred) being full-skittle.How Emacs functions is half of how it looks though, so I will also give you some packages to look up, and my configs for them, that I think make the Emacs minibuffer the single nicest feature in any text editor or IDE ever to be created:
Although, I actually still use counsel/ivy/swiper for searching inside a buffer. Here are my configs for those:
Yeah, essentially my reasoning for not wanting vim was not wanting a modal text editor (which I didn't know the terminology for). Vim only got called out specifically bc I knew like half the comments would be recommending it even with me saying I don't want to use it lol. I like having a more graphical interface like VS Code, I just want something that feels lighter and faster.
Happy user of Nvim here, but if I wasnt so used to the keybinds (been using vi/vim/nvim for well over a decade now), Id probably start with helix. Im so used to the terminal that I would never personally consider a GUI editor at this point.
Helix, although I default to code due to QoL stuff often and because F# support is lacking. I like the idea of it, but I also need to get used to using a terminal editor more, and it seems to be a mixed bag on too little vs too much intellisense.
I personally use geany + a terminal. Id use sublime if I wanted something less spartan
I would have said Notepad++ for a lightweight code editor, but their update servers got compromised by a state actor, likely from China.
But also oof, it's Windows only.
I did used to use Notepad++ back in the day when I was on windows lol! Ngl though, hate its aesthetic enough that I wouldn't really go for it even without the compromise thing
There is a very recent fork of Zed that removes the AI features and the telemetry, if those are things you'd rather do without: https://gram.liten.app/docs/mission/
Zed's AI settings had a simple toggle that seems to have worked for turning off the AI features, but good to know if that ends up not being adequate
I use nvim with NVChad. I also have VSCodium and Zed installed to look at and play around with. There's no good way (I have found) to do step-debugging in nvim for PHP applications so having Zed or VSCodium set up to do that is helpful.
Well it's 2026 and I'm a fullerest stack developer, so I'm not using any sort of tui type applications on a machine with more than 8gb of ram. I use vscodium. If it's a really really small one line change I might use nano or even just notepad.
I still find myself going to ssms for most sql and tsql tasks but at work they want us to start using vscode for that also at some point. The plan is to set up repos/pipelines for the db objects and have the pipeline compile the script and execute it on the server instead of a developer in ssms. vscode has gotten way better, but it's not to ssms level yet.
Pulsar looks pretty cool, I might check that out but I dont have high hopes, atom ran like shit for me before vscode ran away from the pack. Hell it was pretty much the entire reason I switched.
At work I'm pretty much stuck on vscode since we use ms everything (azure, windows, entra, etc)
I spend most of my life in non-optional platform-tied IDEs (Xcode, Android Studio) so my opinion might not be worth a lot, but for non-IDE editors I've stuck with Sublime Text.
It does its job well, it's fast and light, and spiritually it's closest to TextMate which was my first "seriously" used programming text editor. Never felt the need to pursue anything else. VS Code does too much for my taste and has more doodads scattered about its windows than I like and having only started writing "real" code in the late 2000s CLI-based editors like vim feel too alien outside of the odd config file edit.
May I ask you why not Jetbrains? I understand it feels bloated, but add all its functionality in the form of plugins to any editor and they'll start to bloat too.
I had to use Jetbrains to run a custom plugin for work at my last job, and the process of even starting the program and opening the project took so long that it was endlessly frustrating. I cannot Imagine forcing myself to actually use it to code in my free time. Even VS Code with all the plugins I used was faster and snappier to use than PyCharm to an absurd extent. Perhaps Jetbrains really has that much more functionality than the number of plugins I used with VS Code, but I had everything I needed in VS Code, so that means I'd be paying in performance for functionality that I might not use and really don't need tbqh. My main reason for switching away from VS Code is wanting something that feels snappier while still having support for the languages I use, so switching to Jetbrains would be going in the opposite direction of what I want.
PyCharm can indeed choke on large files and codebases, because it's trying to analyze everything and you need to tell it to tone down.