Every new editor makes it harder to write extensions for than the last.
- TextMate used any shell script that could handle stdin/out.
- BBEdit can also do a lot with shell scripts and has great AppleScript support if you want more integration.
- Visual Studio Code wants me to create an entire project in TypeScript.
- Nova is basically the same as VSCode but somehow less approachable.
And now Zed is telling me that I need to learn Rust?
This all feels incredibly over the top when I only want to switch between my current file and its corresponding test. Why do I need to create a developer account and a full-on project to do that? It feels like we’ve gone backward here.
Because these editors want to give us deeper integration, they’ve replaced shell scripting with their own APIs to learn and languages to use. Because they’re all cross-platform, they don’t support native automation like AppleScript or Shortcuts.
Yes, give me new options with deeper integration, but why are we removing the ability to do simple things in simple ways?
Collin Donnell 