As you’ve probably heard by now, Chinese government-sponsored criminals subverted the Notepad++ update system.  Depending on when you updated, it’s possible that malware was distributed through this channel to your Windows PC.

Notepad++ is a free text editor for Windows that is vastly superior to the venerable notepad.exe that Microsoft ships.  It includes syntax highlighting, themes, plugins, advanced search and replace, auto completion, macros, tabs, and other features.

It’s not alone in this space – heck, you can run Vim or Emacs on Windows if you want to – but it’s been the go-to for many people for a long time because it’s free and has a simpler learning curve than those Unix legends.

As I recall, Notepad++ was popular in an era before high quality IDEs were available for free, as VS Code is today.  I think today nearly everyone editing code on Windows is going to use some sort of IDE.  But there are plenty of people (sysadmins, for one) who want an editor that offers more than notepad.exe.

Notably, notepad++ is only available for Windows, which is why I’ve never used it a lot.

For the last decade and a half, I have been a Sublime Text guy.

A recent thread on LowEndTalk about the notepad++ hack has me looking at a free alternative: Zed.

I Used to Love SublimeText

Sublime is a fine product, and offers features beyond notepad++.  It’s an excellent tool.  But it’s not free.

For code, I use VS Code.  For note-taking, I use Obsidian.  That puts Sublime in a middle case where I want to edit text, which is usually looking at JSON or HTML so I can write code around it, modifying SQL or shell scripts (or Python or Perl or PHP) in cases where it’s less “a big programming project” and more DIY.  Even then, I often use vim in the shell.

So for me, Sublime’s $99 price tag is a bit steep.  I paid it once and haven’t upgraded since version 3 because I haven’t felt it justified.

Checking out Zed

Zed is free.

At first glance, Zed looks a lot like Sublime.  Zed is a new project built by the creators of Atom, a Sublime competitor that hasn’t been updated since 2022.  Unlike Atom, it is written from scratch in Rust (!) and designed for speed.

The pitch is simple:

• lightning-fast UI
• native performance
• built-in collaboration
• modern language tooling without bloat
• Available for Windows, Linux and macOS

After a little usage, my impressions are:

• It’s very fast.  No Electron lag or “loading extensions…” spinning wheel.
• It opens nearly instantly.  Not even time for the icon to bounce on macOS.
• The first time I launched Zed, it asked me if I wanted to turn on Vim mode, which thrilled me to the gills.
• It feels very Sublime-like.

If you’re used to Sublime’s world of a command palette, multiple cursors, fast navigation, themeable interface, etc., then Zed feels very familiar.

I’m guessing a hardcore developer who does a lot of work with git would probably notice more differences, but for me the only major workflow change for me has been the need to save files when quitting Zed.  With Sublime, you just quite and when you restart, all your files/buffers are back open.  With Zed, you have to save or discard each.

It’s still early days for me with Zed, but from what I’ve seen so far, I think this is going to be my new GUI text editing tool.

Have You Tried Zed Yet?

Are you sticking with Notepad++, living in VS Code, still using Vim or Emacs, or experimenting with something new?

Drop your thoughts in the comments below!