We're Not Building AI Features for the Money

I think if you're a VC funded company doing something subscription-y or something niche then you have the distrust of the public going. There have been too many rugpulls, or changes in how the company works, where people got burned. Now throw in LLMs and hate will be thrown around.

I've been using Zed on-and-off since a long time now(I think my Zed extension still had the json config), and I appreciate the "turn-off-all the AI" flag, and the login button can also be hidden, so I'm still positive on Zeds outlook. They have improved these types of configs rather than let them be(which a lot of other companies don't do!)

But on a pessimistic day, if I read on a homepage:

Zed is a minimal code editor crafted for speed and collaboration with humans and AI.

Then I'll also just continue using helix or Emacs and walk past right by the slightly red flags. There are things like teamtype that make collaboration possible between editors as well, and I just have very little interest in (sharing things) that target LLMs.

If there are other cool stuff about Zed, like GPUI refactors or cross-platform voice chat that can be written, I'd much rather read that, but that might not be as popular.

I can't help but read a headline like this and see "We're not building X for the money - we're building X for a shitload of money!".

I'm a fan of Zed as an editor though, and use it as my daily driver, albeit with most of the AI stuff turned off. It absolutely makes sense for them to be investing in making the use of AI tools a natural part of the editing experience, whether its motivated by money or not is sort of irrelevant - enough people want the features that it would make sense on that basis alone. The reality is that these tools are going to become increasingly part of the day-to-day life of most developers, so meeting that need is just smart business, period.

Just scamming VCs? That's cool.