1029: The Workflow of the Future With Zed
Summary
Nathan Sobo, co-founder of Zed, discusses building a high-performance Rust-based editor and its custom GPU-driven UI framework. He introduces Delta, a new agentic development environment backed by DeltaDB, which tracks code changes as continuous conversations rather than static snapshots. This system enables real-time, conflict-free collaboration where agents and humans share work trees, allowing teams to review the entire context of how code was generated.
Topics discussed
Conversations as the source of code
Zed's origins and the quest for speed
The rise and fall of Atom and Electron
Building Zed from scratch with Rust
Why Rust remains the right choice
AI integration in the Zed workflow
Text as the ultimate interface
Introducing Delta and DeltaDB
Capturing agent context and conversations
Conflict-free replicated work trees
The Delta sync engine architecture
WebAssembly and cloud-hosted runners
The future of UI and language interfaces
Delta's unique interaction model
Sick picks: Keyboards and Jazz
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