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Zed DeltaDB

132 pointsby ahameztoday at 6:52 PM55 commentsview on HN

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yzatoday at 8:15 PM

Why develop this when the core editor is almost unusable? On Linux wayland, copypaste is broken, the file manager is laggy and snippets do not trigger before the heavy hint logic is done. This is just on top of my head, the list is long

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NoDodgeQuestiontoday at 7:26 PM

Zed should focus on basics. When it focuses on basics Zed is good.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/54150 failing to show newly created files and declining to provide a refresh button, instead adding a polling backend, breaks Zed on WSL.

Why a new version control system? Why not git, jj, or another existing system?

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smy20011today at 8:33 PM

You can simulate this by having a jj repo with file system watches.

docheinestagestoday at 7:32 PM

Sounds like a side-effect of being VC-backed. Like what the ex GitHub CEO went on to build (Entire). Unnecessary.

tetris11today at 8:29 PM

I had the great pleasure/misfortune of being forced to work with LaminDB, and I can tell you folks; data provenance isn't going away -- it will be used to train the very AI models snapping at our heels

CharlesWtoday at 8:29 PM

So is this basically Beads + Dolt? This isn’t to diminish it, it’d be great if this ends up being a less “vibe code-y” alternative to those.

pknopftoday at 7:30 PM

A non-existent problem that nobody asked to solve...

sanextoday at 8:25 PM

I really don't want management critiquing when I swear at Claude, thanks.

myntitoday at 8:25 PM

This feels very useful for training agents but almost completely useless to humans? Do I really want to go back to every change I made? Whatuse would that be?

g42gregorytoday at 7:07 PM

Looks like a great feature/product/functionality. I hope that Zed editor will make it work with LLMs/agents that run in the terminal, not just the Zen Agent itself. Is it even possible? I use OMP.sh agent running in Zed terminal.

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drdexebtjltoday at 7:56 PM

This makes me uncomfortable.

Maybe I’m pessimistic, but I think this just gives micro-managers the data they need to micro-manage you. It invites people to scrutinize the process, instead of the results.

Not once have I wished to review a colleague’s conversation with an AI. I want to review finished work.

I look at this and I can only imagine layoffs being justified with “bad prompt quality”. An incident retrospective broadcasting your agent conversations to the entire company, with people speculating where you should have put the “make no mistakes”.

It’s a shame, really, because I like Zed as an editor, but I can’t bring myself to support them if this is the direction they’re choosing.

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manzutoday at 8:12 PM

this looks like jetbrains "local changes" but globally synced. "for the agents" mights scare people who jump to think about micromanagers, but these people mostly hide or fake work. even micromanagers will eventually give you an agent to use so it won't matter what is in the change log, what matters is speed+quality. and since you can iterate from any branch you have inginite try and retry possibilities

visiondudetoday at 7:38 PM

i think a system that uses git and file system artifacts (txt/md/xml files whatever preference) is much better. eng teams need to define their artifacts, eg plan file, reqs etc whatever is needed and important to that team. the agent convo itself doesn’t add much value IMO and adds unnecessary bloat.

imagetictoday at 7:13 PM

I have fallen in love with Zed.

Lucasoatotoday at 7:59 PM

What problem does this product solve?

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systemvoltagetoday at 8:26 PM

Snapshots have an intention behind them as a chunk that the programmer thought of. It has infinite flexibility depending on the programmer/team. IMO they are a necessary feature, but the article considers it a bug. It’s an explicit and deliberate chunking of code writing process which is what you want in a chaotic “collaborative” environment. The system doesn’t get to decide but you decide when to commit.

xliitoday at 8:07 PM

I start to sound like a Jujutsu fanboy but...

Jujutsu already does this. I had agent screwing up changeset over couple hour long session and it took one shell command to split on pieces with longer pause.

The only downside is that because of Jujutsu snapshots it can't be used inside sandbox (since all jj commands are mutating)

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adastra22today at 7:43 PM

Is this closed source?

esafaktoday at 7:29 PM

Basically what IntelliJ calls local history. It is a feature that has saved my bacon. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/local-history.html

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teaearlgraycoldtoday at 7:26 PM

This is a big unsolved dev tooling problem. Glad someone competent is working on it.

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m3kw9today at 7:43 PM

It should work with github inbetween commits, that i may use. Right now I'm using staging as an in bewteen in a dangerous way.