E162: The AI Code Editor War with Zed

This podcast interviews Nathan Sobo, CEO and founder of Zed, a next-generation code editor focused on high-performance collaboration and AI integration. The conversation traces Sobo's experience building Atom at GitHub, highlighting lessons learned (e.g., the importance of prioritizing performance early in development and the limitations of web technologies for this type of application) and the evolution of Zed's development. Sobo discusses Zed's open-source model, its rapid growth after open-sourcing, and the integration of AI capabilities, including the upcoming "live diffs" feature for dynamic pull request updates. The interview concludes with Sobo's advice for aspiring founders in the AI-native tools space: persistence and focusing on the core product vision.