AI Summary
5 min readNathan Sobo has been thinking about the future of software development tools for nearly two decades. As the co-founder and CEO of Zed, the high-performance Rust-based text editor, and now the creator of Delta—a new agentic coding environment—he brings a rare historical perspective. Sobo previously spent nine years at GitHub building Atom, the editor that helped popularize Electron, and before that worked at Pivotal Labs, where pair programming was the daily practice. That Pivotal experience planted a seed: he wanted to build a tool that could replicate the experience of two people working together in real time, but over the internet, not just plugged into the same machine with two keyboards. Delta is the latest expression of that vision, and it represents a fundamental shift in how Sobo thinks about what software development actually is.
The long road from Electron to the metal
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:08) **From Atom to Zed: The Origin Story** - Nathan Sobo explains his long obsession with building the ultimate software development tool, starting from his time at Pivotal Labs and the dream of replicating in-person pair programming over the internet.
- 2 (03:37) **Why Rust and Not Web Tech** - Nathan details the painful lessons from building Atom on Electron and why going “closer to the metal” with Rust was the only path forward for Zed.
- 3 (07:55) **Building GPUI: The UI Framework From Scratch** - Nathan explains the radical decision to bypass all existing UI layers and write directly to the GPU to achieve zero-lag performance.
- 4 (11:53) **The Speed and Lightness of Zed** - The hosts reflect on why Zed feels so fast and lightweight compared to VS Code, and Nathan contrasts Atom’s failures with VS Code’s success.
- 5 (14:38) **Would You Still Pick Rust Today?** - Nathan confirms that despite Rust’s slow compile times, he would absolutely choose it again for a project of this complexity.
- 6 (16:08) **AI Usage Inside Zed** - Nathan describes how the Zed team uses AI heavily, not for autonomous "dark factory" loops, but as an engaged partner in writing and reviewing code.
- 7 (18:45) **Building a Text Editor in the Age of AI** - Nathan reframes Zed’s mission from "building a text editor" to "building a user interface for interacting with software," arguing that text is more powerful than ever.
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Show Notes
Nathan Sobo joins Scott and Wes to explain why Zed was built in Rust, how GPUI works, and what happens to editors once agents write most of the code. They also talk about DeltaDB, Zed’s new Git-compatible version control system, and Delta, the collaborative agentic editor it powers.
Show Notes
- 00:00 Start
- 00:35 Welcom to Syntax
- 01:13 The Journey to Zed: Building the Ultimate Tool
- 03:26 Why Rust was chosen for Zed?
- 06:29 Brought to you by Sentry!
- 07:07 Building a UI from scratch in Rust
- 15:55 AI’s role in coding and development
- 18:42 The role of text editors in the age of AI
- 21:52 Delta DB: The vision for collaborative development
- 29:06 The Evolution of Collaborative Coding
- 44:45 The Future of User Interfaces
- 52:42 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs
Sick Picks
- Scott:
- Wes:
- Nathan Sobo:
Shameless Plugs
- Scott:
- Wes:
- Nathan Sobo:
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