Hi. I’m looking for a good code editor that doesn’t have any AI in it at all. My problem is, I like modern code editors like VSCodium, but I think it has AI or at least supports it. I know Zed has AI and Zed is kind of complicated to use. Here are my requests for a code editor:
No AI or telemetry Built-in live preview for HTML Built-in terminal Extensions
Right now, I’m using Pulsar, but it has no live preview that I know of. Any suggestions help. I’m not a fan of notepad++, though. It’s very complicated to setup and use. Thanks in advance!
Have you tried disabling the AI in Zed? There’s a toggle in the settings to disable all AI features. I’ve disabled the AI and it’s actually a really nice, responsive, clean editor. Just one toggle, and it doesn’t re-enable itself. The whole “AI-native” marketing really put me off trying it, but it’s now become my go-to IDE for when I’m working on a project where I want a more fully-featured IDE than Vim (my go-to for just editing text files eg standalone scripts, small projects).
If you don’t want to do that, or if you try it and still don’t like Zed, maybe Kate?
Neovim. No other editor comes close to it.
Not sure about preview, but Kate?
It does have preview, the plugin has to be enabled/may need some libraries installed.
Kate rules.
I’m always surprised by its sheer power
I got markdown previews somehow so it can probably do HTML too!
nvi
You can easily disable all AI features in Zed.
I was going to mention the same. Zed has a single global “Disable AI” option which works well.
Geany is quite a nice, simple editor. Very lightweight, open-source, and no AI.
Not sure about live HTML preview, but I ended up picking Gram as well, on my search for AI-free software. (By the way, I found open-slopware a good resource for this.) Someone else already mentioned it in this thread, but I wanted to add some context. Gram is a fork of Zed, which is built for and with AI. It is therefore already tainted, if that’s something you care about. However, I found the Manifesto neat. (It also has official support for Zig which is what I was looking for specifically at the time.)
Oh and I was also recommended Kate. I haven’t gotten to try it, but it could be an alternative worth considering.
Thank you! Noted!
The mission page for gram, as someone unfamiliar with it until this thread, is genuinely a thing of beauty.
It’s great, even has a Helix mode for us Helix users!
I’d like to say neovim but if notepad++ is too complicated then neovim definately is. There are ‘distributions’ that give you a setup ready to go e.g. Lazyvim but you’re still going to have to fiddle with it sometimes.
I don’t think Lazyvim has any ai features out of the box.
If you are at all curious the ‘Lazyvim for Ambitious Developers’ book is a great way in and easy to skim through. Here’s the chapter on ai which proves you have to turn it on to enable it:
https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/course/chapter-16/
I can’t say for sure if the developers of neovim are using ai themselves for the codebase, I suspect they might be as they have made positive statements on it in the past. Love to hear if someone can confirm or not.
[email protected] [email protected]
I’ve been using it for many, many years. C++, Bash, Python, LaTeX, Rust…The setup and learning can take a bit but once you figure it out, you can move your config file across machines. You can define your own functions, define shortcuts per mode you’re in and lots more. Works both in GUI and CL
vim
Helix and Gram. Try em out. Gram even has a Helix bindings mode.
Which operating system are you on? (Sometimes it’s relevant, and you mention notepad++.)
On Linux, I like kate, but IDK if it has live html preview. I use it for Rust and general editing, not for web development admittedly.
I believe it does have HTML preview when using the document preview plugin and with kparts packages installed. When ive used the preview tool i think you can have a split screen view with one half the file and the other the preview, but ive not tested it with html.
I like Kate myself, its a good editor with support for numerous languages, and a decent session system and a range of plugins.
Built-in live preview for HTML
Only in electron based editors AFAIK. It requires an integrated browser engine, and electron already is an integrated browser engine so that makes it easy.
What do you need/use that you find in modern editors that you can’t get in something like Emacs? While there are AI integrations for Emacs they are all optional.
