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The code editor you can take apart.

5 starsRust

The Deconstructed VS Code

by dipankarsarkar·Jun 19, 2026·1 point·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●MidBold BetShip It

VS Code extension compatibility in Rust, but Zed and Lapce are further along.

Strengths
  • •Extension host abstraction with full vscode.* API is genuinely hard engineering.
  • •Six composable crates enable embedding or headless usage patterns.
  • •Claims 60% less memory and sub-second startup versus Electron.
Weaknesses
  • •54 commits and 5 stars signals embryonic stage against production competitors.
  • •Yet another Rust editor in a space with Zed, Lapce, and Helix already established.
Target Audience

Developers wanting lighter IDEs, tool builders embedding editor components

Similar To

Zed · Lapce · Helix

Post Description

One wonders why VS Code has become a bloatware. I am sort of used to it freezing, and just doing its thing.

I started with vim, Eclipse (yes yes!) then sublime text and at this point back to the terminal or a combination of VS Code with the agents.

This did make me wonder where we are headed with IDEs? Are we ready to give them up finally?

This is exploratory work using rust that looks through how VS works internally, rebuild parts and well push for modularization. Most of the codebase is working crates and yes this actually works.

The most useful part is the extension compatibility abstraction (crate - dscode-extension-host), it was hard to get that right.

None of this could have been done without wasting a lot of token, mostly to "clean up" big chunks of abstraction mistakes.

Please review, extend and let me know what you think the future of IDEs look like.

Also, DS stands for my name initials ;).

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