It probably goes without saying that successful development projects need first class tooling. The centerpiece of which is, of course, an excellent code editor. What makes an editor stand out for any one person is, obviously, extremely subjective. But there is at least one uncontroversial aspect in that editors should improve our ability to efficiently produce high quality code. I personally prefer comparatively minimalist editors for a couple of reasons: they are usually more performant, less distractive, and force me to engage deeply with the tech stack I'm using. Minimalism, however, is not the be all and end all. There are many complex features that, in my opinion, shouldn't be missing from a modern editor, because they reliably improve coding efficiency such as fuzzy finders, IntelliSense, or, arguably, AI integration. One of the editors that I found to do a remarkably good job at squaring this circle and delivering a performant and minimalist editor with just the right amount of modern productivity features is Zed, the new editor by the makers of Atom. Continue reading to find out more about Zed in this—admittedly opinionated and somewhat fanboyish—introduction to Zed.

Large Git merges can become complicated especially if there are a lots of unrelated changes to deal with. There is a little trick using `git checkout`, however, that may be useful to resolve merge conflicts quickly.

Pair programming is the work mode in development in which two people collaborate on the same task in split, but frequently reversed, roles (one thinking high level, the other implementing the changes). Compared to solo programming, pair programming may have multiple positive effects, for example, on code quality. Utilizing pairing correctly, therefore, is an important—but non-trivial—aspect of coordination within highly effective development teams. With the emergence of capable generative AI coding assistants in the last few years, pairing between human programmer and an AI coding assistant (sometimes called "pAIr programming") has also developed into an established pattern. Since I personally enjoy traditional human/human pair programming but also use and see the benefits of AI coding assistants, I was curious about what the literature has to say on the pros and cons of both work modes. Here is what I found out.