Do modern code editors need stronger visual hierarchy?

Question

I've been using Zed recently and I think it is one of the most impressive modern editors I've tried. It is clean, fast, beautiful and has minimal distraction. However, after long coding periods, I noticed that it feels less productive than other editors like VS Code. I think the problem is visual hierarchy. A productive tool needs to answer where I am, what is active and where I can find what I need. VS Code has relatively strong separation, though containing more elements.Zed feels much softer, many elements have similar weight, creating a clean impression, but I found myself spending longer time finding things.I wonder how others think about it.

mickeyp · Accepted Answer

This is one of the things Combobulate [0] tries to solve by using the output of tree-sitter. Simple breadcrumbs are easy enough to do (your cursor has a clear parental lineage) but much harder to do if you want to retain semantic things, or do interesting things with (say) sibling nodes.
You can see the treeview it generates in the GIFs in the link below
[0] https://github.com/mickeynp/combobulate

conartist6 · Answer

Yeah no it's no mistake. Zed functions like a closed product despite being an open one, especially since users aren't free to iterate on usability as they are when the IDE UI is styled with CSS.VSCode is benefiting from mounds of work much of which came from the community.