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?

You can easily disable all AI features in Zed.

Geany is quite a nice, simple editor. Very lightweight, open-source, and no AI.

nvi

Gram

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.

vim

!emacs@lemmy.ml !emacs@programming.dev
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

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.

https://www.lazyvim.org/

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.

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.

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.

Helix and Gram. Try em out. Gram even has a Helix bindings mode.

n--?

+1 for pulsar