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DamixLord
DamixLord

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Building Code Zone: A Fast, Lightweight IDE Under 100MB Written in Python

#showdev #python #github #opensource

Hi Dev Community! 👋

I want to share Code Zone, a project I've been working on to solve a real issue I faced daily.

🔗 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/damixlord2-0/code-zone

Why I Built It

I’m damixlord, an 18-year-old developer driven by curiosity. Living in a developing country, accessing high-end hardware or a fast internet connection isn't always easy.

For years, VS Code has been my main editor, but on my machine, it runs slowly, uses a lot of disk space, and building extensions for it feels unnecessarily complex. I looked into Sublime Text—it’s fast and clean, but a bit too minimal for my workflow.

So, using Python, I set out to build an editor that combines the speed and simplicity of Sublime Text, the clean look of VS Code, and the direct language workflow of Code::Blocks.

That’s how Code Zone was born: a lightweight IDE under 100MB.

✨ Key Features

  • Built-in HTML Preview: Live rendering directly within the editor.
  • Markdown Viewer: Integrated viewer for quick documentation reading.
  • Custom Binary Paths: Easily point to local compilers/interpreters for any language—ideal for testing niche or alternative programming languages.
  • Simple Extension System: Write extensions within a single file without complex boilerplate.

💡 A Note on the Build Process & AI

The project still has bugs and is far from complete—I'm not trying to build the next VS Code, but rather a practical, lightweight tool that solves real resource constraints.

Since we're in the AI era, I want to be fully transparent: I used AI during development, not to generate the project blindly, but as an interactive documentation tool. Without it, I would have spent that time searching Stack Overflow, GitHub, and docs. It helped me learn deeply about Python's subprocess module and Tkinter/TTK widgets (like Treeview). I intentionally avoided asking AI to auto-fix every bug or write everything for me because I wanted to master the underlying concepts myself.

Note: English is not my native language, so I used AI to translate this message and my code comments.

🤝 Feedback & Contributions

My goal is to build something genuinely useful for the community. Feedback, bug reports, and contributions are more than welcome!

Check out the code, give it a star ⭐ on GitHub if you like the project, and let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

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