6 ms·

I wonder how Deno's faring. Node's the stable solution and will be with us forever. You can now use TypeScript with it and, soon enough, you'll be able to buil

by vmsp 4mo ago

I wonder how Deno's faring. Node's the stable solution and will be with us forever. You can now use TypeScript with it and, soon enough, you'll be able to build your app to a single executable -- including native deps. Bun's chaotic but, nonetheless, it's _fast_ and it's taking an interesting approach by including everything in the stdlib. Plus, bought by Anthropic. Deno had an awesome story with the sandbox and ease of import for third-party dependencies. Sandboxes feel pretty commoditized now and I'm not sure the import mechanism ended up being that much nicer than a `npm add`.

freedomben 4mo ago
> and, soon enough, you'll be able to build your app to a single executable -- including native deps. Whoa, did not know that. That's a killer feature!
- sirsinsalot 4mo ago
  Code, as a single executable you say?! Whatever will they think of next?
TingPing 4mo ago
> Plus, bought by Anthropic. Who thinks this is a positive?!
- vmsp 4mo ago
  That wasn't a value judgment on the acquisition. I was just pointing out that it made the project more sustainable.
  - TeriyakiBomb 4mo ago
    It really doesn't. You think Anthropic will still be in business in 10 years? If they are, it's not likely they'll be in the same shape.
  - Sammi 4mo ago
    That's a yes and no. Venture funded companies like Anthropic have a history of low follow through with peripheral projects (like Bun is for them). Of course they do - their responsibility is ultimately primarily to their investors - not to Bun. So the risk now is that Anthropic will can Bun whenever they just lose interest or feel it's just a drain that's not contributing directly to their bottom line. Node.js itself did have trouble finding a corporate home that was interested in providing good support for the project, and that's how we got the oi.js fork of Node, which luckily led to Node being transitioned to a foundation and the projects merged. This whole history is what made me so surprised that Ryan of all people would attempt another js runtime (Deno) project as a corporate project. And it's the reason I'm staying away from both Bun and Node. I can't afford platform risk like this. I need my startup to be built on a project that has a more reliable future trajectory, which is what you get with a proper open source project (emphasis on project) that you get with Node. Node is stable and still getting features, but most importantly it's not going away.
    - nine_k 4mo ago
      Bun is not peripheral, it's what Claude Code runs on.
      - Sammi 4mo ago
        I see how this might seem like it would make Bun important to Anthropic, but there are just so many examples of companies losing interest in the technology that their product "runs on". It's just infrastructure to them. To the C-suite, infrastructure is fungible.
  - pier25 4mo ago
    Only if you think Anthropic is a sustainable business per se which remains to be seen.
- simonw 4mo ago
  It means they're a whole lot less likely to run out of money, which makes them a safer bet as a dependency.
  - tarruda 4mo ago
    > safer bet as a dependency. The recent 1 million line vibe coded PR suggests it is not so reliable as a dependency.
    - simonw 4mo ago
      That was Bun at Anthropic, not uv at OpenAI. (UPDATE: My mistake, this thread is about Bun, not uv.)
      - matt_kantor 4mo ago
        Is this a joke I'm not getting or are your wires crossed? Bun is the topic of this subthread.
        simonw 4mo ago
        Huh, you're right. I'd just been reading this other thread about uv and got my wires crossed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228788
  - allthetime 4mo ago
    Running out of money is never the issue with a big company buying an open source project. There are countless examples of projects dying or changing significantly for the worse after acquisition. Also “no human wrote any of this code” is not my personal benchmark for a reliable dependency.
    - pessimizer 4mo ago
      > Running out of money is never the issue with a big company buying an open source project. I'm going to dare to say that running out of money was often an issue before a big company bought an open source project.
hobofan 4mo ago
They did lay off ~half the company ~2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47467746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47467746
neals 4mo ago
It's good to have some options, to prevent the ecosystem from stalling
- appplication 4mo ago
  I agree philosophically, but the JavaScript ecosystem has never been languishing for lack of options. If anything, excessive fragmentation is a real concern.
  - neals 4mo ago
    Interesting, I'm not aware of that many nodejs alternatives...
  - arikrahman 4mo ago
    I agree that frameworks are abundant but there are not that many JS engine alternatives.
    - pjmlp 4mo ago
      It has been raining JS engines since Netscape Application Server, alone on Wikipedia there are 22 listed.
      - arikrahman 4mo ago
        Okay that's great
rozenmd 4mo ago
You can already ship single executables, my product's CLI is a Node single executable application

by vmsp 4mo ago

freedomben 4mo ago

> and, soon enough, you'll be able to build your app to a single executable -- including native deps. Whoa, did not know that. That's a killer feature!

sirsinsalot 4mo ago
Code, as a single executable you say?! Whatever will they think of next?

TingPing 4mo ago

> Plus, bought by Anthropic. Who thinks this is a positive?!

vmsp 4mo ago
That wasn't a value judgment on the acquisition. I was just pointing out that it made the project more sustainable.
- TeriyakiBomb 4mo ago
  It really doesn't. You think Anthropic will still be in business in 10 years? If they are, it's not likely they'll be in the same shape.
- Sammi 4mo ago
  That's a yes and no. Venture funded companies like Anthropic have a history of low follow through with peripheral projects (like Bun is for them). Of course they do - their responsibility is ultimately primarily to their investors - not to Bun. So the risk now is that Anthropic will can Bun whenever they just lose interest or feel it's just a drain that's not contributing directly to their bottom line. Node.js itself did have trouble finding a corporate home that was interested in providing good support for the project, and that's how we got the oi.js fork of Node, which luckily led to Node being transitioned to a foundation and the projects merged. This whole history is what made me so surprised that Ryan of all people would attempt another js runtime (Deno) project as a corporate project. And it's the reason I'm staying away from both Bun and Node. I can't afford platform risk like this. I need my startup to be built on a project that has a more reliable future trajectory, which is what you get with a proper open source project (emphasis on project) that you get with Node. Node is stable and still getting features, but most importantly it's not going away.
  - nine_k 4mo ago
    Bun is not peripheral, it's what Claude Code runs on.
    - Sammi 4mo ago
      I see how this might seem like it would make Bun important to Anthropic, but there are just so many examples of companies losing interest in the technology that their product "runs on". It's just infrastructure to them. To the C-suite, infrastructure is fungible.
- pier25 4mo ago
  Only if you think Anthropic is a sustainable business per se which remains to be seen.
simonw 4mo ago
It means they're a whole lot less likely to run out of money, which makes them a safer bet as a dependency.
- tarruda 4mo ago
  > safer bet as a dependency. The recent 1 million line vibe coded PR suggests it is not so reliable as a dependency.
  - simonw 4mo ago
    That was Bun at Anthropic, not uv at OpenAI. (UPDATE: My mistake, this thread is about Bun, not uv.)
    - matt_kantor 4mo ago
      Is this a joke I'm not getting or are your wires crossed? Bun is the topic of this subthread.
      - simonw 4mo ago
        Huh, you're right. I'd just been reading this other thread about uv and got my wires crossed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228788
- allthetime 4mo ago
  Running out of money is never the issue with a big company buying an open source project. There are countless examples of projects dying or changing significantly for the worse after acquisition. Also “no human wrote any of this code” is not my personal benchmark for a reliable dependency.
  - pessimizer 4mo ago
    > Running out of money is never the issue with a big company buying an open source project. I'm going to dare to say that running out of money was often an issue before a big company bought an open source project.

hobofan 4mo ago

They did lay off ~half the company ~2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47467746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47467746

neals 4mo ago

It's good to have some options, to prevent the ecosystem from stalling

appplication 4mo ago
I agree philosophically, but the JavaScript ecosystem has never been languishing for lack of options. If anything, excessive fragmentation is a real concern.
- neals 4mo ago
  Interesting, I'm not aware of that many nodejs alternatives...
- arikrahman 4mo ago
  I agree that frameworks are abundant but there are not that many JS engine alternatives.
  - pjmlp 4mo ago
    It has been raining JS engines since Netscape Application Server, alone on Wikipedia there are 22 listed.
    - arikrahman 4mo ago
      Okay that's great

rozenmd 4mo ago

You can already ship single executables, my product's CLI is a Node single executable application