Biggest WTF news I've read today. I'm not a web dev so this doesn't affect me, but this is bizarre.
We get a closer first look at what's around the corner for AI coding tools, and make Bun better for it
This incredibly popular tool is now going to merge with an AI company and shift gears to be turned into some forced AI hype machine. Yipee! Exactly what all the devs were hoping for! /s
77 Comments
ptz@dubvee.org · 132 pts · 244d
Oh goddamn it. I just started doing projects in Bun and moving some of my older projects to it.
Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 244d
Same this really sucks
ptz@dubvee.org · 5 pts · 244d
Yeah. I'm going to keep using it for now but definitely going back and un-reimplementing some things that I moved into the Bun API. Basically just gonna use it as a runtime in place of NodeJS.
I just really liked being able to build and distribute a single binary executable :(
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 244d
I would say it should be forked but no one knows Zig haha.
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 243d
I know some, it's such a shame that one of the biggest zig projects suffered this fate, they're also a significant contributor to the zig project
doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de · 10 pts · 243d
Also kinda ironic that Zig itself takes a very different direction as it has a strict no LLM policy and recently moved from GitHub to Codeberg.
rirus@feddit.org · 1 pts · 243d
Why?
ilinamorato@lemmy.world · 84 pts · 244d
Looks like it's MIT-licensed, so it's probably time to make a non-Anthropic fork.
justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io · 56 pts · 244d
Not overly surprising.
Google and Salesforce have been "developing" new features and products this way for at least the last 13 years?
somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 15 pts · 244d
I'm not a business expert, so i want to ask:
Can you "reject" being bought?
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 27 pts · 244d
No. Not if they really want to buy you.
Source
justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io · 11 pts · 244d
The whole Amazon diapers is insane.
The burgeoning monopoly was being noticed as early as 2011. I know this because it is why the CEO of one chain here planned out and started offering grocery deliveries.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 242d
the walmart tactic, they learned from the og AMAZON, aka WM.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 244d
yes, so long as you don't them putting pressure on your suppliers and helping your competitors, I guess
nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de · 14 pts · 244d
Or just building a straight close of your idea and crushing you. Happened to my startup.
GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 244d
Getting bought is often the whole point for a founder, since that's one of a few ways for you to get a big payday.
Getting bought only really happens if a majority of the shareholders agree to it, so you can reject it as much as you want.
jonathan@piefed.social · 6 pts · 244d
It depends on how much of the company you gave away when you took on investment. If you no longer have the controlling share you can be overruled.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 243d
Yes but... not really.
If you're amazingly talented and spend 10 years of your life building something amazing but have no money, when someone offers you millions you're just gonna take it.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 243d
I mean, technically yes.
But mega corpos have so much money to throw at you that at one point, it's hard to say no and very few people can refuse.
It is generational wealth that is being offered to the shareholders. I know I would fold.
paequ2@lemmy.today · 48 pts · 244d
Seems like they've bought into the hype.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 244d
YIKES
Zikeji@programming.dev · 31 pts · 244d
:(
Time to switch to yarn or something.
bjorney@lemmy.ca · 28 pts · 244d
Yarn isn't a JS runtime
Zikeji@programming.dev · 10 pts · 244d
Sure, which makes the transition suck even lol.
naught@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 244d
I guess it's deno time :(
lena@gregtech.eu · 6 pts · 244d
Hey, Deno is really good (for JS standards)
spartanatreyu@programming.dev · 3 pts · 244d
Bruh, deno's great!
naught@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 244d
I bet! Just sucks to constantly be rug pulled
spartanatreyu@programming.dev · 27 pts · 244d
Serious question for anyone who actually uses Bun:
Why are you using Bun instead of Deno or Node?
If you would have asked me 10 years ago, what were the biggest problems with JS as a whole, I would have stated:
Poor type safety
No standard library which leads people into dependency hell
Poor security (installing a project should not even allow the possibility of key stealing or ransomware)
No runtime ergonomic immutable data structures with fast equality checks (looked like it was going to be resolved with the Records and Tuples proposal, but it was withdrawn and discussions are continuing in the composites proposal)
Today I consider point 1 mostly resolved and point 4 a problem for TC39 and engine implementers, and not resolvable by runtimes themselves.
That leaves us with problems 2 and 3.
I see Node having poor solutions for 2 and 3.
I see Bun having poor solutions for 2 and 3.
I see Deno having great solutions for 2 and 3.
As far as I can tell, people have chosen Bun for either hype or speed reasons.
Hype doesn't seem like an important reason to choose Bun since it's always fleeting and there's enough investment in the industry to keep each runtime going for a long time.
I do see speed being a moderate issue with JS, but that's mainly due to:
dependency install times which should be a one time cost, and which can be reduced anyway by using a standard library
slow framework slop, which isn't really a runtime issue.
So I'm not sure speed fits as a reason for choosing Bun.
I'm not sure what the other reasons are, but I'm genuinely curious.
If you're using Bun in projects today, why have you chosen bun?
s4if@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 243d
Simply for convenience and speed. Nothing more.
FizzyOrange@programming.dev · 4 pts · 243d
Is Deno not convenient and fast? I am also interested in knowing why I would want to use Bun over Deno.
Evotech@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 243d
Bun was purely built to make building faster and the apps to be portable
spartanatreyu@programming.dev · 2 pts · 243d
Pretty sure Deno had that first though.
Deno launched with an all-tools-in-one approach and then you could use
deno bundleto compile everything into a single binary that you could run on another machine.Then they briefly broke
deno bundlein their 2.0 release when they added node/npm compatibility then brought it back in 2.4.jsalvador@programming.dev · 2 pts · 243d
I don't know many people who choose Bun instead of Node or Deno, but all of them do it because speed.
IMHO, I like Deno because it's offering solutions for everything and trying to not fall into same issues Node had (same creator, trying to apologize), but eventually I run into Node because TypeScript and easy-to-use (in my experience). Anyway, Bun always has been to me like the third wheel of the bike.
Xylight@feddit.online · 1 pts · 242d
Speed, and the package manager and node backwards compatibility is great
SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works · 23 pts · 244d
How misanthropic
tonytins@pawb.social · 21 pts · 244d
Welp. Guess I'm switching to Deno.
rozodru@pie.andmc.ca · 17 pts · 244d
yeah as a dev myself I saw this coming a few months back and stopped using Bun so this doesn't surprise me. They got on the cursor hype train awhile back and that was enough for me.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world · 17 pts · 244d
Uhoh, now the anaconda is going to want some.
fubarx@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 244d
It's not a bad outcome. Bun is cool but has $0 revenue and some hand-wavy thing about future paid cloud services. This way, larger companies will give them a more serious shot than they would a small startup.
It still doesn't have a revenue story, but it's now strapped onto the side of one of the few AI companies with a decent chance of surviving the next AI Winter. And if Anthropic goes sideways, the Bun engineers can fork the code and keep going.
tonytins@pawb.social · 2 pts · 244d
planish@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 243d
Why does Anthropic think they need a JS runtime though? Are they just like "well Microsoft has a command line tool for installing JS packages so we need one too"???
fubarx@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 243d
On the AI coding IDE side, VSCode has pretty much hoovered up everyone, mainly because JetBrains offered their own AI option, which kept competitors away. On the server side, though, integrating with AI is still wide open.
You eventually have to hit Python because of all the ML libraries. But you can run that as a separate microservice or process. Here's a chance to do something whacky, like let JS invoke Python-ML inline, or port the main ML libraries to JS, or cross-compile JS to CUDA (just spit-balling here). It'll be a lot easier to try these experiments than trying to push it upstream into Node.
Plus, Bun is used by a bunch of cross-platform CLI tools, including Claude Code, so they can make sure there are no breaking changes.
TBH, I'm surprised nobody's snapped up Mojo (and Chris Lattner). They have a lot more advanced, AI-relevant, cross-platform tech.
cornshark@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 244d
What's bun? Some other comments mention a js runtime so is it like a V8 competitor?
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 17 pts · 244d
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 244d
It's more of a node.js competitor, but it doesn't use v8, it uses safaris js engine. https://bun.com/blog/how-bun-supports-v8-apis-without-using-v8-part-1
sga@piefed.social · 1 pts · 243d
i am not a web dev, so please correct me if i am wrong, but a runtime is essentially a specific version of browser in some capacity, more comparable to blink in some sense (minus the html+css parts). so there is a js engine (v8 or firefox's spider if i am not wrong) and that essentially just executes the js, but it needs stuff around it (think for example io or cli interface). none of the run times implement independent js engines, as they are really hard, but surrounding stuff is relatively easier, and likes of deno/node/bun implement that.
And as other commenter said - it has other stuff too, for example a package manager, transpiler (most common would be converting typescript to js i think), bundler (just makes a bundle kinda like java jar), etc.
Taevas@beehaw.org · 11 pts · 244d
Man, Bun's great, I've been using it since 1.0.0 essentially so that REALLY sucks
Like some of the other people commentating on this thread, I'll look into using something else, but it's really sad and frustrating that I need to switch things over and over again
Evotech@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 243d
Did you read the blog post?
Is staying open source
PokerChips@programming.dev · 2 pts · 243d
Yeah but why feed the beast?
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 243d
Does it feed more beasts then using github in general does?
PokerChips@programming.dev · 1 pts · 243d
Use codeberg where possible
arty@feddit.org · 1 pts · 237d
This would consume the beast’s resources
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · 10 pts · 244d
People who are surprised by VC funded software going to shit...
Seriously, this always happens. At some point the investors want a huge payout and they will get it by exploiting existing users or they just shutdown the whole company and strip it for parts.
termaxima@slrpnk.net · 10 pts · 243d
Evil spreads its tendrils further yet.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 243d
Yup, even AI companies are being infected by the evil of Javascript!
Madrigal@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 244d
> Uses JavaScript in 2025.
> Complains about enshittification.
tonytins@pawb.social · 12 pts · 244d
JavaScript was built for the web. That's fine. It's corporations that took it out of its comfort zone even when better alternatives emerged.
kibiz0r@midwest.social · 8 pts · 244d
Eh, it’s fine. It has some bad choices baked into it, but what language doesn’t? And JS in 2025 is miles better than JS in 2005.
I wouldn’t choose it for every project, but it’s a reasonable choice in many cases.
traches@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 244d
The fuck else am I supposed to make websites with, rust compiled to WASM?
Madrigal@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 244d
It’s my opinion that the modern web is massively enshittified, and was so long before that term came into play.
Too much focus on flashy (and often obstructive) presentation, constant reinvention of the wheel, and no regard for the actual information being delivered.
I mean, you mention “semantic markup” to your average web developer and they just stare at you blankly. They’re like the seagulls from Finding Nemo: DIV? DIV! DIV!
Useful information structures? Meaningful metadata? Consistent patterns? Forget about it.
HTML and JavaScript are part of the problem. They provide too much freedom and not nearly enough structure or guidance.
And even if you put all that aside, JavaScript is an abomination that is entirely unsuited to the purpose it’s being used for. Ask any JS developer. Or look at how many ridiculous frameworks have been slapped over the top of it in a vain attempt to address its inadequacies.
traches@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 243d
Ok that’s great but I need to eat
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 244d
Hey! Sometimes it mostly works, and that's all I can reasonably ask for anymore.
DoctorPress@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 244d
aichan@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 244d
WASM is that much slower? I get that needing a f*** Js wrapper to be able to use the DOM cannot be good, but is there really that much of a difference?
Euphoma@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 244d
wasm binaries are pretty large usually
pennomi@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 244d
Davel23@fedia.io · 9 pts · 244d
Or it can go fork itself.
QWho@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 244d
Maybe, with 'AI agents', code can, for the first time in history, fork itself.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 243d
For anyone wondering wtf Bun is, it's a project championing JavaScript. It wants to replace node.js.
On a tangent, I recently switched from a cinnamon desktop (which uses TypeScript or some form of js) to KDE-plasma because I noticed that cinnamon occasionally couldn't keep up with rapid mouse movements (and my machine is high end). KDE-plasma handles it fine and even has a "find my mouse" feature that turns doing the "draw fast circles to see if the mouse drifts all over the screen because the handler can't keep up with the updates" into a game of "how big can I make the cursor".
I wish the whole "let's keep javascript as a thing" movement would just die out. Other languages aren't hard to learn, why are so many people obsessed with sticking with js and shoehorning fixes for its massive flaws instead of just letting it die?
myotheraccount@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 243d
Not saying it should be used for everything, but it is a pretty decent language nowadays (lots of the annoying parts have been fixed in the last 15yrs). Although the main benefit imho is, that it is the closest thing we have to an interpreted language that runs everywhere.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 243d
Isn't Python also widely supported these days?
Though I'll always prefer compiled languages over interpreted and I think cross compiling is also in the best state it ever has been, though dependencies can complicate things still, as well as any inline assembly use.
myotheraccount@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 243d
Supported as in "you can install an interpreter on most machines": yes
But for JS it's already there. You can just write a program, upload it someone, send someone a link and it runs. And it's even sandboxed.
(Although thanks to webassembly, that will be true for many more languages as well, so maybe my argument is void)
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 244d
That sucks. I was really liking bun.
clif@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 244d
Damn it. I've been following bun for a long time and using it casually... Guess it's good I didn't get too far into it
LostWanderer@fedia.io · 5 pts · 244d
As a regular joe on the web, it doesn't affect me directly, yet. However, I foresee more slop sites getting put out there in as the Execucult's naked desire to worship and exalt the thing they are desperately trying to make fetch: AI. This year is so fucking weird with all the AI glazing and executives trying to desperately will AI into a moneymaking thing. Spoiler Alert: It's probably going to continue hemorrhaging money as most people can't be arsed to use it nor do they want products with it crammed in.
lena@gregtech.eu · 3 pts · 244d
Ah fuck, o7 bun. It was a pretty nice runtime, Deno it is now I guess.
I'm so glad I don't have to use JS
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 244d
Every Silicon Valley company has to deal with this on a weekly basis.
bitcrafter@programming.dev · 2 pts · 244d
In fairness, Anthropic needed some way to bundle up to stay warm in the upcoming AI winter..,
itkovian@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 243d
I doubt it's going to be enough.