Bun – fast JavaScript and CSS bundler | Hacker News Reader

Bun – fast JavaScript and CSS bundler

bun.sh

60 pointsthunderbong36 comments

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Hi, I made this.

This shouldn't be on HN yet. It's not quite ready for that.

Just want to apologise for the earlier submission of hop. Which leads to this.

> Request early access?

No, let me try it now and see if it is better than the dozens of other tools already openly available.

Depending on how brave you feel he has published binaries: https://github.com/Jarred-Sumner/bun-releases-for-updater/re...

For a list of similar JavaScript tools that are written in other languages:

https://github.com/RobinCsl/awesome-js-tooling-not-in-js/

Those _awesome_ pages are getting ridiculously specific

In this case, there's a great practical need, namely the 10-100x speed increase given by esbuild and swc, written in Go and Rust respectively.

No public code, no interest.

no ingredients list at the soup kitchen, no eating today

Oh boy. I feel like #ffb8ff is kind of bad for your eyes with current display technology. That was painful even with brightness/contrast set to low on my big IPS panel.

Related: [Hop](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29178710) where the repo references Bun, and user [@Jarred](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Jarred) seems to be affiliated

> Request early access ( https://bun.sh/discord )

Welp, that's a "close window" for me, and I guess it's my fault for putting up with the hot pink background long enough to even read the page

I'll let others chime in with the obligatory "other bundlers are too $whatever, so I made $new_thing that doesn't $other_things_one_needs_to_be_successful"

Why the negativity? It’s pre-release software. The landing page and invites are for people already interested in its early development, not to try to convince you to become interested.

That said, there’s tons of public information about Bun on the creator’s Twitter[1], a lot of it quite interesting, if more curious folks want to find out more. And I wrote a short list of things I find compelling[2] in the related post about another of Jarred’s projects, for the Twitter-averse.

1: https://twitter.com/jarredsumner?s=21

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29180483

The are two forms of negativity in my comment, which come from different sore spots in my contact with JS bundlers

1. bright pink marketing page that wants me to join Discord just to stand in line for access to some release of this software in the future

1. claims of how great a new bundler is in the face of many, many, many, many, many projects started over the years claiming "oh, yeah, those esbuild jokers are no good, but I used Zig so my bundler is going to work much better"

Now I do appreciate that maybe the author wasn't the one who submitted this "pre-release software" page to HN, but nor did I try to comment upon any such twitter thread to express my opinion -- I weighed in on the HN thread as a nod to others who may come to the comments first in order to get the tl;dr before loading up the page

Also, if jarredsumner's twitter is the authoritative source for why one should bother joining Discord, then the site would be well served to provide a link to that instead of linking to Zig as the compelling "read here for more info"

> bright pink marketing page that wants me to join Discord just to stand in line for access to some release of this software in the future

The author has been exceedingly clear that he intends to open up access when he feels it’s ready. The Discord link is for people who are already interested and want access before that. That’s not you, and that’s okay.

> claims of how great a new bundler is in the face of many, many, many, many, many projects started over the years claiming "oh, yeah, those esbuild jokers are no good, but I used Zig so my bundler is going to work much better"

I think this is wildly misrepresenting the author’s disposition. He’s expressed a lot of respect for ESBuild, credits it for aspects of Bun that are either borrowed or direct forks, and has received similar respect from ESBuild’s creator.

> Now I do appreciate that maybe the author wasn't the one who submitted this "pre-release software" page to HN, but nor did I try to comment upon any such twitter thread to express my opinion -- I weighed in on the HN thread as a nod to others who may come to the comments first in order to get the tl;dr before loading up the page

> Also, if jarredsumner's twitter is the authoritative source for why one should bother joining Discord, then the site would be well served to provide a link to that instead of linking to Zig as the compelling "read here for more info"

The author did not, in fact, submit this. And it’s the other way around: AFAIK before this hit HN the way people found bun.sh was specifically by way of Jarred’s Twitter.

I can see how that might be confusing with the context inverted. And I can see how this link, without prior context, might not be valuable to you. I’m very interested in the project and I certainly wouldn’t have posted this link at this time.

But I think one small bit of assuming good faith might be warranted from HN users before reacting negatively: at least try to remember that people share all sorts of interesting-to-them things all the time, and they might not be representing the thing itself or its creator.

Turning the question around: what's so special about this one piece of software that justifies hiding it?

I know nothing about bun, but it is a common pattern when you have a vision for how to build a complicated piece of software that will end up being open source to start with it closed off until you've got enough of everything in place that you're comfortable showing it off to everyone. When it's open, people will expect to be able to send PRs, ask questions, etc, and at the start, that can be a distraction from the task at hand of getting the initial system built.

What you describe is quite reasonable, but that's not what's happening here. If the author were doing what you describe then we wouldn't be talking about it on HN. Instead, they've gone to the trouble of building a fancy pink website and also hidden the software behind a paywall (or something, I didn't click it). Speaking only for myself, it's the combination of those two things that creeps me out.

Edit to add comment from the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29182837

> If the author were doing what you describe then we wouldn't be talking about it on HN.

We’re talking about it on HN because the same author released another piece of software today which made it to the front page, its relevance to Bun was mentioned, and someone saw fit to post about it.

> Instead, they've gone to the trouble of building a fancy pink website and also hidden the software behind a paywall (or something, I didn't click it).

It’s not a paywall, it’s a public Discord invite, which will almost certainly get you access to the repo if you actually want it.

It's not a paywall, it's that you have to ask in order to see it. Asking automatically gives you access. I think that seems very reasonable, you want only people who are interested enough to follow through. This is one step above "nobody gets it" and one step below "everyone gets it."

It is early access, pre-production and suppose to be invite only. The author did not submit or told me to submit it on HN. I dont even know Jarred and only follow his twitter account.

Well I guess I made the mistake of submitting Hop on HN in the first place. Which leads to submission of Bun here. The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I am now considering not doing it any more.

I can’t think of a single example where a piece of open-source software was announced like this before it was available in some form.

Edit to add comment from the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29182837

It wasn’t announced like this. And it is available in some form.

Sure, your mileage may vary. I often see people tweet about or talk about stuff before it's actually ready to go, as a way of getting specific feedback early on without committing to all of the stuff involved in opening a repository.

Also, I don't really see where the authors submitted it to HN, so saying they announced it this way is a bit strange.

By the way, it is available in "some form." After reading your comment I joined the Discord, there is an #invites channel where you can type "I want bun" and it will generate a link for you to be invited to the repo, with a #releases channel that links to each release.

This is 100% the reason why. Having > 500 people in the GitHub repository distracts me from getting it to be done enough for a public release (but still worth it)

I am reminded of the last paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26410487

Keep building some cool tech and ignore the folks who are mad you set a boundary in this thread; very interested to see where this project ends up.

I’m not sure “hiding” it requires justification. But it isn’t ready for public consumption, and it’s generated a lot of interest. I’d have to assume limiting the volume of feedback is at least part of the motivation. I’ve seen several other projects, large and small, take this early stage approach.

It’s also not particularly hidden, the private repo currently has 172 watchers and IIRC I got an invite as soon as I asked for it.

pink page... elite attitude.

yet not typescript support.

so much meh.

Why this fixation with the pink?

Anyway Bun compiles TypeScript. It’s incomplete. It’s not released yet.

With the amount of talk about Bun on the Twitter account compared to Bun's own homepage, I'm surprised that bun.sh doesn't at least have a link to the account

I think it’s because until this post, most of the traffic to bun.sh was likely coming from Twitter or interest relayed from there.

Is this built on esbuild?

I was okay putting in my email but I don’t want to join a discord.

Sounds like it does everything by itself, in a single tool.

Yes, look like it is.

"It’s based on esbuild’s source, but written in Zig. Zig is an LLVM frontend (like Rust) with manual memory management."

From https://twitter.com/jarredsumner/status/1390084461799170050

It’s not built on ESBuild, but the AST implementation was derived from it, and a related library Peechy is forked from ESBuild creator’s Kiwi.

taking bets that $whatever is Rust and $other_things_one_needs_to_be_successful is an ecosystem.

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