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zx2c4 | 2 years ago

I would be interested to learn from somebody with experience using both Bun and Deno: which one is actually the more compelling Node successor? Bun's website makes some impressive performance claims over Deno. Are these true in practice? And if so, why? Seems like Deno also has similar goals. Also, are there large philosophical differences between the two projects? Like Bun tries to reimplement the kitchen sink but Deno wants a new post-Node way of doing things? (Just guessing, no idea if that's true.)

Any seasoned users with time spent on both?

discuss

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afavour|2 years ago

I’m not over the moon with it but I’m kind of interested to know why I need a Node successor at all. Both Bun and Deno are VC funded tools so I have base level suspicion around monetization and longevity.

It seems Bun’s major selling point is performance. I can’t say I’ve really run into massive performance concerns with Node. It isn’t earth shatteringly fast but I’m way more likely to run into IO constraints than Node speed issues.

Deno’s major selling point was that it was Node Done Right in many ways: better packaging, ES6 all the way, etc. (a pitch I was sold on!) but it seems they gave up trying to create a new ecosystem and instead are adding Node compatibility.

Alongside all of this I'm encouraged by a number of recent Node improvements like having its own test runner and built in .env support. So I’m struggling to see good reason to use either Bun or Deno. Even if I were to switch I'd need to make sure I have a concrete path back to Node should the new generation tool become unviable.

Rapzid|2 years ago

Getting VC funded HHVM vibes.

Not sure how they plan on monetizing.

TheAceOfHearts|2 years ago

These tools are way too young for anyone to have actually spent a lot of time using them.

Bun is bundling everything and making it really fast, while also striving to maintain as much compatibility as possible with Node. It doesn't throw away the existing ecosystem.

Deno took on too much of an adversarial perspective towards the Node ecosystem and now they're working towards re-adding support.

So in terms of a successor, I'd say the only option is Bun because it's still trying to maintain compatibility with Node while innovating with new features.

hollowturtle|2 years ago

Not a seasoned users, mostly played with Deno. To me Deno seems more oriented to be an alternative Node runtime with security as first principle and built-in support for Typescript, JSX with some tooling like linter. It's also based on V8. My best guess it's what Ryan Dahl wanted Node to be as an afterthought. Bun, technically speaking is based on Webkit, but can't really say why, seems a better all-in-on tool(also remember rome?) and not only a runtime. Also with compatibility with current frameworks out of box, Deno wasn't npm compatible some time ago and I wonder if it ever meant to be and not a pivotal change on the run

azu|2 years ago

> technically speaking is based on Webkit, but can't really say why

Why Bun uses WebKit/JSC was described here:

> One of the reasons why Bun bet on JavaScriptCore instead of embracing the server-side V8 monoculture is because JavaScriptCore and WebKit/Safari are strongly tied together. This means that Bun can often use implementations of Web APIs from WebKit/Safari directly, without having to reimplement them. This is a great example of that.

via https://bun.sh/blog/bun-v0.7.1#messageport-messagechannel-ar...

ShadowBanThis01|2 years ago

It's known that Deno tacked on NPM support.

For new, from-scratch projects done by someone who doesn't know Node anyway, why not use Deno? I just started writing the server side of a mobile app with it, and I didn't even know JS, TS, or have any experience with routing frameworks. I had server-side queries working in a matter of days, and I don't claim to be fast at all.

The issues cited in the Bun PR, like the morass of modules and related performance problems, don't seem to exist in plain Deno. Or am I missing something? I don't anticipate ever integrating anything from NPM, so I'm actually disappointed (but understanding of the motivation) to see Deno hedge on the "fresh start" idea.

e1g|2 years ago

We're a full-stack TypeScript shop, and I manage ~50 internal libs and ~500K LOC of TS. Last month I tested out both Deno and Bun as alternative runtimes for us. TLDR: for any semi-complex codebase we have, Bun almost always works, Deno almost never works. We now run all our tests in both Node.js and Bun, and gave up on trying to make Deno happen.

ShadowBanThis01|2 years ago

What were your "semi-complex" codebases written in and for? Were they testing native Deno, or its integration of NPM packages?

I have never used Node and am creating a new project from scratch, so I don't know how worried to be about your commentary.

ketzo|2 years ago

If you don't mind sharing, what are some of the issues you've had with Bun so far?

schemescape|2 years ago

If I recall correctly, Bun doesn’t support Windows, unlike Node/Deno.

Edit: sounds like this is changing. Thanks for the correction!

schemescape|2 years ago

The link has been changed to the Bun 1.0 blog post which specifically mentions experimental/incomplete Windows support.

re-thc|2 years ago

Deno wanted to be different but never did enough to force its way. Maybe if they had 10x the funding to rewrite the ecosystem. Now it's in limbo.

Bun aims to be a better replacement to Node. There's less to consider so it's just a matter of if it's compatible enough and faster / better to warrant the switch. A lot easier to swallow.

ShadowBanThis01|2 years ago

There's plenty to consider if you don't care about Node compatibility. From what I've read (including in this thread and on the Bun PR page), Node seems pretty messy, with modules coming from different sources in different ways. In Deno you just import with a URL.

I know very little about JS and TS and "modules," but from a newcomer that's how it all looks. I'm happy to have any further insight!

evbogue|2 years ago

Does Bun support url imports for module loading?

lioeters|2 years ago

I was curious about this too, whether Bun supports URL module imports. Skimmed through the documentation a few times, and I believe it does not.

But, the command `bun install` supports NPM and custom registries, as well as Git and .tgz URLs.

https://bun.sh/docs/cli/install#git-dependencies

wdb|2 years ago

I think you can achieve this via a bun plugin

manojlds|2 years ago

Deno wanted a post-Node way but they have gone back on their original ambitions (which never resonated with me, to be frank) and now have a pretty limited compatbility whereas Bun has full compatibility with Node.