Bun has completely changed my outlook on the JS ecosystem. Prior to Bun, there was little focus on performance. Now the entire space rallies around it.
> Prior to Bun, there was little focus on performance.
This is just completely insane. We went through more than a decade of performance competition in the JS VM space, and the _only_ justification that Google had for creating V8 was performance.
> The V8 engine was first introduced by Google in 2008, coinciding with the launch of the Google Chrome web browser. At the time, web applications were becoming increasingly complex, and there was a growing need for a faster, more efficient JavaScript engine. Google recognized this need and set out to create an engine that could significantly improve JavaScript performance.
I guess this is the time we live in. Vibe-coded projects get bought by vibe-coded companies and are congratulated in vibe-coded comments.
This missed the mark - Bun optimized systems whose predecessors were often implemented as JS libraries with a high number of syscalls. V8 is super fast for web usecases but your typical webpack / react compiler as implemented in JS had tons of unnecessary bottlenecks.
> Vibe-coded projects get bought by vibe-coded companies
this is so far from the truth. Bun, Zig, and uWebsockets are passion projects run by individuals with deep systems programming expertise. furthest thing from vibe coding imaginable.
> a decade of performance competition in the JS VM space
this was a rising tide that lifted all boats, including Node, but Node is built with much more of the system implemented in JS, so it is architecturally incapable of the kind of performance Bun/uWebsockets achieves.
Machine code yes (along with Spidermonkey, JSC and Nashorn), the timeframe around 2005-2010 saw the introduction of JIT'ed JS runtimes. Back then however JS was firmly single-threaded, it was only with the introduction of SharedArrayBuffer that JS really started to receive multithreading features (outside of SharedArrayBuffer and other shareable/sendable types, a runtime could opt to run stuff like WebWorkers/WebAudioWorkers in separate processes).
Early Node f.ex. had a multi-process setup built in, Node initially was about pushing the async-IO model together with a fast JS runtime.
Why Bun (and partially Deno) exists is because TypeScript helps so damn much once projects gets a tad larger, but usage with Node hot-reloading was kinda slow, multiple seconds from saving a file until your application reloads. Even mainline node nowadays has direct .ts file loading and type erasing to quicken the workflow.
krig|2 months ago
This is just completely insane. We went through more than a decade of performance competition in the JS VM space, and the _only_ justification that Google had for creating V8 was performance.
> The V8 engine was first introduced by Google in 2008, coinciding with the launch of the Google Chrome web browser. At the time, web applications were becoming increasingly complex, and there was a growing need for a faster, more efficient JavaScript engine. Google recognized this need and set out to create an engine that could significantly improve JavaScript performance.
I guess this is the time we live in. Vibe-coded projects get bought by vibe-coded companies and are congratulated in vibe-coded comments.
tibbar|2 months ago
logsr|2 months ago
this is so far from the truth. Bun, Zig, and uWebsockets are passion projects run by individuals with deep systems programming expertise. furthest thing from vibe coding imaginable.
> a decade of performance competition in the JS VM space
this was a rising tide that lifted all boats, including Node, but Node is built with much more of the system implemented in JS, so it is architecturally incapable of the kind of performance Bun/uWebsockets achieves.
nailer|2 months ago
whizzter|2 months ago
Early Node f.ex. had a multi-process setup built in, Node initially was about pushing the async-IO model together with a fast JS runtime.
Why Bun (and partially Deno) exists is because TypeScript helps so damn much once projects gets a tad larger, but usage with Node hot-reloading was kinda slow, multiple seconds from saving a file until your application reloads. Even mainline node nowadays has direct .ts file loading and type erasing to quicken the workflow.
stefan_|2 months ago
The reality is that the insane "JS ecosystem" will rally around whatever is the latest hotness.
umanwizard|2 months ago
v8 is one of the most advanced JIT runtimes in the world. A lot of people have spent a lot of time focusing on its performance.
satvikpendem|2 months ago
denismenace|2 months ago