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Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

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Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#11

Post by report-to-trees »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #6
report-to-trees wrote: post #3

I wasn't expecting a deep and thorough comparison just from the headline... but the feature list and comparison text here is worse than I thought it would be, bordering on useless. "Built in" means nothing because the value prop of node compared to the other two is the ecosystem and maturity. Do you care if your linting tool is built in if it's buggy and regularly releases breaking changes? "Secure by default" in par…

> Do you care if your linting tool is built in if it's buggy and regularly releases breaking changes? In general I would expect a linting tool or any other component that is a first class feature of the app would be less likely to be released with bugs and breaking changes than a third party one.

Sure, maybe. How would you know without doing some research into a specific project?

My point was that the feature checklist here is so surface level it's useless as a practical comparison.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#12

Post by ozten »

andyferris wrote: post #7
ozten wrote: post #2

Bun's #1 killer feature is that web application tooling has become a nightmare that everyone dreads dealing with. Bun promises one tool designed for DX to solve bundling, testing, runtime, and more. Even if Bun didn't have a better performance story, I would evaluate switching to it to reduce project complexity.

Does not Deno aim for exactly the same?

Good point. Bun promises compatibility with existing mainstream web development technologies (CommonJS, ES Modules, NodeJs APIs, Typescript, etc).

Deno promised "Node", but done a second time the right way (Typescript, new APIs, new package manager, etc). Which is not an entirely new language / platform, but different enough that you have to buy into the Deno vision.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#13

Post by afavour »

There’s an important column missing in the table: ownership.

Both Bun and Deno are made by companies with heavy VC investment. Node is not. Don’t want to state the obvious but those VCs want to see a return on their investment and that makes me very hesitant to invest in Bun or Deno, especially at this early stage.

Don’t know if it’s coincidence or if the competition has lit a fire under the Node project but it’s recently been adding some great stuff like a built in test runner and watch mode. I’m optimistic.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#14

Post by yeck »

Bun is getting a lot of hype due to all the press, but almost everyone is just echoing Bun's docs and marketing material and lack direct experience using it. I haven't done a deep dive into Bun yet, but I have tried porting a legacy project to it. Hit a lot of issues after a few hours of hacking around. It wouldn't correctly install node modules because of opt-in dependency lifecycles (and maybe other issues?) and then I couldn't use it to execute the existing webpack build without encountering opaque runtime errors.

The promise of Bun seems pretty good, but I think their marketing material is further along than their core projects atm.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#15

Post by birkskyum »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #8

Isn't Deno under the strong commercial grip of a couple of corporate companies, including the one that develops it?

I think deno (made by Deno Company) and bun (made by Oven) are in quite similar situations here, both controlled by companies eyeing deployment services of their respective runtimes as the main source of revenue. Node is in the OpenJS Foundation, so it's in a different situation.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#16

Post by birkskyum »

afavour wrote: post #13

There’s an important column missing in the table: ownership. Both Bun and Deno are made by companies with heavy VC investment. Node is not. Don’t want to state the obvious but those VCs want to see a return on their investment and that makes me very hesitant to invest in Bun or Deno, especially at this early stage. Don’t know if it’s coincidence or if the competition has lit a fire under the Node project but it’s rec…

That is true. Both deno and bun runtimes are released under MIT license, and might potentially outlive the companies behind them.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#17

Post by klabb3 »

ozten wrote: post #2

Bun's #1 killer feature is that web application tooling has become a nightmare that everyone dreads dealing with. Bun promises one tool designed for DX to solve bundling, testing, runtime, and more. Even if Bun didn't have a better performance story, I would evaluate switching to it to reduce project complexity.

I think that in general, tooling is underrated. In many ways, tooling is more important than the language itself (although some language features are intertwined with the tooling story). And I don’t mean more features, but rather consistency, reproducibility, simplicity, etc.

Great tools have knock on effects. Good dependency managers improve the ecosystem. Fast language servers can enable interactive dev style. And so on…

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#18

Post by jauntywundrkind »

ozten wrote: post #12
andyferris wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does not Deno aim for exactly the same?

Good point. Bun promises compatibility with existing mainstream web development technologies (CommonJS, ES Modules, NodeJs APIs, Typescript, etc). Deno promised "Node", but done a second time the right way (Typescript, new APIs, new package manager, etc). Which is not an entirely new language / platform, but different enough that you have to buy into the Deno vision.

Deno in my view was promising web.

They actively fought against being Node at all for a long time, & differentiated themselves in being much much less, no package.json at all. Only recently has Deno gotten deep Node intercompatibility, after years of trying to leave that shit behind & finally giving in to the needs to be part of the vast npm externality.

The general principle has & still is evident. It's not totally picture perfect rosy - there's lots of pieces missing - but Deno's http serving for example uses standard w3c Request Response objects used by Fetch & Service Worker. https://deno.land/api@v1.36.4?s=Deno.serveHttp

But more so, things like typescript & formatting come out of the box & are crazy fast/just work.

Re: Deno vs. Bun vs. Node.js: A feature comparison

#20

Post by paulddraper »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #6
report-to-trees wrote: post #3

I wasn't expecting a deep and thorough comparison just from the headline... but the feature list and comparison text here is worse than I thought it would be, bordering on useless. "Built in" means nothing because the value prop of node compared to the other two is the ecosystem and maturity. Do you care if your linting tool is built in if it's buggy and regularly releases breaking changes? "Secure by default" in par…

> Do you care if your linting tool is built in if it's buggy and regularly releases breaking changes? In general I would expect a linting tool or any other component that is a first class feature of the app would be less likely to be released with bugs and breaking changes than a third party one.

Maybe?
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