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I am worried about Bun

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Re: I am worried about Bun

#141

Post by switz »

ahepp wrote: post #117
smcl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before the acquisition, Bun had to figure out how to monetize at some point. I think it is insane that people got into a situation where they had committed to a javascript runtime that had to "figure out how to monetize at some point". It is also bizarre that some people are still hopeful despite it being acquired by one of the most enormously unprofitable companies in the most enormously unprofitable sectors of ou…

Are there any situations you would compare this to historically? To me, the obvious comparison seems to be Docker. Their tooling revolutionized software development and made cgroups and containerization accessible to the masses. Yet they generally seem to have failed to extract payment from users, even with managed service opportunities. It seems to me that there are substantial obstacles to monetizing a project lice…

It's a shame that VCs have corrupted a $200MM/year business into the perception as a failure. Who cares if the VCs didn't get a large return, or if the outsized impact of the software didn't quite fully capture the value created. $200MM/yr without aggressive R&D or operational costs could be an incredibly healthy business.

Maybe we should stop trying to build so many billion dollar/year businesses and work on more sustainable models.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#142

Post by afavour »

This isn't anything new and I feel the same way about Deno. We can argue about exactly how much trouble any runtime is in today vs yesterday vs tomorrow but VC funding of a javascript runtime feels inherently unstable to me.

The key question is how much unique tooling you're relying on. If you can switch to Node tomorrow, great. If you can't, make sure you have a contingency plan.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#143

Post by constantius »

rtrigoso wrote: post #21

I agree with OP, and understand why to some it feels premature. We live in a vastly different world than before, where people are more conscious of ethical concerns and willing to stand on their ground to avoid repeating past mistakes. It might be premature from a tech standard, but it makes sense from an ethical concern. I don't think misconduct is as easily backtracked as it was before and preemptive measures are n…

> where people are more conscious of ethical concerns and willing to stand on their ground to avoid repeating past mistakes

Would be interested to hear what makes you say that. I don't see anyone being conscious of ethical concerns more than they were before. I can see slightly more BDS people, for example, but outside of that not much.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#144

Post by dgellow »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #134
dgellow wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would mention deno as the main competitor

I would too ... but not as the winning competitor. For their first year two of existence, bun tried to do npm, but better. For the first year or two of their existence, Deno tried to reinvent npm. The key result is that after that first year or two Deno had to walk back their decisions, to create a Node-ecosystem-compatible tool .. and as a result, they're now significantly behind bun (at least by all metrics I've se…

I know, early deno was rough and frustrating. But it is now _the_ main competitor to Bun. What makes you say it is behind? Are you talking about features or usage?

Re: I am worried about Bun

#145

Post by dgellow »

afavour wrote: post #139
dgellow wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would mention deno as the main competitor

I would mention Node as the main competitor. It isn't moving as vast as the VC-backed ecosystems are but its future is a lot more assured.

Ok, but Node is the status quo. As replacement to the node runtime bun and deno are the two contenders at the moment

Re: I am worried about Bun

#146

Post by namuol »

I see the word “enshittify” being thrown around casually about Claude Code. We’re far from that part of the Enshittification cycle still. This is just a mismanaged product and the result of an extremely competitive market that moves too fast.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence, etc.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#147

Post by estimator7292 »

namuol wrote: post #146

I see the word “enshittify” being thrown around casually about Claude Code. We’re far from that part of the Enshittification cycle still. This is just a mismanaged product and the result of an extremely competitive market that moves too fast. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence, etc.

Yeah, I'm none too happy with anthropic right now, but what's happening to Claude code is just your typical garden variety mismanagement of a project that grew way too fast for its owners to reasonably handle.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#148

Post by Scarbutt »

wg0 wrote: post #35

OpenAI and Anthropic both are destined to doom for sure. There's no way around it and it is all in the math. Bun would be a causality. It is only a matter of time. Only company that would survive the AI race - the one where the current wave was actually invented along with the research paper, the libraries and even specialised hardware: Google. Google has a serious problem with its product management culture (long li…

That's assuming Google can outpace Nvidia, which may or never will. Nvidia is not just going to sleep on it.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#149

Post by andai »

AntonyGarand wrote: post #11

I disagree with the overall premise: Before the acquisition, Bun had to figure out how to monetize at some point. Now, even though their parent company does some shitty practices with their other software (claude code), it's a stretch to assume this will also translate into making Bun worse: Being worried makes sense but I remain optimistic about Bun. Especially given the context of both of these different context: C…

What came to my mind is Windows.

Regardless of what else is going on, kernel is a separate team, and has very strong incentives to remain competent and sane.

Re: I am worried about Bun

#150

Post by motbus3 »

bombcar wrote: post #58
motbus3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people say it is unprofitable but I wonder if there is a way to verify it is truly is. I will not say any details but I worked for a giant company which was barely making money YoY but somehow the bonuses for heads were bigger and bigger given a proxy metric related to profit. There are way too many ways companies arrange to pay themselves and never be profitable to avoid taxes.

"Profitable" is the wrong metric, really, it's whether it is sustainable - can development continue indefinitely given the current financial situation?

I'm thinking about your comment... It put many wheels to spin...

Tldr; I think the don't care about what will happen to the company in medium or long term.

---

Are any of those companies looking for stability or sustainability?

I have the impression they are completely aware of the diminished return effects and they will explore the moment to the fullest of their capabilities promising even more absurd things when the results are even smaller.

I do agree there is a considerable improvement comparing from a year ago but definitely not ground shaking as it was from the year before to the last.

Many of the promises turns out to be empty or at least having huge number of asterisks to it.

I think there are flags everywhere. From minor things such as everyone using different benchmarks or plotting performance differences on weird choices os axis and ordering.

Other mild things such as promoting the "system" created a compiler from scratch when such compiler does not even do a hello world and runs and gave output binaries running 300x then the counterparts.

(I am aware there was a misusage of the agentic benchmark to build a compiler but there was an active choice on how to tell the story. Given other movements I am not quite sure if I believe it was an accident)

There are other red flags such as people rolling back to previous versions of models because they can't get the new one to work properly.

Other situations such as the affirmations that they have such "dangerous" model that apparently seems to be more of a benchmark trick than real results with I don't think we are yet in the turning point where everything will collapse but my feeling is that we are going in that direction unless something that makes these models much more intelligent AND efficient.

It makes sense to not hire a person when you can have a machine for the same job for the same price. But AI prices are getting higher than the returns do the margins for it to be a sensible choice are getting smaller.

That all said, I say again that I think that they are completely aware of this effect. Not because they understand the technology but because this happens more frequently than not. Because of this, I don't think they care to be sustainable. All of them,smell that they will take the money and leave the ship to sink.

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