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My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

andrewkelley.me

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Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#171

Post by conartist6 »

tuckwat wrote: post #101

This is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig. I know very little about Jared but his article yesterday, which I read, seemed appreciative of Zig. I now learn he's donated significant chunks of money to them. This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product. It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig when it really just makes them look chil…

"An unprofessional embarrassment" is exactly how I feel about Bun.

I don't get mad at people for standing up for their morals, I get mad when they have none. AI is an a-moral tech, and Bun is using it in an a-moral way: for team Bun the ends justify any means.

I'm on team Zig!

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#172

Post by entrope »

taneq wrote: post #104
rob74 wrote: post #93

> You can imagine how we might want to put some social distance between ourselves and a project whose irresponsible software engineering practices invite the exact kind of criticism that people are eager to level. The other (very salient) points notwithstanding, I'm afraid this quote shows that Zig hasn't learned a lesson that other languages of its generation (and older) have: if a project's memory safety depends on…

I’m reminded of the hierarchy of controls in machine safety. If you can’t eliminate the hazard, or substitute a less hazardous thing, then engineering out the hazard (like Rust did) is preferable to a procedural control (“git gud at engineering”).

Can you elaborate on the distinction between "eliminate the hazard" as the first choice and "engineering out the hazard" as a fallback approach?

In my safety background (recently aerospace, ARP4754/4761), removing and avoiding the hazard are essentially equivalent, with reducing the likelihood and mitigating its effects acceptable if you can't remove or avoid the hazard, and procedure is also the least preferred mechanism.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#173

Post by alex_suzuki »

vmg12 wrote: post #102

> The sleight of hand misdirects the reader away from the main way bugs are eliminated: by dedicating engineering resources to it. I was on a platform team and I had a constant backlog of bugs (introduced by others) that I was working on and the two most impactful things for preventing bugs were Typescript and Cypress (playwright-like testing before playwright). I've dealt with many shitty code bases and the only way…

> Anyway, Jared donated $60k a month to this project

$60k per year, which amounts to $5k per month. Still, nothing to be sneered at.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#174

Post by jdw64 »

tialaramex wrote: post #167
jdw64 wrote: post #3

I read the post and roughly summarized it as: 1.It felt uncomfortable that Bun was presented as a representative example of Zig. From the internal Zig perspective, it looked more like a bad example of how to use Zig. 2.It felt uncomfortable that they spoke as if Rust prevents things that could actually be handled by Zig's style guide. 3.I(OP,andrewkelly) don't think badly of Jarred as a person, but after signing a co…

> 2.It felt uncomfortable that they spoke as if Rust prevents things that could actually be handled by Zig's style guide. "Handled by Zig's style guide" ends up as "Don't make mistakes" which is entirely useless advice. C++ spent years trying to make out that this constitutes useful guidance before gradually accepting that people aren't in fact going to stop making mistakes, you need to provide a better language and…

I agree with some points as well. In fact, the OP argues that sufficient engineering attention can solve the problem, but I think that's only theoretical in reality, it's difficult. It's like C programmers claiming that undefined behavior is manageable.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#175

Post by sepisoad »

i think the blog post was very honest and direct and i could not agree more with andrew, now i’m not a zig user and i don’t find the language itself pleasing but it’s just a matter of taste,

i admire a few things in zig community, the focus on human relationship with learning and discovery and the focus on performance and building a meaningful relationship with members of community, I wish all the best to the zig and its community, although i have heard a few years ago that andrew was making apologies for not having enough diversity (race and skin colour wise) which i guess was a very dumb statement, but hey we all make dumb statements!

I really admire his stance on AI and agentic code contribution and the joy that they find in crafting good tools.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#176

Post by conartist6 »

dnoberon wrote: post #74

Not sure a personal attack against Jarred really helps the case for using Zig. He could have and should have focused on the language and not “a stinky manager”. Honestly, this makes me want to steer clear of Andrew as much as Jarred.

Makes me want to give him a handshake and a big hug

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#177

Post by jdw64 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #155
tuckwat wrote: post #101

This is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig. I know very little about Jared but his article yesterday, which I read, seemed appreciative of Zig. I now learn he's donated significant chunks of money to them. This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product. It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig when it really just makes them look chil…

> This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product The article seems to be happy about the switch to Rust, that point is re-iterated multiple times in the article, and seemingly they were both awaiting Bun moving away from Zig and wishing for it.

I feel the same way as you do. Honestly, even though it was well-packaged, I did find it a bit rude. But since I don't know their personal relationship, it's not really my place to interfere.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#178

Post by nesarkvechnep »

preommr wrote: post #121

There are astute comments about the post's tone elsewhere in this thread[0] But this killed my hopes for Zig. The drama is fun, and Andrew is maybe even admirable in his earnest, but this just isn't the kind of professionalism needed for a serious project. I know that's boring and uninspired, but that's what I want my tech stack and it's management to be. Also, maybe Jarred was a net negative, but bun was also a real…

In what way the article convinced you that Andrew Kelley is not professional enough for a serious project like Zig? Isn't his contribution to the language what's important?

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#179

Post by titularcomment »

tuckwat wrote: post #134
lins1909 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of strange to not engage with any of the points made in the article. Unlike you, I don't think the post makes them look childish at all. I think it raises a lot of valid points and makes me want to use Zig more.

Do you have bias? I'm not saying I don't have some hidden bias but I have no skin in the game. I don't use Bun or Zig or plan to. My reflection comes after reading Jarred's post yesterday, which I found interesting, and then Andrew's today. I just pasted this article into an LLM to understand the tone and the summary is: > The overall tone is deeply personal, cathartic, biting, and polemical, with flashes of humor an…

I'm glad that you asserted that you do have potential hidden bias and say that you used an LLM to judge the tone of an article partly pertaining to AI usage in coding right after.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#180

Post by elktown »

tuckwat wrote: post #101

This is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig. I know very little about Jared but his article yesterday, which I read, seemed appreciative of Zig. I now learn he's donated significant chunks of money to them. This entire article is publicly and personally attacking him for choosing a different product. It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig when it really just makes them look chil…

No, it's embarrassing being obsessed with good tone to the point that people behaving badly should never be called out for it.

The article provides good background into how it got to this point - and it fits well with doing an opportunistic AI rewrite after being acquired by an AI provider.

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