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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

#181

Post by conartist6 »

jdw64 wrote: post #177
embedding-shape wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The people who steal with AI and give no credit to the actual creative forces (that they are stamping out) are the fucking rude ones.

I just return to them the kindness they show me when they say, "You made this?? I made this!!"

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#182

Post by jdw64 »

Decabytes wrote: post #70

While I agree that the Zig code in Bun could be better, and that the Silicon Valley pressure to move fast and break things prevented a lot of suggested improvements, this feels like the same argument as people who write C or C++ where people think they wouldn’t make mistakes. For example this section > We've been trying to warn you about your comptime abuse for years. You could replace comptime with templates in C++…

I agree with some of your points, but I think the Safe C++ project will be difficult because it would require breaking backward compatibility with existing projects. Honestly, I also don't agree with the claim that 'if you manage it well, data races and memory safety errors won't happen.' However, C++ already has so many projects built on it that breaking backward compatibility would cause serious problems. I think it might be better to just switch to a different language altogether.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#183

Post by 0xpgm »

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…

How is it unprofessional when it is simply someone giving their honest personal opinion on an issue that involves something that is valuable to them, on their personal blog nonetheless.

Is everyone a walking and talking brand now so that they have to always filter their words, walk on eggshells, hide behind corpo-speak so as to seem 'professional'?

More honest discourse is required in today's world, not less. It seems interactions online are becoming less and less authentic.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#184

Post by neutronicus »

rkangel wrote: post #149
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…

I don't think it's too bad, but I also don't think it's good. I also don't think Andrew can claim at the end "I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred" when the post includes the sentence "Jarred was already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs".

It accuses him of presiding over “a shitshow”, and basically seems to imply he’s a greedy narcissist.

So, yes, I find that line laughably disingenuous.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#185

Post by nsagent »

norman784 wrote: post #128
jorisw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

Here[0] are other reasons besides AI - [0] https://ziggit.dev/t/bun-s-zig-fork-got-4x-faster-compilatio...

I think that post highlights a difference in philosophical approach to software development. Bun is focused on moving fast and will deal with the consequences as they come. Zig takes a more planful approach.

I've experienced both in my career and I fall solidly on the planful side. It's why stopped using homebrew and I've avoided huggingface packages as much as possible.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#186

Post by jdw64 »

conartist6 wrote: post #181
jdw64 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people who steal with AI and give no credit to the actual creative forces (that they are stamping out) are the fucking rude ones. I just return to them the kindness they show me when they say, "You made this?? I made this!!"

I understand your anger too. AI did steal open source knowledge, and I agree with that part.

But separately from that, I think it's a bit unfair to talk about the people associated with it in such a dismissive way.

In reality, humans aren't purely rational beings, and I can understand why the Zig philosophy and the Bun manager who joined the AI side might not have looked good from that perspective. But I think that's a separate issue from the emotions involved.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#187

Post by fp64 »

I like zig a lot, I share its core philosophy, and I generally agree with Andrew's views. I found this article interesting, and I think it is understandable in all of this to be a bit bitter towards Bun and Jarred - in some sense, it had turned into a big "If you don't use Rust in 2026 you are stupid" which directly hurts the Zig project.

Personally, I prefer zig over most other languages. I find "memory-safety" is bought at the price of code that is not straightforward to reason about and requiring a steep learning curve. The reader's working memory is filled up quickly with language constructs and crutches rather than with the actual logic of the code at hand. I have used C++ for a large part of my professional career and eventually got so annoyed by always having to cross-reference multiple files to check which behavior might be used by which constructor and things like that. I have written a big and critical system in pure C once, just to try, and while I would not do it again, diligence and testing resulted in virtually zero runtime failures across its lifespan - while it was always possible to quickly reason about all the logic that tied low-level hardware access and near-realtime requirements together in a way much more visible than hidden behind layers of "safe" abstraction. Zig is, for me, the sweet spot: It solves the terrible issues that plain C has, and adds a lot of convenience on top that does not obscure the logic, while encouraging but not enforcing safe patterns.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#188

Post by zeratax »

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…

how is it attacking him for using a different product? except for compile times nothing here even indicates that rust would be a bad choice for bun

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#189

Post by dataflow »

lins1909 wrote: post #125
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…

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.

> 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.

I know nothing about the drama here other than what's in the blog post, but these feel more like unnecessarily public personal attacks which don't really reflect well:

- a stinky manager. Poor communication, unrealistic expectations, low empathy, no experience. Just a total shit show, from an employment perspective

- already writing slop well before he had access to LLMs

- their vague "sell some cloud something" business plan was a farce

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#190

Post by zeratax »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #168
lins1909 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, I'm very confused by the last part of your comment. You put it into an LLM to...understand the tone? Is that supposed to convince me of something?

They phrased it poorly, but from context it seems clear they intend the LLM as a less biased third-party measure of the tone which agrees with their own assessment.

which they very much are not
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