My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite • Hacker News Board

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#331

Post by yomismoaqui » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

As an outside observer with no horse in this race I think this post its more about the feelings of Andrew than pure technical content. He must surely feel frustated about Bun's migration to Rust and what it means for Zig, but it reads as sour grapes.

Compare the tone of this post to the one from Jarred about the Rust migration from yesterday, that one reads like a sensible technical document (no matter what you feel about the AI assisted migration).

This one reeks of hurt ego to me. Hell hath no fury like a language creator scorned.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#332

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

27183 wrote: post #320

orangedog wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to if you give a shit about the community you are leading, yes. You're not operating as a private figure in that role, everything you do affects the community and it is blind or selfish to act otherwise.

This is so deeply wrong . This person owes you nothing . You're accusing them of "selfishness" after they've given away thousands of hours of their time... Your entitlement is just breathtaking.

[deleted]

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#333

Post by anon7000 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

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 is unprofessional and embarrassing for Zig

This isn’t like the official stance of the zig foundation or anything. I for one am happy to see people being honest about their frustrations instead of playing politics.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#334

Post by tialaramex » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

jdw64 wrote: post #174

tialaramex wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The "Don't make mistakes" thing isn't even just Programmming, that's why I consider it unforgivable. Railway interlocking starts in the Nineteenth Century. It's a fully mechanical system, if you see an old "Signal box" somewhere, that cabin with a human pulling levers isn't up there just because it's a better vantage point (though that doesn't hurt) it's because there are physically steel cogs and gears meshed together to allow the machine they're operating to only enter safe states. If you make mistakes in that signal box just moving the levers and so on nothing terrible happens. Worst case you annoy people and that's forgiveable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omYfLDlt-MA

Like Avon says in The Wire, "And how you ain't never gonna be slow? Never be late?". Systems which require that you don't make mistakes will fail.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#335

Post by swiftcoder » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #321

swiftcoder wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, corpo-speak is the original slop. The result of too many comms/legal inputs to a conversation. Professional communication is direct, clear, and ideally courteous (but only to a point).

What is managing legal and PR risk if not professional?

corporate != professional. Plenty of professionals who do not work in those highly risk-averse corporate roles

What's the actual risk here? I guess he could sue Andrew for slander, and then prove in court that his management style doesn't suck, and his code is not slop...

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#336

Post by orangedog » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

dpatterbee wrote: post #318

orangedog wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's leading the community. Not having basic professional does indeed kill them vibe for some of us. When is he going to pile on somebody else he disagrees with?

Zig's community is - bar none - the least toxic programming community I've experienced. People on this website (who have never witnessed a single Zig community interaction) love to read blogposts from afar and come to conclusions this way and that, but if they ever stopped to actually engage with the people involved they'd find out the truth quite easily.

I have engaged with the Zig community. You're saying that people should not come to conclusions based on what they just read.=, from the founder nonetheless.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#337

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

dpatterbee wrote: post #292

krautsauer wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually don't have any personal criticisms of Jarred. was the cherry on top.

Those are not personal criticisms, those are all professional criticisms. There are many people who don't seem to know the different between work and life and so they may conflate the two, but to me it's pretty obvious.

[deleted]

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#338

Post by simonw » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

tomlockwood wrote: post #230

simonw wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the rewrite to Rust article: > Bun v1.3.14 was the last version of Bun written in Zig. Bun v1.4.0 will be the first version of Bun written in Rust. It's available in canary now. It's also been shipping with Claude Code since June 17th.

It's been shipping in the company that's success is partly contingent on it shipping? But there's no release? Curious.

Sounds like the first release is coming very soon.

Given the size of the rewrite I think it's pretty responsible to dogfood it a lot - including with a Claude Code release - before pushing a stable release to the wider community.

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#339

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite

#340

Post by andor » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

nsagent wrote: post #185

norman784 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you using instead of Homebrew?