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Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

antjs.org

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Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#151

Post by rileytg »

girvo wrote: post #60
lucb1e wrote: post #37

Why call it "Ant" and not "Antjs" or "Ant.js" when there is already Ant from Apache? https://ant.apache.org

Ant in JS land is already claimed and huge too lol https://ant.design/

ant design is a design system that the marquee title is underneath the top nav. it has at least three major fousc on mobile dark mode ios page load. both are clasic blunders documented and well solved since early bootstrap era. hardly a project worth owning “ant” in the js ecosystem.

apache ant (another neat tool) is from the java ecosystem (and can be used outside of it) that has largely been replaced by maven, which is gradually being replaced gradle.

this project seems to only overlap with either in that it uses javascript (or the word java).

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#152

Post by pier25 »

reasonableklout wrote: post #112
nhinck2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now nothing goes past me unreviewed and untested So it's not hand-built?

OP, you will get a much better reception if you clarify that "hand built" just means you're not using existing libraries. It's a cool project, but it's disappointing to come in expecting to see a rare gem of a 100% human project in 2026 but it's really something else.

This 100%

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#153

Post by alienbaby »

theMackabu wrote: post #32
tekacs wrote: post #28

I code with AI all day, every day. But I do think that it's worth pointing to this issue (from March). The author has said that they've redone it since, but the "from-scratch hand-built" framing specifically – for me – somewhat grates given the original heavy lifting from an existing AGPL codebase. https://github.com/cesanta/elk/issues/75 I want to acknowledge that the original authors don't seem to have minded too m…

this was flagging code from all the way back in dec of 2025, back when this project was just some idea and not what it is today. around feb thats when basically deleted the existing codebase and designed a much more reliable system from the ground up. I knew the existing code was basically pure slop, and it was not the biggest issue then, now nothing goes past me unreviewed and untested > To the author: I absolutely…

Unreviewed, untested, understood?

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#154

Post by giglamesh »

brabel wrote: post #117
steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You would only name it ant if you wanted to taint the first impression of anyone that’s been coding for a couple decades or more.

Or if you have only started in the last few years and never heard of those older projects.

And could not be bothered to make the tiniest cursory check to see if the name was already in use by a well known project.

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#156

Post by theMackabu »

cognitiveinline wrote: post #138
theMackabu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on linux its kvm, on darwin its hypervisor.framework, the memory is not upfront, by default 256mb is lazy allocated, and ~35mb are used by both ant + the vm. the kernel is https://nanos.org with patches to get ant+networking running smoothly

Does it work on windows?

no sandbox on windows... yet!

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#157

Post by theMackabu »

progx wrote: post #122
bellowsgulch wrote: post #14

> Something you could distribute without dragging along hundreds of megabytes of V8 or Node. Holy crap, V8 is that big now? Very interested in this for embedding purposes.

https://zoo.js.org/ V8 21M, Score 47285, ES6 98% Ant 4.3M, >>> Score 69 <<<, ES6 50%

this is very out of date, from February. please just check the repo or even run the tests

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#158

Post by sivanmz »

ebiester wrote: post #33
carimura wrote: post #19

i was just joking about Anthropic's `ant` CLI not caring about Apache `ant` (maybe one person got it), and now we're talking about Javascript `ant`!

I thought I was the only person who remembered Apache Ant... I know we're running out of names but that was a really influential piece of infrastructure.

I was working on our ant build last night

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#159

Post by latchkey »

normie3000 wrote: post #119
latchkey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the first user and contributor to Apache Ant outside of Sun Microsystems when James gave it to me, and I could care less that someone else used the same name.

Could or couldn't?

couldn't... sorry for bad engrish.

Re: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

#160

Post by [deleted] »

Kiro wrote: post #133
lionkor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not count as hand built. In the same way that a human pressing buttons, such that an automated production line makes a watch, and then at the end a human goes and looks at it and says "yup that's a watch" isn't a hand-made watch.

Nice opinion but it's clearly a spectrum and not binary. Is assembling machine-made components by hand to make a watch hand-made?

[deleted]
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