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Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

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Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#541

Post by famouswaffles »

fragmede wrote: post #536
famouswaffles wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop thinking about '9 days' like it means the same thing in an era where machines can generate thousands of lines of code in a few hours. There is no way a human rewrite like this wouldn't be roughly at the same stage with a 9 day delta. In that case, some of these accusations would be reasonable to make. But that is not the case here.

Just because the machines can generate code that quickly doesn't mean that human thought has changed to moving faster. Everyone's had a problem they were working on, and the solution doesn't come sitting at the desk staring at the code, but three days later in the shower, eureka! hits. Just because machines are writing code hasn't changed the underlying human thought speed substrate. That's why people see nine days a…

Human speed thought doesn't matter here because it's not human reviewed. The code was generated. It exists and it (now) works to the extent they're satisfied with going through with a canary release. Going on about about '9 days' is working with a mental model that simply does not apply here. That is my point.

If you think there should be human review or that there should have been a lot more human collaboration, that's one thing but accusing Jarred of lying about his intentions is another thing entirely, and one where '9 days' is not remotely the proof people think it is in this situation.

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#542

Post by buu700 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #170
tasuki wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, nine days ago[0]: > I work on Bun and this is my branch > This whole thread is an overreaction. 302 comments about code that does not work. We haven’t committed to rewriting. There’s a very high chance all this code gets thrown out completely. Maybe... it wasn't such an overreaction? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019226

You're not alone in voicing this, another (now dead) comment did it earlier too with a bit more of an emotional response ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134229 ). Still, do you folks never do something to see how you feel about something, then chose to go one way or another? I'm not sure why it's so hard to see that it was an overreaction at the time, because it was an experiment, then at one point it stoppe…

This actually happened to me a couple months ago. Started a Rust rewrite of a project as an experiment, then a few weeks later it was presented to the team and promoted to mainline.

Although in that case the language change was almost incidental — the rewrite was very much not a straight 1:1 port, but more of a substantive architectural overhaul and longstanding tech debt cleanup; Rust was just one of many tools and design decisions that helped get the best possible end result. There were also various reasons it made sense to attempt a rewrite within that particular window of time.

The upshot is we've ended up with a substantially stronger QA posture, a much higher-quality and more maintainable codebase, and an extremely positive audit report by a group that was brought in to review the project. There were some early kinks to work out, but the longer we've lived in this version of code the more it's proven itself to be a stronger foundation than its predecessor.

Of course, Bun is its own thing and all circumstances are unique. I have no idea how that rewrite was approached, whether it was the right decision, or how it will ultimately prove itself. Just saying the shift from "experiment" to "official new direction" is normal and credible, and that I'd give it some time to see how it handles contact with reality before passing judgement. If it's truly a disaster, nothing's stopping them from reversing course and backporting any new changes to the old Zig codebase.

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#544

Post by gpm »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #362
Aurornis wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bun codebase had a similar number of lines of code before the rewrite. There's nothing unusual about a rewrite coming in with a similar LOC number.

I was going to comment this same thing. I don't know enough about what Bun does... But Rust is so insanely complicated, it's hard for me to wrap my head around how Bun is equally complictated.

Complicated things can often be expressed very succinctly - the hard part is in understanding why the short program does what it is supposed to.

Simple things often take a lot of space, simply because there's a lot of similar but different simple things that each need to be written down.

Lines of code just isn't a good measure of "complicated".

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#545

Post by taejavu »

Tesl wrote: post #539
tasuki wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, nine days ago[0]: > I work on Bun and this is my branch > This whole thread is an overreaction. 302 comments about code that does not work. We haven’t committed to rewriting. There’s a very high chance all this code gets thrown out completely. Maybe... it wasn't such an overreaction? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019226

I'm really out the loop here so maybe you can help answer me a question - why is HN unhappy about this rewrite? why are people writing here almost as if they feel betrayed by Bun being rewritten from Zig into Rust? I genuinely don't get it. I've been following this Bun stuff a bit but I don't understand where the HN sentiment is coming from.

My read is that it just seems a bit reckless doing a full rewrite so quickly.

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#546

Post by Tesl »

supern0va wrote: post #531
makotech221 wrote: post #270

first major company to really nuke their main product via AI psychosis?

I for one think it's a fascinating experiment to see how well it goes. Though if it actually works and leads to bun getting better over the coming months, I suspect the arguments against it will just take on a different flavor.

Of course they will, the goalposts will keep shifting because people don't want to admit that agents are now this capable.

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#547

Post by [deleted] »

Tesl wrote: post #539
tasuki wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, nine days ago[0]: > I work on Bun and this is my branch > This whole thread is an overreaction. 302 comments about code that does not work. We haven’t committed to rewriting. There’s a very high chance all this code gets thrown out completely. Maybe... it wasn't such an overreaction? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019226

I'm really out the loop here so maybe you can help answer me a question - why is HN unhappy about this rewrite? why are people writing here almost as if they feel betrayed by Bun being rewritten from Zig into Rust? I genuinely don't get it. I've been following this Bun stuff a bit but I don't understand where the HN sentiment is coming from.

[deleted]

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#548

Post by [deleted] »

wiseowise wrote: post #499
weraK10 wrote: post #262

As an educational thread, see this one from a week ago where Jarred again deflects from a merge decision and legions of foot soldiers attack anyone who predicted the impending merge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48073680 Didn't age well, did it?

It'll never cease to amaze me how many bootlickers are out of there that don't really care which boot to lick.

[deleted]

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#549

Post by oskarkk »

shimman wrote: post #384
_aavaa_ wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Rewrite from zig to rust in as close to zig as you can. 2. Turn into idiomatic rust.

1. Get hired into a company where you have a solid bet on making multi-century lasting generational wealth (>$50,000,000). 2. Every waking moment do everything in your power to boost the company that might give you the ability to define the direction of technology for the rest of your life. 3. Use the only thing you have (bun) to help push you in this direction and do things to help boost LLM marketing (a technology…

> a technology that already deeply struggles to find customers

As far as I know it's the opposite, Anthropic struggles to satisfy demand, they have tons of paying customers and their customer base is growing fast.

Re: Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged

#550

Post by jauntywundrkind »

0x457 wrote: post #522
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #250

What does this mean for bun add-ons like opencode's opentui? Did FFI also somehow get ported or will that have to be updated? https://github.com/anomalyco/opentui

First, why are you calling it "add-on". Second, it's done via the same C ABI.

Node's been calling native code distributed in a npm package "add-ons" for a decade and a half.

Fair call on the same C abi. Adapting to node 26.1.0's new FFI is happening in https://github.com/anomalyco/opentui/pull/104 . There's also some new FFI adapters opentui is adding there, and they're adding a worker.

So there is some adaption. That was sort of the interesting useful actual look I thought might be informative, where-as I feel like you were mostly just trying to be curt & maintain a status quo of keeping us all uninformed/unknowing. Let's try actually providing useful steps forwards when we post, ok?

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