I reckon I've come across at least 100 articles discussing JavaScript fatigue over the years. Undoubtedly, for those who have experienced the challenges of upgrading Node versions and dealing with major package version updates, wiring different development, build and testing tools together, the difficulties are undeniable.
However, is there a single solution on the horizon to alleviate all this frustration?
Enter Bun.
Bun is an all-in-one toolkit for JavaScript and TypeScript development, offering fast performance, simplified tooling, and seamless integration. The project has been in development for the last two years, but Bun team just announced the release of v1.0.
Bun serves as a replacement for various existing tools, including Node.js, transpilers, bundlers, package managers, and testing libraries. Bun provides Node.js compatibility, exceptional speed, TypeScript and JSX support, Web API integration, hot reloading, customizable plugins, and optimized standard library APIs. Additionally, Bun functions as a package manager, a bundler with a plugin API, and a test runner with Jest compatibility. It introduces JavaScript macros for bundle-time execution and offers experimental support for Windows. The release marks the beginning of Bun's journey toward new deployment methods for JavaScript and TypeScript.
Sounds pretty awesome if you ask me. But...will it live up to it's promise?
Maybe, maybe not.
On this Hacker News thread about the v1.0 release, there's some valid comments about the discrepancy between Bun being a "drop-in replacement for Node.js", while also admitting Bun doesn't implement all of Node.js. There is a page documenting Node.js compatibility, but yeah, I kind of agree that a drop-in replacement should ideally come without any exceptions.
Regardless, I'm willing to give it a try. Could Bun be the start of a new era of JS/TS development? Or maybe serve as inspiration and motivation for the Node.js team to bring the now 14 year old runtime to serve the needs of current development? Or will we all be replaced by AI by that time? Only time will tell...
Top comments (3)
It has been a day since bun was released, and the number of issues for bun has reached 1.1k.
Personally, I was waiting for the release of 1.0, but now I am waiting for the release of 2.0.
Yeah, looking through some docs yesterday, the statement "Next.js currently relies on Node.js APIs that Bun does not yet implement" means it's not a drop-in replacement enough for me to start using it at work. But definitely interested to use it for some personal stuff.
I’m little confuse, bun has status “production ready”. Now I wonder, did they rush it?