My Thoughts on the Bun Rust Rewrite
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Zig creator critiques Bun's code quality and is relieved by its Rust rewrite.
Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, reflects on Bun's history with the Zig community. He describes Jarred Sumner's early "beginner energy" as healthy, but says it soured after Bun took venture capital and became a startup. Kelley alleges Jarred was a poor manager with low empathy, and that Bun's codebase was full of hacks and technical debt. He was relieved when Anthropic acquired Bun and the rewrite was announced, calling the separation a net positive for Zig.
Kelley disputes claims in Bun's announcement post, arguing that the rewrite's performance gains come from LTO (which Zig supported) and that the assertion about fuzzing Zig code is false. He says the blog post is marketing, and that bug elimination comes from dedicating engineering resources, not language choice.
What commenters are saying
Commenters are split. Many agree with Kelley's critique of Jarred as a manager and the code quality issues, with some backing up his assessment from public drama. Others find the post too personal, noting that Kelley's claim of having no personal criticism is contradicted by the tone. Some defend Rust's safety guarantees over Zig's, arguing that reliance on style guides is unrealistic. A few dispute the claim that Bun could have sustained itself via crowdfunding, calling it surreal.
There is skepticism about Bun's relevance, with commenters noting most production systems still use Node.js. Some express gratitude toward Kelley for the transparency.