Deno: has a basic permission model that is very helpful, written in Rust, and native TypeScript support.
I'm not deep in the webdev / node / Bun ecosystems, I've just been a happy user of Deno for small services for several years. Can someone explain why it sounds like there's such rapid growth of Bun? Is it just being used as a bundler, but not as JS runtime?
Just the permission system alone (though I wish it extended to modules) is so compelling with Deno that I'm perplexed at why someone would transition from node to bun and not node to Deno.
I use (and like) both. Bun is a drop-in replacement for node. If you don't want to fuss with test config, tsconfig, esmodules, etc., I find that it just works.
Deno has a nice standard lib, great CLI support, and I used to love deno deploy but its gotten very clunky these days.
Node's the stable solution and will be with us forever. You can now use TypeScript with it and, soon enough, you'll be able to build your app to a single executable -- including native deps.
Bun's chaotic but, nonetheless, it's _fast_ and it's taking an interesting approach by including everything in the stdlib. Plus, bought by Anthropic.
Deno had an awesome story with the sandbox and ease of import for third-party dependencies. Sandboxes feel pretty commoditized now and I'm not sure the import mechanism ended up being that much nicer than a `npm add`.
Afaik there is no proof Anthropic is profitable. This, and uv buyout by OpenAI only adds a risk to supply chains. In few years these companies can be overrun by open source models or startups delivering new hardware/software breakthrough in LLM. It is not like uv and bun are acquired by IBMs or Alphabets of today.
Running out of money is never the issue with a big company buying an open source project. There are countless examples of projects dying or changing significantly for the worse after acquisition.
Also “no human wrote any of this code” is not my personal benchmark for a reliable dependency.
For those who care about their dependencies being "safe bets", Bun should already be out of the question after the recent "vibe code the entire thing into a different language in a week with zero human intervention" fiasco.
Yeah, that's my immediate debate in reading this blog post: `deno pack` might be a great replacement to my existing `npm publish` workflow for my open source packages and continue shifting my work to Deno-first/Deno-mostly, but on the flipside, with Node's growing TS support I'm also considering switching to Typescript-only npm packages as a (tiny) message to the ecosystem.
Though I'm also happy that JSR exists as that (mostly) cleaner ecosystem.
Deno is a JavaScript and TypeScript runtime, for those who don't recognize the name. Here's a review of Deno 2.6 vs competitors Bun 1.3 and Node.js 25:
It's surprising to me that bun is so much faster serving web requests. The article mentions Zig as a factor, but is micromanaging memory really gaining over 2x vs node?
Similarly, it seems, though they didnt exactly say, that they're running bun with a warm package cache... What about the others? Do they have caches?
I wrap most node-isms and use deno as the runtime. Works well. If a project is pure typescript I just have deno run it. Extra options for security are great, installation scripts disabled by default, etc.
If you're using node directly, please stop. At a minimum use Bun.
With agentic work, there is little reason to use anything besides Rust and Typescript in any case. Room to disagree but type safety, memory safety, and a large corpus of work is critical. Agents need difficult errors and baked in patterns they navigate it easily. For UI, Typescript makes the most sense just because of the mass of design examples.
I actually lost interest in Deno once it started leaning into NPM. I thought it was a bold and wise idea to make a clean break from the mess of Node and restart with a sensible ecosystem. Absent that... I'm just sticking with Node.
Deno: has a basic permission model that is very helpful, written in Rust, and native TypeScript support.
I'm not deep in the webdev / node / Bun ecosystems, I've just been a happy user of Deno for small services for several years. Can someone explain why it sounds like there's such rapid growth of Bun? Is it just being used as a bundler, but not as JS runtime?
Just the permission system alone (though I wish it extended to modules) is so compelling with Deno that I'm perplexed at why someone would transition from node to bun and not node to Deno.
I use (and like) both. Bun is a drop-in replacement for node. If you don't want to fuss with test config, tsconfig, esmodules, etc., I find that it just works. Deno has a nice standard lib, great CLI support, and I used to love deno deploy but its gotten very clunky these days.
I wonder how Deno's faring.
Node's the stable solution and will be with us forever. You can now use TypeScript with it and, soon enough, you'll be able to build your app to a single executable -- including native deps.
Bun's chaotic but, nonetheless, it's _fast_ and it's taking an interesting approach by including everything in the stdlib. Plus, bought by Anthropic.
Deno had an awesome story with the sandbox and ease of import for third-party dependencies. Sandboxes feel pretty commoditized now and I'm not sure the import mechanism ended up being that much nicer than a `npm add`.
You can already ship single executables, my product's CLI is a Node single executable application
They did lay off ~half the company ~2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47467746
It's good to have some options, to prevent the ecosystem from stalling
> and, soon enough, you'll be able to build your app to a single executable -- including native deps.
Whoa, did not know that. That's a killer feature!
> Plus, bought by Anthropic.
Who thinks this is a positive?!
That wasn't a value judgment on the acquisition. I was just pointing out that it made the project more sustainable.
It means they're a whole lot less likely to run out of money, which makes them a safer bet as a dependency.
> which makes them a safer bet as a dependency
Wouldn't node be the safest bet as a dependency?
Afaik there is no proof Anthropic is profitable. This, and uv buyout by OpenAI only adds a risk to supply chains. In few years these companies can be overrun by open source models or startups delivering new hardware/software breakthrough in LLM. It is not like uv and bun are acquired by IBMs or Alphabets of today.
Running out of money is never the issue with a big company buying an open source project. There are countless examples of projects dying or changing significantly for the worse after acquisition.
Also “no human wrote any of this code” is not my personal benchmark for a reliable dependency.
For those who care about their dependencies being "safe bets", Bun should already be out of the question after the recent "vibe code the entire thing into a different language in a week with zero human intervention" fiasco.
> safer bet as a dependency.
The recent 1 million line vibe coded PR suggests it is not so reliable as a dependency.
That was Bun at Anthropic, not uv at OpenAI.
running out of money, for an open source project of almost any kind, is safer than "running into money" with the wrong strings attached
(still reserving judgement on Bun, though — I mean, we'll soon see, one way or the other!)
The new *deno pack* command is a nice addition for safe and simple packaging.
For those using Node.js, a similar single command is available with https://www.npmjs.com/package/ts-node-pack
Now that Node.js supports importing .ts modules, more repos can use them without a build step or putting any build artifacts in the checkout.
Yeah, that's my immediate debate in reading this blog post: `deno pack` might be a great replacement to my existing `npm publish` workflow for my open source packages and continue shifting my work to Deno-first/Deno-mostly, but on the flipside, with Node's growing TS support I'm also considering switching to Typescript-only npm packages as a (tiny) message to the ecosystem.
Though I'm also happy that JSR exists as that (mostly) cleaner ecosystem.
Deno is a JavaScript and TypeScript runtime, for those who don't recognize the name. Here's a review of Deno 2.6 vs competitors Bun 1.3 and Node.js 25:
https://www.devtoolreviews.com/reviews/bun-vs-node-vs-deno-2...
It's surprising to me that bun is so much faster serving web requests. The article mentions Zig as a factor, but is micromanaging memory really gaining over 2x vs node?
Similarly, it seems, though they didnt exactly say, that they're running bun with a warm package cache... What about the others? Do they have caches?
> The article mentions Zig as a factor, but is micromanaging memory really gaining over 2x vs node?
As someone who has optimized by reducing/batching heap allocations, 2x seems within the realm of possibility, depending on the exact circumstances.
That being said, iirc, node also has more hooks for things like observability than bun does, which might hurt it here
I wrap most node-isms and use deno as the runtime. Works well. If a project is pure typescript I just have deno run it. Extra options for security are great, installation scripts disabled by default, etc.
If you're using node directly, please stop. At a minimum use Bun.
With agentic work, there is little reason to use anything besides Rust and Typescript in any case. Room to disagree but type safety, memory safety, and a large corpus of work is critical. Agents need difficult errors and baked in patterns they navigate it easily. For UI, Typescript makes the most sense just because of the mass of design examples.
By the time I read this, the blog post doesn't exist yet:
> The release post for v2.8 is not yet published.
> Check GitHub releases page for the latest release status of Deno.
The release is here: https://github.com/denoland/deno/releases/tag/v2.8.0
EDIT: Formatting
> Deno now defaults to npm:
This is an interesting development. npm after all is the de-facto ecosystem and leaning into it makes sense.
I'm wondering how Deno would've been received if it supported npm and package.json from day 1.
I actually lost interest in Deno once it started leaning into NPM. I thought it was a bold and wise idea to make a clean break from the mess of Node and restart with a sensible ecosystem. Absent that... I'm just sticking with Node.
As someone that works in projects with standard IT tools, not supporting NPM made it a non starter for us.
No way it would go through standard build pipelines, or team skills.
"standard" IT tools?
The release post for v2.8 is not yet published. Check GitHub releases page for the latest release status of Deno.
https://deno.com/blog/v2.8