The Truth About Bun | Theo - t3․gg YouTube Video Summary
Theo talks about the Bun runtime and why it is as performant as it is. Theo highlights how important the Node community is and that Bun could not have existed without it. Theo discusses some key insights on how to use bun and some future plans that he has heard the Oven team is planning to implement. Theo states he does not think people should be trashing Node developers and should be more thankful for all the work they have provided.
Detailed Summary:
"Buntime" name history
Theo starts the video by saying how Bun is "the new hot thing", with countless tweets, benchmarks, and videos. Theo pushed for the Bun runtime to be called "Buntime" but the Oven team decided against it. Theo believes because Bun is a compiler, a package manager, and a runtime it should have fun names.
Why install times are faster in Bun
Theo mentions the install times of PNPM and Bun and how many people mentioned that network speed would become a bottleneck. PNPM and Bun both cache, however, PNPMs cache is significantly slower than Buns. Theo mentions how Bun does not check the network to make sure that packages it has are the correct versions unlike PNPM, so Bun will install an older version in under a third of a second whereas PNPM will take 6+ seconds. He states that Bun defaults to the oldest version that honors the key.
Mac OS Cloning Files
Theo touches on his previous video talking about Mac OS vs Linux file copying. Most package managers reference the cache in the node modules, but since sim linking is not the fastest on Macs, Oven uses the clone file API.
Concerns around relying on Bun
Theo ends with saying he wanted to voice his support for the core Node team and that we would not be where we are without Node, as the ecosystem is a collaborative one. There is potential damage outside the direct blast radius of Bun, and that was unexpected even to Theo. He also stresses there is risk that Oven won't be able to balance profits and updates in the future as it is a venture backed company.