There’s been a great buzz around a new Software Development tool.
This one promises to be a major milestone in the JavaScript ecosystem!
You may already know that development goes beyond FE and BE, as well as Database Management.
There are many languages, frameworks and libraries devs have to use to ensure everything works properly!
You may also know that JavaScript is a popular language due to its maturity, versatility and efficiency.
Yet, things can get messy with all the tools required to develop JavaScript applications.
But good news! A new tool eliminated the burden of handling the most annoying aspects of JS development!.
Bun is an all-encompassing JavaScript toolkit that supports advanced Developer Experiences of concurrent users.
A reason for its rsing popularity is its efficiency and safer runtime than the well-known Node.js environments.
However, there’s much more to Bun than just being a lightweight runtime environment. Let's find out!
What is Bun in JavaScript?
The short definition? Bun is an all-in-one JavaScript runtime with a massive Node-compatible package manager.
Its main strength surrounds built-in testing support to improve developer productivity.
Bun comes with a robust bundler, giving developers a world-class experience when building complex apps with JavaScript.
What's more, Bun uses a powerful and low-level programming language called Zig.
In itself, Zig can outperform Rust and even C, the OG programming language, which explains why Bun is remarkably fast.
Bun can largely outperforms most JavaScript runtimes, bundlers, and package managers.
In fact, Bun had have faster start times than Node.js when working with TypeScript and 26x times faster than pnpm!
It often takes over 10 seconds to compile your code with an npm package. With Bun, it can take less than half a second.
Bun's faster startup times is explained by its use of JavaScriptCore, which tends to outperform options like JSV8 engine.
How Does Bun Work?
As mentioned, Bun uses the JavaScriptCore engine to achieve insane performance levels.
With a strong focus on performance, Bun uses tagged pointers to avoid the overhead of storing function pointers separately.
It was built from the ground up with the help of many investors and collaborators.
This scope helped optimize every little aspect to guarantee great levels of performance.
Zig's power also allowed for manual memory usage management.
Bun APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) use web-standard APIs like WebSocket and ReadableStream.
These handle HTTP requests and environment variables without downloading additional package installations.
When getting started, Bun doesn't demand tons of configuration files.
Combined with its seamless built-in TypeScript support, it allows devs to start writing TypeScript code in the blink of an eye.
Its transpiler processes TypeScript files without any configuration while heavily supporting React and hot reloading out-of-the-box.
Since it works as a package manager, it can replace any npm run command with “bun run” to run scripts.
It’s worth noting that Bun aims for compatibility with Node modules. You don’t need to start from scratch, reinventing the wheel.
Bun vs Node
Bun’s team defines it as an all-in-one drop-in replacement for built-in Node.js modules.
Its compatiblity with Node makes it great for both new and existing projects.
Yet, there are quite a few more things to take into consideration.
Node.js is a much more mature tool with larger libraries and communities.
While Bun seems faster and more convenient, unlike Node.js, Bun used large amounts of money to build it.
As a result, Bun’s team may probably try to monetize it.
Why Use Bun?
One of the main reasons Bun has become a compelling alternative is its high performance levels.
However, it wouldn’t be fair to say Bun is all about blistering speed and performance.
What makes Bun so special is how it eliminated the complexities of working with JS but keeping the cool stuff.
Complexities include tons of configuration files and separate tools you must use to build a JavaScript program.
It solved the annoying problem of transitioning from CommonJS to ES Modules.
With Bun, you can import and require in the same file extension. No more weird specifications.
The JavaScript cool stuff I mentioned includes React.js and TypeScript support and compatibility with Node.js and npm commands.
Besides, Bun uses its transpiler for .js, .ts, .cjs, .mjs, and .tsx files and native Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
That also helps explain why it’s so efficient.
Let’s not forget that the Bun test runner and debugger are compatible with the Jest testing framework.
One more thing worth noting is that Bun works perfectly with Elysia.js, which claims to be nearly 20 times faster than Express and Node.js.
Conclusion
As a full-cycle digital agency, we’re very excited about how Bun's features can shape the future.
We're quite used to leverage Node.js, especially in MERN stack projects.
Yet, we can ignore the promise of robustness that Bun offers to streamline Product Development Lifecycles.
It also holds potential to deliver products with seamless User Experiences!
What are your thoughts on Bun? Are you using it? Let us know!
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