Comment by dts

Comment by dts 15 hours ago

179 replies

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A lot of people seem confused about this acquisition because they think of Bun as a node.js compatible bundler / runtime and just compare it to Deno / npm. But I think its a really smart move if you think of where Bun has been pushing into lately which is a kind of cloud-native self contained runtime (S3 API, SQL, streaming, etc). For an agent like Claude Code this trajectory is really interesting as you are creating a runtime where your agent can work inside of cloud services as fluently as it currently does with a local filesystem. Claude will be able to leverage these capabilities to extend its reach across the cloud and add more value in enterprise use cases

ok_dad 13 hours ago

Yea, they just posted this a few days ago:

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/advanced-tool-use

They discussed how running generated code is better for context management in many cases. The AI can generate code to retrieve, process, and filter the data it needs rather than doing it in-context, thus reducing context needs. Furthermore, if you can run the code right next to the server where the data is, it's all that much faster.

I see Bun like a Skynet: if it can run anywhere, the AI can run anywhere.

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  • yellow_lead 13 hours ago

    Java can run anywhere too

    Reply View 93 replies
    • wiz21c 4 hours ago

      Java is owned by Oracle. And you sure don't want to do business with that company. There's a reason why postgresql is slowly eating their cake.

      Reply View 9 replies
      • OrangeMusic 4 hours ago

        This is FUD. Java has many open source implementations and nobody needs to deal with Oracle.

        Reply View 8 replies
    • Schnitz 7 hours ago

      Anywhere where the correct Java version is installed correctly, important caveat

      Reply View 6 replies
      • gf000 an hour ago

        You can just supply a minimized runtime for your program, which is the primary way to ship Java programs for quite some time now.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • jimbob45 6 hours ago

        Java’s cardinal sin was not owning the OS like Microsoft’s C# to force end-users to update the framework. Oracle really didn’t understand what they were sitting on with their Ubuntu competitor Solaris.

        Reply View 4 replies
    • wrboyce 11 hours ago

      It’s relevant enough that I feel I can roll out this bash.org classic…

      <Alanna> Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders

      EDIT: someone has (much to my joy) made an archive of bash.org so here is a link[1], but I must say I’m quite jealous of today’s potential 1/10,000[2] who will discover bash.org from my comment!

      [1] https://bash-org-archive.com/?338364

      [2] https://xkcd.com/1053

      Reply View 11 replies
      • anamexis 10 hours ago

        Perhaps my biggest claim to fame is being #11 on the bash.org top 100.

        Reply View 2 replies
      • post_below 3 hours ago

        As one of the lucky 1/10000, holy shit that was amazing. Thank you.

        To everyone else: I acknowlege that this post is not adding value but if you were one of the lucky 1/10000 you would understand that I have no choice.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • centur 11 hours ago

        Not discovered from scratch, but was a big fan when it was alive and kicking. Went there from time to time to get some mood boosters. So was very sad when found that it's gone (original one). Thanks a lot for sharing that bash-org-archive.com exists, what a great fun going down this memory lane.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • wrboyce 10 hours ago

          I’ve been browsing the archive since I left that comment, they really were the good old days weren’t they. IRC was my introduction to geekdom, and I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say it shaped my life. Here I am 30-ish years later, an old man yelling at clouds — and I wouldn’t change much!

          If anyone ever requested/used an eggdrop(?) bot from #farmbots or #wildbots on quakenet then thanks to you too; that was certainly one of the next steps down the path I took. A (probably very injectable) PHP blog and a bunch of TCL scripts powering bots, man I wish I could review that code now.

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      • yellow_lead 11 hours ago

        That's hilarious. My comment is mostly a joke, but also trying to say that "runs everywhere" isn't that impressive anymore.

        Reply View 1 reply
      • orliesaurus 11 hours ago

        wait - how do you search the quotes??

        Reply View 1 reply
        • wrboyce 11 hours ago

          I don’t think there is a search function, I got the exact wording from a web search (I think “bash Java anal”, arguably a dangerous search!) and then after submitting I wondered if there is an archive of the quotes.

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    • ok_dad 8 hours ago

      I ain’t hot a horse in this race I just put 2 and 2 together to get 4. I’m sure Java is fine but they didn’t buy Java.

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    • 827a 12 hours ago

      Java is not for sale.

      Reply View 12 replies
      • Zambyte 11 hours ago

        Java can be depended on without buying anything.

        Reply View 11 replies
    • wiseowise 13 hours ago

      Not in the browser, and no – webassembly doesn't count, otherwise you can say the same about Go and others.

      Reply View 18 replies
      • creata 13 hours ago

        Wasm does count, and you can say the same about Go and others.

        Reply View 2 replies
      • amingilani 13 hours ago

        Why doesn’t wasm count?

        Reply View 6 replies
      • fishmicrowaver 12 hours ago

        May I ask, what is this obsession with targeting the browser? I've also noticed a hatred of k8s here, and while I truly understand it, I'd take the complication of managing infrastructure over frontend fads any day.

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    • mythz 9 hours ago

      AI tools value simplicity, fast bootstrapping and iterations, this rules out the JVM which has the worst build system and package repositories I've ever had the displeasure of needing to use. Check in gradle binaries in 2025? Having to wait days for packages to sync? Windows/Linux gradle wrappers for every project? Broken builds and churn after every major upgrade. It's broken beyond repair.

      By contrast `bun install` is about as good as it gets.

      Reply View 11 replies
      • pjmlp 4 hours ago

        Gradle is something that only Android devs should be using, and because of Google imposes its use. Had not been for Google and Android Gradle plugin, almost no one would care.

        Please give me Java tools over C, C++, JavaScript or Python ones, any day of the week.

        Only .NET and Rust compare equally in quality of DX.

        AI tools value simplicity?!?

        Check in the Python dependency management chaos, what it is the proposal this month, from what AI startup doing Python tools in Rust?

        Reply View 0 replies
      • DarkNova6 3 hours ago

        Apples and oranges. Maven is leagues beyond npm. Screw Gradle.

        How many mass security incidents have there been with npm just the last few weeks?

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      • sfn42 3 hours ago

        It's just too bad bun is based on literally the worst programming language that's in actual use.

        Reply View 5 replies
      • speed_spread 8 hours ago

        By using Gradle you certainly didn't make yourself a favor.

        Reply View 2 replies
  • VerifiedReports 7 hours ago

    What do you mean by "context" here?

    Reply View 2 replies
    • manbash 7 hours ago

      Under "Programmatic Tool Calling"

      > The challenge

      > Traditional tool calling creates two fundamental problems as workflows become more complex:

      > Context pollution from intermediate results: When Claude analyzes a 10MB log file for error patterns, the entire file enters its context window, even though Claude only needs a summary of error frequencies. When fetching customer data across multiple tables, every record accumulates in context regardless of relevance. These intermediate results consume massive token budgets and can push important information out of the context window entirely.

      > Inference overhead and manual synthesis: Each tool call requires a full model inference pass. After receiving results, Claude must "eyeball" the data to extract relevant information, reason about how pieces fit together, and decide what to do next—all through natural language processing. A five tool workflow means five inference passes plus Claude parsing each result, comparing values, and synthesizing conclusions. This is both slow and error-prone.

      Basically, instead of Claude trying to, e.g., process data by using inference from its own context, it would offload to some program it specifically writes. Up until today we've seen Claude running user-written programs. This new paradigm allows it the freedom to create a program it finds suitable in order to perform the task, and then run it (within confines of a sandbox) and retrieve the result it needs.

      Reply View 1 reply
btown 13 hours ago

Yea - if you want a paranoidly-sandboxed, instant-start, high-concurrency environment, not just on beefy servers but on resource-constrained/client devices as well, you need experts in V8 integration shenanigans.

Cloudflare Workers had Kenton Varda, who had been looking at lightweight serverless architecture at Sandstorm years ago. Anthropic needs this too, for all the reasons above. Makes all the sense in the world.

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  • gorjusborg 13 hours ago

    Bun isn't based on V8, it's JavaScriptCore, but your point still stands.

    Reply View 4 replies
    • hbbio 12 hours ago

      Who would have predicted KDE could become the foundation of both AI and gaming

      Reply View 3 replies
      • jeeeb 11 hours ago

        Also the worlds most popular web browsers

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  • orliesaurus 11 hours ago

    you left out the best part...what happened to Kenton? He looked at lightweight serverless architecture..and then what?

    Reply View 6 replies
  • littlestymaar 3 hours ago

    > Yea - if you want a paranoidly-sandboxed, instant-start, high-concurrency environment, not just on beefy servers but on resource-constrained/client devices as well, you need experts in V8 integration shenanigans.

    To be honest, that sounds more like a pitch for deno than for bun, especially the “paranoidly sandboxed” part.

    Reply View 0 replies
wrathofmonads 36 minutes ago

Java was doing "cloud-native, stripped down (jlink) image, self-contained runtime with batteries included" long before Bun existed. There's also GraalVM for one executable binary if one's ambitious.

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hoppp 14 hours ago

It's fine but why is Js a good language for agents? I mean sure its faster than python but wouldn't something that compiles to native be much better?

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  • chatmasta 14 hours ago

    JS has the fastest, most robust and widely deployed sandboxing engines (V8, followed closely by JavaScriptCore which is what Bun uses). It also has TypeScript which pairs well with agentic coding loops, and compiles to the aforementioned JavaScript which can run pretty much anywhere.

    Reply View 23 replies
    • otterley 13 hours ago

      Note that "sandboxing" in this case is strictly runtime sandboxing - it's basically like having a separate process per event loop (as if you ran separate Node processes). It does not sandbox the machine context in which it runs (i.e. it's not VM-level containment).

      Reply View 6 replies
      • Brass_Hopper 13 hours ago

        When you say runtime sandboxing, are you referring to JavaScript agents? I haven't worked all that much with JavaScript execution environments outside of the browser so I'm not sure about what sandboxing mechanics are available.

        Reply View 4 replies
      • Muromec 13 hours ago

        Running it in a chroot or a scoped down namespace is all your need most of the time anyways.

        Reply View 0 replies
    • locknitpicker 10 hours ago

      > It also has TypeScript which pairs well with agentic coding loops, (...)

      I've heard that TypeScript is pretty rough on agentic coding loops because the idiomatic static type assertion code ends up requiring huge amounts of context to handle in a meaningful way. Is there any truth to it?

      Reply View 5 replies
      • miguelspizza 8 hours ago

        Not sure where you heard this but general sentiment is the opposite.

        There was recently a conference which was themed around the idea that typescript monorepos are the best way to build with AI

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      • aizk 5 hours ago

        I think this is contingent on the skill of the human reviewing the AI's code.

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    • parentheses 10 hours ago

      Not to mention the saturation of training data

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    • mrcsharp 13 hours ago

      > It also has TypeScript which pairs well with agentic coding loops

      The language syntax has nothing to do with it pairing well with agentic coding loops.

      Considering how close Typescript and C# are syntactically, and C#'s speed advantage over JS among many other things would make C# the main language for building Agents. It is not and that's because the early SDKs were JS and Python.

      Reply View 7 replies
      • chamomeal 13 hours ago

        Typescript is probably generally a good LLM language because - static types - tons and tons of training data

        Kind of tangent but I used to think static types were a must-have for LLM generated code. But the most magical and impressively awesome thing I’ve seen for LLM code generation is “calva backseat driver”, a vscode extension that lets copilot evaluate clojure expressions and generally do REPL stuff.

        It can write MUCH cleaner and more capable code, using all sorts of libraries that it’s unfamiliar with, because it can mess around and try stuff just like a human would. It’s mind blowingly cool!!

        Reply View 2 replies
      • wiseowise 13 hours ago

        > C#'s speed advantage over JS among many other things would make C# the main language

        Nobody cares about this, JS is plenty fast for LLM needs. If maximum performance was necessary, you're better off using Go because of fast compiler and better performance.

        Reply View 3 replies
  • AstroBen 14 hours ago

    It's widespread and good enough. The language just doesn't matter that much in most cases

    Reply View 11 replies
    • moron4hire 13 hours ago

      This is one of those, "in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is" issues.

      In their, quality software can be written in any programming language.

      In practice, folks who use Python or JavaScript as their application programming language start from a position of just not carrying very much about correctness or performance. Folks who use languages like Java or C#, do. And you can see the downstream effects of this in the difference in the production-grade developer experience and the quality of packages on offer in PIP and NPM versus Maven and NuGet.

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      • drzaiusx11 11 hours ago

        As a developer that switches between java, python and typescript every day I think this is fairly myopic opinion. Being siloed to one lang for long enough tends to brings out our tribalistic tendencies, tread carefully.

        I've seen codebases of varying quality in nearly every language, "enterprise" and otherwise. I've worked at a C# shop and it was no better or worse than the java/kotlin/typescript ones I've worked at.

        You can blame the "average" developer in a language for "not caring ", but more likely than not you're just observing the friction imposed by older packaging systems. Modern languages are usually coupled with package managers that make it trivial to publish language artifacts to package hubs, whereas gradle for example is it's own brand of hell just to get your code to build.

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      • AstroBen 12 hours ago

        That's not a fair comparison. In your example, you're talking about the average of developers in a language. In this situation, it's specific developers choosing between languages. Having the developers you already have choose language A or B makes no difference to their code quality (assuming they're proficient with both)

        Reply View 1 reply
        • moron4hire 10 hours ago

          These are statements these developers will make themselves. They will say they don't like more strictly typed languages because they feel constrained and slowed down in development. They will argue that the performance hit is worth the trade offs.

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      • justatdotin 5 hours ago

        perhaps many of those 'Folks who use languages like Java or C#'

        do so because a boss told them 'thats the way we deal with correctness and performance around here'

        the fact that their boss made that one decision for them does not somehow transmit the values behind the one decision.

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  • aizk 5 hours ago

    TS is enormous, has endless training data, and can interact with virtually anything on the Internet these days. Also, strong typing is very very useful for AI coding context.

    Reply View 4 replies
    • justatdotin 4 hours ago

      > strong typing is very very useful for AI coding context

      what makes you think so?

      I believe strong typing is very very useful for human coding,

      I'm not convinced its so 'very very' for agents.

      Reply View 3 replies
      • matwood 3 hours ago

        When I've use agents with TS, failing tests due to typing seems to help the agent get to the correct solution. Maybe it's not required though.

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jillesvangurp 4 hours ago

I'm not confused about the acquisition but about the investment. What were the investors thinking? This is an open source development tool with (to date), 0$ of revenue and not even the beginnings of a plan for getting such a thing.

The acquisition makes more sense. A few observations:

- no acquisition amount was announced. That indicates some kind of share swap where the investors change shares for one company into another. Presumably the founder now has some shares in Anthropic and a nice salary and vesting structure that will keep him on board for a while.

- The main investor was Kleiner Perkins. They are also an investor in Anthropic. 100M in the last round, apparently.

Everything else is a loosely buzzword compatible thingy for Anthropic's AI coding thingy and some fresh talent for their team. All good. But it's beside the point. This was an investor bailout. They put in quite a bit of money in Bun with exactly 0 remaining chance of that turning into the next unicorn. Whatever flaky plan there once might have been for revenue that caused them to invest, clearly wasn't happening. So, they liquidated their investment through an acquihire via one of their other investments.

Kind of shocking how easy it was to raise that kind of money with essentially no plan whatsoever for revenue. Where I live (Berlin), you get laughed away by investors (in a quite smug way typically) unless you have a solid plan for making them money. This wouldn't survive initial contact with due diligence. Apparently money still grows on trees in Silicon Valley.

I like Bun and have used it but from where I'm sitting there was no unicorn lurking there, ever.

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  • djfdat 5 minutes ago

    They don't need Bun to make revenue, but they need Bun to continue existing and growing for their products to make revenue. Now they can ensure its survival, push for growth, and provide resources so that Bun can build the best product rather than focus on making money.

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davnicwil 13 hours ago

Isn't what you're describing just a set of APIs with native bindings that the LLM can call?

I'm not sure I understand why it's necessary to even couple this to a runtime, let alone own the runtime?

Can't you just do it as a library and train/instruct the LLM to prefer using that library?

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  • ignoramous 12 hours ago

    Mostly, just Jarred Sumner makes it worth it for Anthropic.

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milowata 13 hours ago

Could also be a way to expand the customer for Claude Code from coding assistant to vibe coding, a la Replit creating a hosted app. CC working more closely with Bun could make all that happen much faster:

> Our default answer was always some version of "we'll eventually build a cloud hosting product.", vertically integrated with Bun’s runtime & bundler.

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gz5 13 hours ago

>Claude will be able to leverage these capabilities to extend its reach across the cloud and add more value in enterprise use cases

100%. even more robust if paired with an overlay network which provides identity based s3 access (rather than ip address/network based). else server may not have access to s3/cloud resource, at least for many enterprises with s3 behind vpn/direct connect.

ditto for cases when want agent/client side to hit s3 directly, bypassing the server, and agent/client may not have permitted IP in FW ACL, or be on vpn/wan.

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jorblumesea 14 hours ago

That's a really cool use case and seems super helpful. working cloud native is a chore sometimes. having to fiddle with internal apis, acl/permissions issues.

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fishmicrowaver 14 hours ago

[flagged]

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  • askedrelic 14 hours ago

    This matches some previous comments around LLMs driving adoption of programming languages or frameworks. If you ask Claude to write a web app, why not have it use your own framework, that it was trained on, by default?

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    • fishmicrowaver 13 hours ago

      Users are far more likely to ask it about shadcn, or material, than about node/deno/bun. So, what is this about?

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  • ojame 14 hours ago

    Currently Claude etc. can interact with services (including AWS) via MCPs.

    What the user you're replying to is saying the Bun acquisition looks silly as a dev tool for Node. However if you look at their binding work for services like s3[0], the LLM will be able to interact directly with cloud services directly (lower latency, tighter integration, simplified deployment).

    0: https://bun.com/docs/runtime/s3

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    • mrcsharp 14 hours ago

      That doesn't make sense either. Agents already have access to MCPs and Tools. Your example is solved by having an S3 wrapper as a set of tools.

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      • rs186 16 minutes ago

        I bet you didn't click that link. A wrapper and an API that is built-in to the runtime and optimized for those use cases are different things.

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      • solumunus 5 hours ago

        Being able to remove a layer of abstraction to get the thing done is usually good right?

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    • fishmicrowaver 13 hours ago

      An AI company scoops up frontend tech. Do you really think it was because of s3?

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      • rs186 18 minutes ago

        JavaScript ≠ frontend

        bun ≠ front end development tool

        hasn't been like that for many years

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      • gedy 11 hours ago

        Bun is not really frontend tech

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1vuio0pswjnm7 13 hours ago

As a commandline end user who prefers to retreive data from the www as text-only, I see deno and bun as potential replacements (for me, not necessarily for anyone else) for the so-called "modern" browser in those rare cases where I need to interpret Javascript^1

At present the browser monstrosity is used to (automatically, indiscriminantly) download into memory and run Javascripts from around the web. At least with a commandline web-capable JS runtime monstrosity the user could in theory exercise more control over what scripts are downloaded and if and when to run them. Perhaps more user control over permissions to access system resources as well (cf. corporate control)

1. One can already see an approach something like this being used in the case of

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS

where a commandline JS runtime is used without the need for any graphics layer (advertising display layer)

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  • tclancy 12 hours ago

    Is this something I’d have to own a tv to understand?

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