Developer Tooling #006

Welcome to Developer Tooling #006, a newsletter enhancement for Freek Van der Herten's popular and high-quality newsletter, geared towards Software Engineering and related fields. If you haven't checked out his newsletter, take the time to now. It's worth it.
For this edition, we're experimenting with a themed approach for all of the showcased tools. Please let us know if you prefer it (or not!)

Theme: ECMAScript/TypeScript native-binary bundlers & compilers (built with Go, Rust, etc.)

1. rspack
   Description: A modern, rust-based javascript compiler that replaces webpack.
   What we like: Rich feature set that attempts to have feature parity with webpack; it's part of a growing ecosystem that appears well-maintained.
   What we don't like: It supports similar complexity in its configuration due to feature parity with webpack

2. esbuild
   Description: a Javascript/TypeScript/React compiler written in Go.
   What we like: It's the OG compiler/bundler for JS/TS. It was orders of magnitude faster than anything else before it was cool.
   What we don't like: It's lost some ground to tools such as bun.

3. bun
   Description: A feature-rich, extremely fast bundler, compiler, and package manager all in one.
   What we like: it's incredibly fast not only when bundling, but also as an NPM replacement - it's working on feature parity with the npm cli and API; bun install is so much faster than npm it's hard to believe.
   What we don't like: It's written in Zig, which may have been a poor choice for long-term maintainability.

4. rolldown
   Description: A rust-based tool that aims to replace rollup.
   What we like: Highly active development. Aims to replace rollup, which is too slow.
   What we don't like: Documentation leaves something to be desired (it's not bad, but it could be better)

5. farm
   Description: Another rust-based bundler
   What we like: Excellent documentation; has been under active development for quite some time; if its history is a reliable indicator, it will (hopefully) be reliably maintained for years to come.
   What we don't like: The speed comparisons on their website feel dishonest - we don't like that it claims to be faster than everything but doesn't offer direct comparisons for tools like bun. (Note: we're not commenting on the accuracy of their comparisons - only noting that the comparisons aren't presented in the best light)