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Cover image for Bun - The fastest Javascript Runtime
Jordan Soo Yen Yih
Jordan Soo Yen Yih

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Bun - The fastest Javascript Runtime

Bun - the new Javascript runtime has just announced its first beta release and makes the claimed that it's significantly faster than Node and Deno, not just a little bit faster, but orders of magnitude faster. What makes Bun special?

Performance ⚡

It doesn't use the V8 engine but instead uses the JavaScriptCore from WebKit which is generally considered to be faster. In addition it's written in a low level programming language called ZIG that similar to C or Rust and the creator of Bun say ZIG the lack of hidden control flow makes it much simpler to write fast software.

All-IN-ONE Runtime 🎁

  • Native module bundler to replace tools like Webpack.
  • Native transpiler to support Typescript code out of the box.
  • Top level await (just like Deno🦖)
  • Auto transpile JSX files
  • Supports WebAPI like fetch, WebSocket and ReadableStream
  • Supports many Node core modules as well as Node API which will allow many NPM packages also work in Bun.
  • Implements Node.js' module resolution algorithm, means you can install packages from npm into bun and those packages install 20x faster.⚡😲
  • Environment variables load automatically, no more dotenv.
  • Native test runner like Jest.

Try it out, if you are using Windows, you are required to use WSL to install Bun.

Thank you for reading.

Top comments (5)

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yenyih profile image
Jordan Soo Yen Yih

Agree, but if the performance do matters for the existing projects, then it is worth to do so. 😁

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apvarun profile image
Varun A P ⚡️

And what an excellent project requires is an Awesome page 😄

github.com/apvarun/awesome-bun

PS: Bun is awesome (breath of fresh air) and I believe it will force the competition to also invest in performance.

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urielsouza29 profile image
Uriel dos Santos Souza

Just-JS - Why is Javascript in the top 2 of techempower?

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rngala profile image
Roney Ngala

With a native bundler, transpiler, task runner, and NPM client built-in; it's a breath of fresh air.

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philip profile image
Philip Kumah Jr • Edited

Great. This is awesome