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"No native Windows support" should be written in all caps at the beginning of the article. This is a dealbreaker for most developers working on Windows, and thi

by rwalle 4y ago

"No native Windows support" should be written in all caps at the beginning of the article. This is a dealbreaker for most developers working on Windows, and this project will never take off until it treats Windows as a first-class citizen. WSL helps but not everyone uses it (probably most people don't use it for regular development environment). Don't believe me? Just wait and see how this turns out in three years.

Siilwyn 4y ago
Are you sure? From let's say the 100 web devs I encountered the past years I remember 3 using Windows, and they all used the Linux environment for development.
JoyrexJ9 4y ago
Not saying you're wrong about the windows support but when it comes to WSL, my entire department uses WSL for their primary development environment
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Ooh. I find it a bit painful. Stuff like watching for file changes if you mount C:/ don’t work. Adds friction to web dev for sure.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
    Dogshit IO performance when accessing native files makes it unusable for me.
    - JoyrexJ9 4y ago
      I suggest never access native files, if you are still keeping your code in C:\ somewhere I think you're approaching WSL the wrong way. Go all in and I've never looked back
      - sanitycheck 4y ago
        I'll second this. I treat WSL (2) as a Linux box I'm working on, which I can access via a terminal and \\wsl$ (and VS Code, crucially.)
        dom96 4y ago
        This is why I don't use WSL 2. WSL 1 has much better performance when used on C:\
flohofwoe 4y ago
Fair point, but I sometimes wonder if there are even any web developers left who use Windows as their main platform. The one thing that has probably changed most in the last 15 years is that Windows isn't the center of the (coding) universe anymore. And (from what I can tell), Windows support with node.js isn't perfect either, otherwise tools like rimraf wouldn't be needed.
- jpambrun 4y ago
  I hate it but where I work WSL is not allowed and Docker requires continuously renewed exceptions.. InfoSec/IT says they can't see what we (or malware..) are doing within..
- throwaway0asd 4y ago
  If you are developing for the web what difference does the OS make? Web technologies work the same on any OS
  - CapsAdmin 4y ago
    While the final output should be the same, the development tools are not and that's really where all the subtle problems are. One of the reason WSL exists is to solve this problem. (assuming bun doesn't work on native windows but works under wsl)
    - vips7L 4y ago
      WSL has its own pain points. It’s not the catch all solution everyone claims it to be.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Sometimes the target OS for deployment matters. Obvious case I run into: a deploy broke because a developer using Windows didn't realize he had some MiXeD case file name with the wrong capital letter. The Linux OS on the production system noticed. Sometimes it's the availability of native modules. They tend to exist for Linux, because it's the target for deployment, and sometimes not for Windows.
jeswin 4y ago
> Don't believe me? Just wait and see how this turns out in three years. There are so many projects which do well without a native Windows port. It may fade away in three years, but lack of Windows support will not be the primary reason for it.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  It is the other way round: Windows support usually comes because something is popular (and therefore has the funding, resources or help to do so from keen Windows users).
cr3ative 4y ago
Web development is predominantly macOS and Linux; node servers generally run in Linux containers. Your claim that this won't take off until Windows is at parity just doesn't ring true.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  several folks in the threads here have posted references to the contrary. perhaps you have data which disagrees, or you may be operating on observations from your own circles.
  - infamia 4y ago
    Those numbers were all developers overall. In the Django developers survey, which is web only, the most used platform is Linux (42%), Mac 32%, Windows with WSL 17%, and straight up Windows is a paltry 12%. In other web frameworks the numbers are likely worse, since Django has a pretty good Windows experience. https://medium.com/codex/jetbrains-django-developer-survey-results-explained-211c06237a34 https://medium.com/codex/jetbrains-django-developer-survey-r...
chrisseaton 4y ago
> This is a dealbreaker for most developers working on Windows How many developers are really working on Windows? That's got to be a rounding-error of zero. There are so many programming tools with basic or non-existent support for Windows and nobody notices.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  I do professionally but I prefer Linux for coding at home, mainly because it needs less RAM, runs quicker and stuff just works. If we move to .NET5 or higher I might use linux at work too.
- arrow7000 4y ago
  lol this is a ridiculous take
- sdflhasjd 4y ago
  HN bubble alert! I think most programmers are actually using Windows as their development environment. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de...
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Even the developers I know at Microsoft use Linux or macOS!
    - throw5653 4y ago
      You were just shown statistics that disprove your idea that almost nobody codes using Windows... over half of the developers who answered StackOverflow's survey are using Windows. Pointing at more anecdotes around you does not change this fact.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        Maybe Stack Overflow skews to Windows developers? I don't know how good their data is. It's hard not to look around with your own eyes and notice that you never see anyone using Windows - like I say, even the Microsoft ones! Do you meet a lot of developers using Windows? What kind of circles is that in?
realusername 4y ago
WSL is there for a reason though, it's that Windows is severely underused in some development areas and web is one of them. Not having windows compatibility is not uncommon working on the web. As an example, out of 100 developers of my company working on a web product, zero are using windows in my knowledge.
- mastazi 4y ago
  that might be the case in your company, maybe in your state or even in your country, but not outside of it https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-t...
  - hu3 4y ago
    It's kind of amazing how our beliefs are still mostly formed by our surroundings. Even in the age of internet where information is plenty and free. I still read often in HN that "most people use iPhones" and "almost no dev uses Windows". Makes me question if my own beliefs have these enormous misconceptions too.
    - davidmurdoch 4y ago
      Someone on Twitter was upset that people they follow were following someone they disagree with. I pointed out that it's healthy to make yourself aware of dissenting opinions, and that following someone doesn't mean you align with every one of their beliefs and opinions. They seriously couldn't fathom the idea of intentionally following someone they didn't agree with. So not only are people aware of their filter bubbles, they guard them like it's the responsible thing to do.
      - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        Cult members need something to hate to reinforce their identity.
    - beebeepka 4y ago
o_m 4y ago
Windows users are fairly conservative and won't be looking at the latest tech that isn't established yet
thrown_22 4y ago
>Just wait and see how this turns out in three years. I think you seriously over estimate the number of developers still on windows.
mytydev 4y ago
We should also talk about why this is the case. JavascriptCore. The reason Bun is so fast is mostly due to the fact that it is using Apple's JavascriptCore and what all of the benchmark comparisons are really doing are comparing Google's V8 engine to Apple's JavascriptCore engine. So basically, there will never be Windows support until JavascriptCore is able to be used on Windows and I'm not entirely sure on the state of that. My guess is that it has limited to no support for that scenario.
- wffurr 4y ago
  You can use JavaScriptCore on Windows right now: https://github.com/Lichtso/JSC-Standalone https://github.com/Lichtso/JSC-Standalone
- Hamcha 4y ago
  Zig, the programming language Bun is written on, is currently having some Windows headaches of its own: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/12420 https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/12420 I wonder how much of Bun's immaturity is due to Zig's own immaturity.
  - dimgl 4y ago
    Why not point the finger at Windows? Development on Windows is archaic.
    - _gabe_ 4y ago
      > Why not point the finger at Windows? Development on Windows is archaic. How so? Zig is a programming language, so I'm guessing the main interactions it needs with the OS are file IO. It shouldn't need to do any GUI work as long as it provides proper bindings to the C functions. And file IO is essentially cross platform in C++ as long as you use the stdlib. Threads are also essentially multiplatform if you're using the stdlib. I also don't know if Zig is written in C, C++, or Zig so it may differ. Generating binaries is different, but I wouldn't consider windows binaries any more archaic than Mac or Linux binaries, and I'm not sure if zig already uses LLVM backend or something anyways. But given all that, writing basic Win32 code to do file IO or any sort of OS level interactions isn't any less archaic than what I've had to do in Linux. It's an API, and it's got a lot of cruft built up over the years, but so does any sort of Linux OS API. Here's the Linux API for creating a file[0] and here's windows[1]. There's more parameters for the Win32 version, but the documentation is solid and gives a lot of tangential information. I actually prefer the Win32 docs to a lot of the Linux docs that I've used because they describe all the details very explicitly. So I wouldn't call Windows any more archaic then any other OS. Basically what I'm saying is, it takes like 2-3 hours at most to add Windows support to a programming language unless you've architected your code in a way that tangles OS operations with regular operations. It's really not that hard to keep OS code separate from the apps logic to make porting the app to different operating systems trivial. [0]: https://linux.die.net/man/3/creat https://linux.die.net/man/3/creat [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/nf-fileapi-createfilea https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/n...
madeofpalk 4y ago
I think "WSL is our Windows strategy" is perfectly acceptable for "bleeding edge"/modern things like this. I've been using WSL as my full time web development environment for years now. Thanks to VSCode's great remote support for it I don't notice any downsides to it.
- mderazon 4y ago
  I don't like WSL, it magically works with VScode until it doesn't and some extension breaks or it runs super slow or git commit takes 10 seconds.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  VS Code remoting is great and magic when it works well (which in my experience has indeed been most of the time), but it's still so much overhead versus native builds and native support. I use WSL for the rare times I need to use Ruby, but Node has been mostly good enough in Windows for years at this point and it is nice to have native builds with no remoting overhead.
geuis 4y ago
On a lark recently, I tried to get node setup on my Win10 gaming box so I could try out a basic workflow and see how I liked it. My normal environment is using MacOS and Linux. I don't remember any specific "wtf" details, but generally it was kind of a non-starter. I got node installed, but then there were issues with using that runtime for my simple server demo. The whole attempt was frustrating. Tried installing the pseudo Linux shell thing for the command prompt and I gave up trying to use that pretty quickly. Obviously I'm not a native Windows developer. This was just me experimenting. I'm not sure how Win devs actually work these days on non-Win applications in any productive capacity. I can easily get stuff done on MacOS and Linux but Windows is just this multi-decade old black box of cruft.
- ripley12 4y ago
  > I'm not sure how Win devs actually work these days on non-Win applications in any productive capacity. WSL. It's trivial to drop into Linux for development these days. That said, I generally haven't had issues with Node on native Windows.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
I am genuinely curious who is using production node.js web apps on Windows server OS. I'm sure there are niche things like a massive legacy Windows shop that's slowly moving off, or trivial load internal applications where it doesn't matter. But it would really surprise me to see someone take a major bet on running large public, internet facing load on node + Windows server. ASP.NET + Windows, sure that makes total sense. Even C++ + Windows is solid and very performant. But node.js has always been a second class citizen with Windows support (it wasn't until Microsoft themselves put fulltime devs working on node that it supported Windows) and it's a huge bet to take with very little benefit and tons of potential failures.
teaearlgraycold 4y ago
> This is a dealbreaker for most developers working on Windows Yes but how many JS developers use Windows?
- skrebbel 4y ago
  Lots
t_mann 4y ago
> probably most people don't use [WSL] for regular development environment I know quite a few people who do, I actually wouldn't be surprised if their number was higher than pure Windows users for web dev.
9935c101ab17a66 4y ago
Apparently windows support is planned. This is still a new project — anyone interested in using a new, cutting-edge beta JavaScript runtime is certainly capable of using bun through WSL. Your comment is unnecessarily antagonistic. It comes across as if you’re personally offended that bun wasn’t launched with native windows support. Also, this made me laugh: > …this project will never takeoff until it treats windows as a first-class citizen.

by rwalle 4y ago

Siilwyn 4y ago

Are you sure? From let's say the 100 web devs I encountered the past years I remember 3 using Windows, and they all used the Linux environment for development.

JoyrexJ9 4y ago

Not saying you're wrong about the windows support but when it comes to WSL, my entire department uses WSL for their primary development environment

quickthrower2 4y ago
Ooh. I find it a bit painful. Stuff like watching for file changes if you mount C:/ don’t work. Adds friction to web dev for sure.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
  Dogshit IO performance when accessing native files makes it unusable for me.
  - JoyrexJ9 4y ago
    I suggest never access native files, if you are still keeping your code in C:\ somewhere I think you're approaching WSL the wrong way. Go all in and I've never looked back
    - sanitycheck 4y ago
      I'll second this. I treat WSL (2) as a Linux box I'm working on, which I can access via a terminal and \\wsl$ (and VS Code, crucially.)
      - dom96 4y ago
        This is why I don't use WSL 2. WSL 1 has much better performance when used on C:\

flohofwoe 4y ago

Fair point, but I sometimes wonder if there are even any web developers left who use Windows as their main platform. The one thing that has probably changed most in the last 15 years is that Windows isn't the center of the (coding) universe anymore. And (from what I can tell), Windows support with node.js isn't perfect either, otherwise tools like rimraf wouldn't be needed.

jpambrun 4y ago
I hate it but where I work WSL is not allowed and Docker requires continuously renewed exceptions.. InfoSec/IT says they can't see what we (or malware..) are doing within..
throwaway0asd 4y ago
If you are developing for the web what difference does the OS make? Web technologies work the same on any OS
- CapsAdmin 4y ago
  While the final output should be the same, the development tools are not and that's really where all the subtle problems are. One of the reason WSL exists is to solve this problem. (assuming bun doesn't work on native windows but works under wsl)
  - vips7L 4y ago
    WSL has its own pain points. It’s not the catch all solution everyone claims it to be.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Sometimes the target OS for deployment matters. Obvious case I run into: a deploy broke because a developer using Windows didn't realize he had some MiXeD case file name with the wrong capital letter. The Linux OS on the production system noticed. Sometimes it's the availability of native modules. They tend to exist for Linux, because it's the target for deployment, and sometimes not for Windows.

jeswin 4y ago

> Don't believe me? Just wait and see how this turns out in three years. There are so many projects which do well without a native Windows port. It may fade away in three years, but lack of Windows support will not be the primary reason for it.

quickthrower2 4y ago
It is the other way round: Windows support usually comes because something is popular (and therefore has the funding, resources or help to do so from keen Windows users).

cr3ative 4y ago

Web development is predominantly macOS and Linux; node servers generally run in Linux containers. Your claim that this won't take off until Windows is at parity just doesn't ring true.

andrew_ 4y ago
several folks in the threads here have posted references to the contrary. perhaps you have data which disagrees, or you may be operating on observations from your own circles.
- infamia 4y ago
  Those numbers were all developers overall. In the Django developers survey, which is web only, the most used platform is Linux (42%), Mac 32%, Windows with WSL 17%, and straight up Windows is a paltry 12%. In other web frameworks the numbers are likely worse, since Django has a pretty good Windows experience. https://medium.com/codex/jetbrains-django-developer-survey-results-explained-211c06237a34 https://medium.com/codex/jetbrains-django-developer-survey-r...

chrisseaton 4y ago

> This is a dealbreaker for most developers working on Windows How many developers are really working on Windows? That's got to be a rounding-error of zero. There are so many programming tools with basic or non-existent support for Windows and nobody notices.

quickthrower2 4y ago
I do professionally but I prefer Linux for coding at home, mainly because it needs less RAM, runs quicker and stuff just works. If we move to .NET5 or higher I might use linux at work too.
arrow7000 4y ago
lol this is a ridiculous take
sdflhasjd 4y ago
HN bubble alert! I think most programmers are actually using Windows as their development environment. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de...
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Even the developers I know at Microsoft use Linux or macOS!
  - throw5653 4y ago
    You were just shown statistics that disprove your idea that almost nobody codes using Windows... over half of the developers who answered StackOverflow's survey are using Windows. Pointing at more anecdotes around you does not change this fact.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Maybe Stack Overflow skews to Windows developers? I don't know how good their data is. It's hard not to look around with your own eyes and notice that you never see anyone using Windows - like I say, even the Microsoft ones! Do you meet a lot of developers using Windows? What kind of circles is that in?

realusername 4y ago

WSL is there for a reason though, it's that Windows is severely underused in some development areas and web is one of them. Not having windows compatibility is not uncommon working on the web. As an example, out of 100 developers of my company working on a web product, zero are using windows in my knowledge.

mastazi 4y ago
that might be the case in your company, maybe in your state or even in your country, but not outside of it https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-t...
- hu3 4y ago
  It's kind of amazing how our beliefs are still mostly formed by our surroundings. Even in the age of internet where information is plenty and free. I still read often in HN that "most people use iPhones" and "almost no dev uses Windows". Makes me question if my own beliefs have these enormous misconceptions too.
  - davidmurdoch 4y ago
    Someone on Twitter was upset that people they follow were following someone they disagree with. I pointed out that it's healthy to make yourself aware of dissenting opinions, and that following someone doesn't mean you align with every one of their beliefs and opinions. They seriously couldn't fathom the idea of intentionally following someone they didn't agree with. So not only are people aware of their filter bubbles, they guard them like it's the responsible thing to do.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Cult members need something to hate to reinforce their identity.
  - beebeepka 4y ago

o_m 4y ago

Windows users are fairly conservative and won't be looking at the latest tech that isn't established yet

thrown_22 4y ago

>Just wait and see how this turns out in three years. I think you seriously over estimate the number of developers still on windows.

mytydev 4y ago

We should also talk about why this is the case. JavascriptCore. The reason Bun is so fast is mostly due to the fact that it is using Apple's JavascriptCore and what all of the benchmark comparisons are really doing are comparing Google's V8 engine to Apple's JavascriptCore engine. So basically, there will never be Windows support until JavascriptCore is able to be used on Windows and I'm not entirely sure on the state of that. My guess is that it has limited to no support for that scenario.

wffurr 4y ago
You can use JavaScriptCore on Windows right now: https://github.com/Lichtso/JSC-Standalone https://github.com/Lichtso/JSC-Standalone
Hamcha 4y ago
Zig, the programming language Bun is written on, is currently having some Windows headaches of its own: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/12420 https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/12420 I wonder how much of Bun's immaturity is due to Zig's own immaturity.
- dimgl 4y ago
  Why not point the finger at Windows? Development on Windows is archaic.
  - _gabe_ 4y ago
    > Why not point the finger at Windows? Development on Windows is archaic. How so? Zig is a programming language, so I'm guessing the main interactions it needs with the OS are file IO. It shouldn't need to do any GUI work as long as it provides proper bindings to the C functions. And file IO is essentially cross platform in C++ as long as you use the stdlib. Threads are also essentially multiplatform if you're using the stdlib. I also don't know if Zig is written in C, C++, or Zig so it may differ. Generating binaries is different, but I wouldn't consider windows binaries any more archaic than Mac or Linux binaries, and I'm not sure if zig already uses LLVM backend or something anyways. But given all that, writing basic Win32 code to do file IO or any sort of OS level interactions isn't any less archaic than what I've had to do in Linux. It's an API, and it's got a lot of cruft built up over the years, but so does any sort of Linux OS API. Here's the Linux API for creating a file[0] and here's windows[1]. There's more parameters for the Win32 version, but the documentation is solid and gives a lot of tangential information. I actually prefer the Win32 docs to a lot of the Linux docs that I've used because they describe all the details very explicitly. So I wouldn't call Windows any more archaic then any other OS. Basically what I'm saying is, it takes like 2-3 hours at most to add Windows support to a programming language unless you've architected your code in a way that tangles OS operations with regular operations. It's really not that hard to keep OS code separate from the apps logic to make porting the app to different operating systems trivial. [0]: https://linux.die.net/man/3/creat https://linux.die.net/man/3/creat [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/nf-fileapi-createfilea https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/n...

madeofpalk 4y ago

I think "WSL is our Windows strategy" is perfectly acceptable for "bleeding edge"/modern things like this. I've been using WSL as my full time web development environment for years now. Thanks to VSCode's great remote support for it I don't notice any downsides to it.

mderazon 4y ago
I don't like WSL, it magically works with VScode until it doesn't and some extension breaks or it runs super slow or git commit takes 10 seconds.
WorldMaker 4y ago
VS Code remoting is great and magic when it works well (which in my experience has indeed been most of the time), but it's still so much overhead versus native builds and native support. I use WSL for the rare times I need to use Ruby, but Node has been mostly good enough in Windows for years at this point and it is nice to have native builds with no remoting overhead.

geuis 4y ago

On a lark recently, I tried to get node setup on my Win10 gaming box so I could try out a basic workflow and see how I liked it. My normal environment is using MacOS and Linux. I don't remember any specific "wtf" details, but generally it was kind of a non-starter. I got node installed, but then there were issues with using that runtime for my simple server demo. The whole attempt was frustrating. Tried installing the pseudo Linux shell thing for the command prompt and I gave up trying to use that pretty quickly. Obviously I'm not a native Windows developer. This was just me experimenting. I'm not sure how Win devs actually work these days on non-Win applications in any productive capacity. I can easily get stuff done on MacOS and Linux but Windows is just this multi-decade old black box of cruft.

ripley12 4y ago
> I'm not sure how Win devs actually work these days on non-Win applications in any productive capacity. WSL. It's trivial to drop into Linux for development these days. That said, I generally haven't had issues with Node on native Windows.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

I am genuinely curious who is using production node.js web apps on Windows server OS. I'm sure there are niche things like a massive legacy Windows shop that's slowly moving off, or trivial load internal applications where it doesn't matter. But it would really surprise me to see someone take a major bet on running large public, internet facing load on node + Windows server. ASP.NET + Windows, sure that makes total sense. Even C++ + Windows is solid and very performant. But node.js has always been a second class citizen with Windows support (it wasn't until Microsoft themselves put fulltime devs working on node that it supported Windows) and it's a huge bet to take with very little benefit and tons of potential failures.

teaearlgraycold 4y ago

> This is a dealbreaker for most developers working on Windows Yes but how many JS developers use Windows?

skrebbel 4y ago
Lots

t_mann 4y ago

> probably most people don't use [WSL] for regular development environment I know quite a few people who do, I actually wouldn't be surprised if their number was higher than pure Windows users for web dev.

9935c101ab17a66 4y ago

Apparently windows support is planned. This is still a new project — anyone interested in using a new, cutting-edge beta JavaScript runtime is certainly capable of using bun through WSL. Your comment is unnecessarily antagonistic. It comes across as if you’re personally offended that bun wasn’t launched with native windows support. Also, this made me laugh: > …this project will never takeoff until it treats windows as a first-class citizen.