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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
by dts 10mo ago
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
- robertjpayne 10mo agoThis is an insanely good take I never thought of.
- fishmicrowaver 10mo ago[flagged]
- ojame 10mo agoCurrently 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 https://bun.com/docs/runtime/s3
- mrcsharp 10mo agoThat 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.
- fishmicrowaver 10mo agoAn AI company scoops up frontend tech. Do you really think it was because of s3?
- askedrelic 10mo agoThis 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?
- fishmicrowaver 10mo agoUsers are far more likely to ask it about shadcn, or material, than about node/deno/bun. So, what is this about?
- hoppp 10mo agoIt'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?
- AstroBen 10mo agoIt's widespread and good enough. The language just doesn't matter that much in most cases
- moron4hire 10mo agoThis 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.
- wiseowise 10mo ago[flagged]
- rishabhaiover 10mo agoExactly! In the Java ecosystem, your intelligence is measured by how elaborate an interface hell you can conjure just to do CRUD.
- CharlieDigital 10mo ago> Nonsense. Average Java/C# is an enterprise monkey who barely knows outside of their grotesque codebase. Netflix is Java. Amazon is mostly Java. Some of the biggest open source projects in the world are Java. Unity and Godot both use C# for scripting. I don't know where you're getting the impression that Java and C# are somehow only for "enterprise monkey who barely knows outside of their grotesque codebase"
- ants_everywhere 10mo agoThe writeup makes it sound like an acquihire, especially the "what changes" part. ChatGPT is feeling the pressure of Gemini [0]. So it's a bit strange for Anthropic to be focusing hard on its javascript game. Perhaps they see that as part of their advantage right now. [0] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/googles-gemini-forces-openai-ceo-sam-altman-send-code-red-warning-to-employees-two-years-after-chatgpt-did-same-to-google/articleshow/125718598.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/goo...
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- jorblumesea 10mo agoThat'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.
- davnicwil 10mo agoIsn'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?
- ignoramous 10mo agoMostly, just Jarred Sumner makes it worth it for Anthropic.
- ActionHank 10mo agoWhy? The whole point every CEO with a toe in the AI pool can't stop bleating on about is that software engineering is dead and replaced by AI. bun is MIT licensed, they could take bun free of charge and use their Phd level software engineer god machine to iterate on it.
- btown 10mo agoYea - 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.
- gorjusborg 10mo agoBun isn't based on V8, it's JavaScriptCore, but your point still stands.
- hbbio 10mo agoWho would have predicted KDE could become the foundation of both AI and gaming
- sheepscreek 10mo agoGaming = talking about the Steam Deck?
- jeeeb 10mo agoAlso the worlds most popular web browsers
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- orliesaurus 10mo agoyou left out the best part...what happened to Kenton? He looked at lightweight serverless architecture..and then what?
- kentonv 10mo agoI built Cloudflare Workers?
- milowata 10mo agoCould 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.
- ok_dad 10mo agoYea, they just posted this a few days ago: https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/advanced-tool-use 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.
- yellow_lead 10mo agoJava can run anywhere too
- throwawaymaths 10mo agorun code anywhere hamstrung by 90s syntax and hidden code indirections
- groundzeros2015 10mo agoHaven’t checked in on Java in a while?
- ozim 10mo agoFrom what I gather everyone is still stuck on Java 8 so no need to check?
- gz5 10mo 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.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo agoAs 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 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)
- tclancy 10mo agoIs this something I’d have to own a tv to understand?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo agoWhy do Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI, AWS and other so-called "tech" companies advertise on TV What about people who do not own a TV
- jillesvangurp 10mo agoI'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.
- djfdat 10mo agoThey 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.
- danenania 10mo agoInvestors are really bad at predicting up front what can become a unicorn and what can’t.
- wrathofmonads 10mo agoJava 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.
- kopirgan 10mo agoI'm also confused.. Why does a generic AI company that helps coding as one of main offering get deeply in bed with one tech stack I mean would it have made sense to acquire golang if it were on sale?
- qwm 10mo agoThey want to make sure the runtime they depend on continues to be maintained. It's still niche and new, so its continued existence isn't as sure as something like Go.
- catigula 10mo agoI don't get the whole 'cloud' thing for AI agents. It feels forced. Who is actually using these services?
- baby 10mo agoif I would guess Anthropic is (rightly) frustrated with the state of the js ecosystem and is taking the best attempt so far to make the js experience much more streamlined for their developers. Convention over configuration might finally be coming to the js ecosystem?