Item — HN Reader

It is a pity that you can't make an experimental commit on an experimental branch without igniting a fire of delirium through some people who -- if they were able to put their emotional response aside for a minute and could weigh this up on the basis of merit -- would probably agree with the motivations for researching this approach.

> if/how hard it’d be to get it to pass Bun’s test suite and be maintainable

Every month brings new opportunities to completely abstract the process of porting code with agents, all using linguistics. What an exciting time.

For those looking for a similarly interesting (and interestingly similar) example, see Cloudflare's port of Next.js[0], "vinext", from a couple of months ago. It had some teething problems at the start but I'm using it in a few production projects now with minimal issues.

[0] - https://github.com/cloudflare/vinext

5 comments

This is what it means to work on a popular project, unfortunately.

You also don't have a duty to read or respond to the social media flames. Just do the work you want to do.

If people get worked up about experimentation, that's their problem, not yours.

It’s not your problem until it becomes your problem.

It only becomes your problem if you choose it to be your problem.

That is not how these things usually work.

Exactly. Usually is most people. You can choose to deviate.

You can delete your social media accounts and just keep working on what you want to, for one. Nobody is forcing you to use social media.

I'm mostly on board with what you're saying, but under such an interpretation of "forcing", people are never truly forced into anything. That puts it in fundamental conflict with the very existence of the word, i.e. renders it meaningless.

That said, I did also walk away from most mainstream platforms already, so it's not like I disapprove of the message necessarily. I did find it regrettable that the calculus worked out that way though, and I don't find it reasonable to deny that there is / was a calculus. You do give up on things that are not just the assholes. I'd definitely classify that as a force.

But maybe I'm just missing that this was supposed to be inspirational rather than literal, and mistook your words. I don't know.

I am a topic starter, and I had no emotional response, was just being curious. Never expected it will land at HN #1. I specifically posted the link to the first commit and not to the whole branch, because currently the prompt is the most interesting part.

The title kinda set the tone for this post.

The title is "Bun is being ported from Zig to Rust". The docs/PORTING.MD starts with "Zig → Rust porting guide"

I don't think the tone was the problem.

Imaging title it "Bun is being ported from Zig to Rust in an experimental branch" though. Not enough drama with that

The branch name is "claude/phase-a-port", there was zero indication this was an experiment until Jarred commented. The more accurate title might have simply been "there is a branch in the official repo of bun describing a port to rust from zig". No amount of soft titles would have prevented the discussion. People have their opinions about Bun, about Zig, about Rust and it's all going to come out in a discussion board.

Can’t every branch be considered an experiment? I have a ton of experimental branches that I don’t label «experimental». One of the reasons you use git…

If every branch is experimental. Then there is no need to put ut in the title.

Sure, but then how does it change anything around the discussion? You are still running an experiment to port to Rust, it still gets posted, the Rust-heads and Zig-heads still make their comments.

> there was zero indication this was an experiment

  The goal of Phase A is a **draft** `.rs` next to the `.zig`
  that captures the logic faithfully — it does **not** need to compile. Phase B
  makes it compile crate-by-crate.

I mean, it would be hard to spell it out any clearer than that! Code that fails to compile is just not very useful for real work.

Phase B clearly says compilation is the next goal. The first goal is to get a like for like logic, the second goal is to get it to compile. Can you guess what the third goal will be? Throw out the code?

Yes, but that would require people to read past the title. You can't get a proper knee-jerk first post in if you do that! Completely unfair to expect people to make that sacrifice/effort.

[there was some sarcasm there, BTW, if anyone has a faulty detector that didn't pick up on it]

I couldn't use that title because I didn't know if it an experiment at the moment. Even now the correct title would be "Bun author says that he is entertaining the idea of porting it from Zig to Rust, creates an experimental branch".

But you also didn't know a port was happening, which the title implies.

How would an outside observer know it’s an experiment?

An original topic starter? I'm pretty sure that this was originally posted on X by someone else, as I commented there, and minutes after, it was copied and put here on HN with the twisted title; the original was more of a "question, surprise tone"

This topic starter. I saw a post on Twitter in "for you" feed, verified it, found an interesting bit (rewriting prompt) and started a topic on HN. Like I said, I never expected it to hit #1.

It’s annoying for the team members I suppose, but to be fair, if you’re working on a high-profile open source project, owned by one of the most hyped companies in the world, and your branches are public, it’s probably a good idea to be clear in the branch naming and supplemental files if you’re just “experimenting”.

By working in public on a popular open source project, you are communicating intent and purpose to your users and the general public through your commit messages, branch names, and documentation. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief if you act accordingly.

The fact someone who works on Bun is willing to create and even push a branch generated by a stochastic parrot is very telling of the direction the project is going.

Doesn't matter if it's "experimental", it's a dumb experiment that shouldn't exist.

Doesn't matter if it's "experimental", it's a dumb experiment that shouldn't exist.

Do you think the same about bitcoin? Where do you draw the line as to what programs are allowed to be written?

Why are you treating branches as if they are holy? This is all OSS, people work on this in their free time, git is got and people can use branches as they like to experiment and share their experiments with others. If you don't like the code, don't use it you damn leech.

Underplaying AI, overselling what an experimental branch is, and suggesting it's representative of the entire project, all while suggesting people shouldn't even consider new tools and methodologies. Where to start.

That's not a very constructive, nor accurate, way of trying to dismiss all concerns around bun that has been raised.

I think that was a very constructive comment about the unconstructive way people are shoe-horning other concerns about bun into this thread abut a specific aspect which itself turns out to be just an experiment that someone knee-jerk reacted to, despite several active threads already discussing those matters one of which only just fell off the front page.

While the concerns many have about Bun's potential future direction are valid IMO, of the posts on this thread the one you are criticising is one of the more constructive.

Maybe time to rethink your stance?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094745