Deno and Bun had very different focuses when they launched. Deno was trying to fix a lot of what Ryan (the original creator of Node) thought was wrong with Node. Bun focused on compatibility with Node and the ability to run popular frameworks like Nextjs from the beginning.

A lot of dependencies and frameworks simply did not work with Deno for a long time. In the beginning it didn't even have the ability to install dependencies from npm. (In hindsight with all the npm supply chain attacks Ryan was probably right about all of these things).

So Bun was a better Node with a lot of very nice quality of life features that just worked and it required much less configuration.

I think the Deno team kind of realized they needed to have compatibility with Node to succeed and that has been their focus for the past couple years.

Edit: And Deno is now more compatible with node than bun.

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gslepak 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> In hindsight with all the npm supply chain attacks Ryan was probably right about all of these things

"Probably"? Are you saying there's a chance he wasn't right?

I really think Ryan deserves a lot more credit than a "probably". He put in a lot of effort to do the right thing and improve the security of the entire ecosystem he created.

	▲	sysguest 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		this we nodejs devs were just ignorant/lazy npmjs should mark libs "deno compatible" and move over to deno gradually for security

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VerifiedReports 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I started a new project with Deno specifically to avoid the NPM mess, and because it was created by Node's creator to fix its shortcomings. I'm new to Web development, but so far the experience has been pretty good.

Nice to see Deno being maintained. The features listed seem pretty substantial.

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tuananh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Bun focused on compatibility with Node and the ability to run popular frameworks like Nextjs from the beginning.

and yet Bun's npm compat is much much lower than deno

https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2057579066744881188

	▲	vmg12 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was talking about the history and not the current state of the projects if that was not obvious.

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nailer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

(thinking emoji) they could merge.

Seriously, they're both Rust now. They share goals.

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tomjakubowski 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I doubt it would work out. The engineering cultures could not be any different.

	▲	sysguest 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		well bun could 'gradually become deno': 1. add 'enhanced security mode' that's actually 'deno-compatible/like' (permissions, etc) 2. mark libs/executables/etc as 'enhanced security compatible' 3. ...merge by buying out deno?

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notnullorvoid 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They may share some goals, but also have differing and opposing goals.

But it's possible that all 3 Deno, Node, and Bun could share some code in the future considering they now all require Rust as part of their build process.