970: Why Did Anthropic Buy Bun?  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Why Anthropic Bought Bun** - Anthropic acquired Bun to ship the Claude Code SDK with a fast, compact JavaScript runtime. - Owning Bun lets Anthropic optimize runtime features and performance for AI-driven code execution. Transcript: Wes Bos First question from Brett Peary. Why did Anthropic buy Bun? So if you didn't hear the news a couple of weeks ago, Anthropic bought Bun. Bun the JavaScript runtime. Why would they do that when they can just ask Claude to make a JavaScript runtime? But this was a pretty interesting move. And the reason that they did this was because the Claude code SDK runs on Bun. And they want to be able to ship the Claude code, not going to say binary, but like the app itself. And they want to ship it, ideally with the JavaScript runtime. I'm pretty sure that's what they do right now as well. And in order to make that thing as small and as fast as possible, and I'm assuming get the features in that they necessarily need, it's great to bring Bun under their wing and have them Continue developing that. ([Time 0:00:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8b67bae6-9bc7-4ec5-bb26-ac98487167c4)) - **Bun's Unique Appeal** - Bun's unique, nonstandard features and Zig implementation make it attractive for quick scripts and small apps. - Fast local runtime for AI-driven code execution is a key use case beyond just local developer ergonomics. Transcript: Scott Tolinski It was interesting to me because it's like Bun is such a unique case where everything about Bun feels just a different approach than like whether that is the fact that it's written with Zig or the fact that they're unapologetically adding features that JavaScript, Node.js, non-standard APIs, just because they should be there. I personally, I do like using Bun. There are enough mysterious times when I'm using Bun where something isn't working quite right and I have to go back. But if I'm throwing up a script here and there I'm using bun every time and I do feel like that plays well into their entire beyond the fact that they they use it I think it plays well into Them wanting to be the authority on vibe coding there right building scripts building kinds of stuff it bun is so much less effort to get set up with than these other ones. Wes Bos There's sort of like another aspect to this that is probably going to happen is that when you ask ChatGPT or Cloud, what is it just called Cloud, their chat apps, when you ask them to do A lot of stuff, they're literally just running Python scripts behind the scenes. ([Time 0:01:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fccd1b1d-4de5-4241-a1c0-3f1661bc038f)) - **Runtime Speed Matters For LLMs** - LLMs often run code (scripts) behind user-facing responses, so a tiny, fast runtime matters for latency. - Anthropic likely sees Bun as a nucleus to run model-invoked code both locally and remotely. Transcript: Wes Bos There's sort of like another aspect to this that is probably going to happen is that when you ask ChatGPT or Cloud, what is it just called Cloud, their chat apps, when you ask them to do A lot of stuff, they're literally just running Python scripts behind the scenes. The AI is just running code and spitting out the result for you. So if that can be as fast as possible, or if they can make this amazing little nucleus that you can just throw code into and have it spit out exactly what you need that's probably another Use case like there's the obviously the cloud code use case where it runs on your machine but some sort of compute that's running somewhere is is probably the other use case that it will Do calculations it will do actually running code for the llm when it's needed yeah ([Time 0:02:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55398fd4-6271-42b6-a1fe-b7717f2fd0a5)) - **Bun vs. Deno vs. Node** - Bun bundled many nonstandard conveniences (bundler, router, SQLite) which appealed to fast prototyping and 'vibe-coded' apps. - Alternatives like Deno aimed for standards but risk sitting in a middleground that feels less distinctive. Transcript: Wes Bos Had predicted that bun would put its own hosting competitor together and like, like the other player in this space is Dino. Dino. Right? And, and both of these first came at like, at node being like, we're going to be a better node. And the uptake has been good, but like not amazing. I think most people are just fine with node. So there's this other use cases like, oh, well maybe we can have like hosting, or maybe we can have like a app that we run. And those things haven't haven't really picked up for Dino either. So they're probably looking at being like, we probably are not going to like crush Vercel or AWS or anything like this. So our other option to like, obviously, Bunn been vc funded and they need to get their money back at some point the other option is to like sell to a larger company who has the cash to help Scott Tolinski Them out yeah you know what i wonder about dino and all of this like this seems like crazy to say given how much of a change dino was when it was first dropped. But do you think Dino is too much in the mushy middle between Bun or Node.js to really stand out? Right? Because Dino now feels like Bun is kind of the hyper-performant. It is the YOLO, just add SQLite to the thing, you know, kind of thing where Dino feels so much more measured in format, so much more like Node.js 2.0, that maybe it's not poised to break Out as much. Wes Bos I think the reason why Bun got so popular was because they did non-standard stuff. And if you're going to use something that's not Node, I think a lot of people sort of looked at that and was like, well, I'm going to use the thing that has all these like weird APIs built In. So like if you're not sure what we're talking about is like Bunship, like SQL database adapter built in right now. Node has that as well. They also are like competing with V in being a bundler, but then they also have a router, and they can also just import HTML and return it, and it will serve it up. ([Time 0:03:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/670d8fa2-bdfe-4b73-9e98-bcd94bec720d)) - **Use Editor Git UI For Everyday Tasks** - Use your editor's GUI for staging, diffs, and quick Git operations for clarity and speed. - Keep a separate terminal for complex commands like remotes or listing branches to stay efficient. Transcript: Scott Tolinski What do you use to commit your changes on your editor? I have a weird struggle where I am using external terminal to run my commands, but I always use the internal editor to run my git commands, git commit, git push, etc. I am looking for a better way that feels natural. Hey, I do this as well. I run all of my terminal commands on Ghosty, on my terminal, external, like no matter what it is. I'm running all my processes starting up there. I code in my editor, but then I do use my editor and usually just straight up the editor's UI for all Git operations. Why? I like clicking the button that says track all files. And I like maybe like clicking and seeing the diff on the files and kind of browsing it that way. And that was one of the reasons why I didn't move to the Zed editor for a long time, because their Git tools weren't there. But Zed actually is really good Git diff tools, and you can do everything that I was doing in VS Code before. So me, I'm still using that. And VS Code even has like using AI to generate commit titles and stuff like that directly in the editor there there's like a lot of nice little features that you can have via the UI that I just prefer to do it that way now there is other means to do this there was what is that get like different UIs here you look it up I'll tell you where I'm at right now because like forever Wes Bos I've been like a get in the CLI guy and everybody for years has been like you gotta use a gui you gotta use a gui and i've been i switched over mostly to using the one that's built into vs code Cursor whatever and it honestly it's better like having a gui where you can literally click on and and like stage the files you can you can click on them and see the diffs. It's honestly better for for that. Whether you like the AI commit messages or not. Yeah. Yeah. I find that to be really, really nice. I'll still every now and then use I I'm so hard coded in the terminal. If I need to do anything like change an origin or list out all of those things, I'll just write back to it. But the simple adding, committing, pushing, those big three are happening mostly in my editor these days. And I also want to move a lot of my terminal usage into the editor as well. I just can't. I can't do it. I just it feels I don't know what it is, but it's just it doesn't feel good. I like the separate terminal. ([Time 0:07:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/87e81ffa-0511-4d28-9da0-e30f97350e00)) - **Pick GUI For Complex UIs** - Prefer GUIs for tasks that need clickable buttons, precise selection, and resizable windows. - Use terminal UIs selectively for small utilities but avoid forcing every UI into the terminal. Transcript: Wes Bos I love the terminal, but I, I do not support trying to everybody trying to make a UI for absolutely everything in the terminal, man. You know, what is good at making UIs? HTML and CSS or whatever native UI, you know? If you want to put a button somewhere, you want to click it, you want to be able to select text word by word. Scott Tolinski I want to be able to resize the window without everything kind of getting angry at me all the time. Wes Bos Yeah, some of these terminal UIs are great. And I love them for little utility tools. But some stuff is better as a GUI. Even the open code folks just released a GUI for that. Because they realize, yeah, the terminal is the best. But if you want like normies and regular people to use your software, you got to give them a button. Yes. Scott Tolinski Yeah. Just a button. Just a button. ([Time 0:11:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4654a7c9-8b08-4fcb-8ad0-bccd5c499e8e)) - **Record Sources And Prioritize Audio** - For coding videos, record individual sources (code, terminal, browser) and use decent audio gear for clarity. - Use tools like ReCut and DaVinci Resolve to remove dead space and finish edits efficiently. Transcript: Wes Bos Yeah. Frenchy says, I would like to make YouTube videos for code tutorials. I was wondering if you could give us your setup tools and software to make good videos with code at an affordable price if possible. Maybe it's more Randy's expertise right now, but when you guys were already doing a good job, any tips would be appreciated. Yes. What are your tips, Scott? Scott Tolinski Oh, yeah, my tips. So I think a lot of it will come down to beyond just the software that you're using. The fundamentals here are truly making sure the code is big enough to read, making sure that your windows are organized, that it is pleasant to watch, that you're not making people struggle For it, making sure that your audio sounds good. You can get a decent Shure microphone that's USB powered for 150 bucks. That's going to sound endlessly better than what so many people try to use. You got that you have your code nice and clear, and then you cut out the dead space with editing and stuff like that will get you way further than really like futzing around the edges. So as far as like recording goes, if you want the easiest possible setup, I still think screen something like screen flow is the easiest possible setup because it includes you can record Everything, you know, you can record any screens or video that you want audio and then edit it right in there. I personally use DaVinci Resolve. It is free. It is a professional linear editing software, but it is very powerful and it is very free. So if you don't want to spend any money and you don't mind a bit of a learning curve and you can gain a skill, DaVinci Resolve is fantastic. Now, if you want my pro setup, the pro setup is to record all of your sources some way. People use OBS, it's a pain. I made my own app, VFramer, that I'll post here. It's not available, but it will be by the time you're hearing this, that records all individual sources. My pro setup is to record all your sources. You drop them into an app called ReCut. ReCut then finds all of the blank space where you're not talking and it makes a cut. You can then go right from ReCut to DaVinci Resolve. So I can do a first past edit with ReCut to say, hey, remove all of the blank space, maybe the ums, the ahs, whatever, makes it really nice and easy for many layers at once. And then you say from recut, send to DaVinci, that sends it to DaVinci, and then I just finish it off there where I do all my fit and finish and polish there. So that is my current flow is VFramer to recut to DaVinci. ([Time 0:12:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd8f159e-6de1-4332-8f2c-c4e4dfa8607e)) - **Document Failures And Push For Process** - Document incidents and escalate to a manager with clear examples when a colleague's actions harm production. - Propose concrete processes (deploy rules, testing) to prevent future destructive changes. Transcript: Wes Bos Jason yaml3 says how do i go about a disagreement with another developer who's been at the company longer than me my co-worker crashed three of our apps because they did a big database Production without telling me and without testing it. They deleted my feature branches, changed deploy settings, which caused more prod downtime. They cannot take feedback. They seem to just do whatever because they've been there so long and we can't come to an agreement on change of jurisdiction or communication. They get angry and snippy whenever I bring up major issues like this and it turns into a back and forth matter of the cause. Oof, that sounds awful. First of all, you probably shouldn't be in a situation where somebody else can just nuke your entire thing. So I guess ideally you'd have like a local implementation of something like that what do you think Scott like somebody is this awful I don't know I've never never worked with awful people Scott Tolinski Like this yeah that it is tough I've never worked with somebody this awful but there has to be some kind of so managerially there has to be some kind of process in place where this isn't Just a fighting back and forth kind of thing. Like, oh, don't do that. Do this. Do that. There needs to be some process in place where you work, whether that's from top down or whether that's from something you're getting agreement upon from your boss. So that way, when these things happen, you have a sign to point at that says you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. And then if they're breaching that, then it becomes an on them type of thing. But if this is just kind of ethereal and like, oh, we're just kind of just throwing code at the wall here and there. And oops, they deleted my thing. Then yes, it sucks. But your amount of actual control over the situation becomes way more immature and way more like less process based. So I would push for some kind of actual structure here, whether that is from above, I would talk to their manager and let them know this has been happening and document these things. Yeah. The one thing that I think always comes in handy in these situations is when they happen, document them very clearly. And when you speak to your manager, when you speak to somebody, the best advice I got was like, be honest, don't pull any punches, be honest. This is how it is. This is how it's been going. These are the things that have happened. And it's not acceptable to me. Like, what's the path forward here? But if you're just like, ah, it's been bad. This person's been a jerk to me. Then the resolution is just not going to happen. Wes Bos There's a pretty clear way forward here. The fact that they crash the app three times and cause almost like what is like it's hurting the business. Right. Think you just go forward be like look we need to put processes in place so that this does not happen again and that we don't lose we don't have an even more expensive loss of data or something Like this it's it's pretty you go whoever is this manager be like look i'm trying to figure to make it so that we don't have this anymore. We don't crash our apps and have prod going downtime and me wasting a week of my work. This is what I would like to implement, and I can't get this guy to come on board. ([Time 0:20:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/81e11773-5ecd-4b4d-a417-994b70d3e221)) - **Label Creative Work Separately** - Showcase both accessibility work and creative projects but label them clearly by purpose. - Use creative coding as a portfolio differentiator while keeping accessibility work visible and professional. Transcript: Scott Tolinski I'm an experienced web dev specializing in design systems and accessibility for the last six-ish years. I feel like I've been typecast as an accessibility engineer, and I'm struggling with an identity crisis on how to portray myself on my personal website. Lately, I've developed a strong passion for more experimental and creative coding projects. I'd love to showcase this side of my work, WebGL, game dev, interactive art, generative projects on my personal site and attract new opportunities to break out of my role that I find Myself stuck in. The problem is, creative coding often includes visual experimental projects that are not and sometimes cannot be easily 100% accessible. My professional work, however, is deeply rooted in promoting and implementing accessible web experiences. My question is, am I fundamentally jeopardizing my professional reputation and design systems by pursuing and sharing inaccessible creative projects? How can I showcase my wider skill set and passion for experimental coding without undermining my credibility I've built as an accessibility expert? You know, this one is so fascinating to me. I think it's all in how you package it. I think if you're labeling things, like this is a creative exploration, this is a creative project. I don't think people are expecting a WebGL visualizer to be accessible to blind folks, you know, vision impaired folks, right? That's actually something that bothers me with some, not all accessibility folks, but some accessibility folks will look at any experience and be like, oh, you made a music player? Well, what about hearing impaired folks? They can't use it. So that drives me nuts. Not every experience can be the exact same for all abled or disabled people. Just straight up. It can't be. So I think it's all about how you package those explorations and works. And by all means, I think this is a cool avenue for you. And I think you should lean into it. But just label your stuff. Say this is accessibility work. This is creative coding. This is that. This is this. And just make that very clear. I don't think if you put a creative coding project and label it as like this is a creative exploration or whatever on your site, I don't think anybody's going to care about that. Wes Bos I think that is a kick-ass way to get a new job because I'll tell you, I'll tell you what, as someone who's hired several people, you know what the Slack room looks like when people are going Through resumes, check out this sick website. That's all it is, is if somebody's portfolio has a list of really cool things or check out this tweet of somebody that built this wild thing. And also, I think the accessibility stuff can be like a bit of a Trojan horse into the company because you can like win them over with all the interactive, all the artistic, all of the next Level JavaScript stuff you've been building. And then bam, guess what? Also care about accessibility once you get into the company. ([Time 0:24:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/696c9ed3-a0e1-4d99-a8a5-db87d454a76d)) - **Contrast Rules Are Evolving** - Color contrast algorithms (WCAG) can be overly strict and a new APCA algorithm aims to be more practical. - Tools and modern CSS can automate 90% of cases, reducing manual contrast fixes. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Oh, I see. I need to move it over here a little bit more. Wes Bos I was talking to Killian, who works on Polypane. That's a browser for web development. It was amazing. If you want to check out building responsive and accessible and everything. But I tweeted something out about like, you know, like if you look at the Chrome DevTools, if you put like white text on a red background, it'll be like, that's not accessible. And you're just like looking at it being like yeah that's extremely easy to read why are these accessibility contrasts algorithms so crappy you know and it turns out we talked to jen Simmons from apple as well we talked about the color contrast function why that's not going on he was telling me this whole world of there's like this new color contrast algorithm that's Being worked on that is way more. I don't want to say permissible, but it's like it's better. You know, it's like you look at something where like I can read that. I think most people can read that. It's a lot better. But he was telling me about all the like drama going on in the accessibility world as to if this is good or not. And it's it's cool so i'll tell you right now is like the rules are still like the color contrast stuff is still still sucks and a lot of people still have to follow those because they their Company will get sued but hopefully soon we will have better algorithms for calculating color contrast. Scott Tolinski There's a really good blog post from Leah Verrou on this talking all about some of these different strategies, but also outlining how to be using modern CSS. I'll share my code as well. I took some of her work and like reapplied that with some clamps and some light dark functions and have what I think is a pretty dang good, like 90% of the time, auto color contrast CSS, Where you can just do like auto contrast on this. And it works with transparent backgrounds. It works with any colors. And I'll share the code for this thing. But like, I think we're getting closer to being able to like, I think that's like one of the big things, especially with with automatic color contrasting in the browser, is that like, You're not going to be able to usually apply a blanket function right now that just takes care of all situations. But if you can, if you can fix 99% of situations and then like do the rest by hand, that gets you along a decent way. Yeah. Wes Bos Killian actually has a website color contrast.app. And there's like three levels of color contrast, right? There's WCAG2. And you can, you either have to be aa or triple a compliant um and those are the ones that are like oh we can't put white on red button that's that's annoying and the new one which is is not A standard yet but it's what they're working on is called the apca that one seems to be a lot more permissible so check out color contrast that app from killian yes the. Scott Tolinski Yes. And the APCA is also talked about quite a bit in the Slaveroo blog post. So you can pick ([Time 0:28:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4ff6972c-c9df-4786-a788-cd8a1b0aa5c2)) - **Tame Home Assistant Complexity** - Use Home Assistant for flexible local automations and pair it with simple voice assistants for convenience. - Keep configurations tidy to avoid overwhelming sensor lists and complex dashboards. Transcript: Wes Bos John Ray says, what are you using for your smart home? I have an old OpenHAB 2.4 from 2018, but I really need to migrate to something newer. I'm on Home Assistant running it on my Synology. I've talked about that in the past, but you don't need a lot of heavy hardware to run this stuff. It's just handling MQTT streams and setting variables across the world. So that is a very good one. I also run Google Home as well, just because I love having the screens all over the house and being able to just talk to it. But for most of my like scheduling automation, I use Home Assistant. Scott Tolinski Yeah, I use Home Assistant as well. I have it running on a Home Assistant OS that just runs on a Raspberry Pi that I just always have on over there plugged into that. I have like a Zigbee adapter into that directly. That's what i run i like it a lot i actually just recently just wrote a little automation the other day that automatically turns on my bathroom exhaust fan when the humidity gets too high In the primary bathroom it was nice and easy took no time at all in home assistant and that's just the kind of stuff you want with a smart home right yeah like yeah i think now don't got to Wes Bos Turn on the exhaust home assistant is not for the the faint of heart i think they need to figure out some better it's gotten a little bit ui and some better like what happens with home assistant Is you add like like a light bulb and then it'll be like here's 600 sensors that this light bulb can do you know and it's just you to a point where you add like I have I have probably 40 50 smart Things in my house and then each of them have seven or eight different things you have to spend some time really culling it down and getting it to as simple as you want so hopefully I don't Know I don't know what that's the thing with any of these Swiss Army tools you let people do literally anything and then it gets to be a little bit overwhelming. That's your Home Assistant dashboard? Scott Tolinski Yeah, it's pretty nicely tuned. And one thing that I like about mine is on this homepage. The homepage, I have a bunch of presets where it's watching a movie, eating dinner, whatever. And a lot of those are on timers, but at any given point, I can enable one. And then on any given room, I just have all the individual lights and whatever set up. Or like my office is a little bit different because it's my office where I can have like master toggles with everything in there and all of my studio lights. Wes Bos I have one for my office one. I have it hooked up to my stream deck as well. ([Time 0:31:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fc92fa11-ca93-42b7-a455-53e3e4eccf31)) - **Block Bad ASNs For Bot Control** - Block or challenge requests from known hosting ASNs to reduce bot and data-center traffic. - Implement ASN-based rules in Cloudflare to block or present CAPTCHAs for suspicious networks. Transcript: Wes Bos Where does such a list come from that he curated himself? So there's a GitHub repo called bad ASN list. So an ASN is, you can go deep into what an ASN is. It stands for autonomous system, but typically a hosting provider or an ISP, which a hosting provider is, they'll all have their unique number that's attached to it. Comcast is 7922, DigitalOcean is 14061. And depending on the type of site that you're operating from, it makes sense to simply just block all people that are coming from, or all requests, not even people. So like if you're getting requests to your website from like a shady ISP in Russia that are like, this is not people's homes. You know, this is not like a cell phone network. This is like somebody is making a request from a data center somewhere. And if that's, why is that the case? Either somebody's on a VPN trying to hide something or or somebody's running some sort of bot farm and they're they're sending requests your way. So instead of blocking individual IPs or or blocks of IPs, you can simply just say requests from these ASNs are going to be either totally blocked or you could throw a captcha at them. I think that's what I do right now because it's like there is a case where somebody would be using a VPN that's running on one of these. But in my case, I've never heard from a single customer saying, hey, your website's blocked. That's never been the case. It's only blocked shady people and shady bots. And the same thing with the way that you implement it is you go into your Cloudflare and you can create a rule. And it's just this massive rule where he says, if the ASN is XYZ, you can block it. But you can also block countries as well, which you probably shouldn't block countries, but you can block everybody who is from the XX country or the, I think the tour country and anybody Who's, who's visiting your website via tour is probably doing shady stuff as well, trying to hide their tails. ([Time 0:35:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/144f443d-5ecc-47a3-91f1-247e6818922f)) - **Enterprise Web Stacks Are A Hidden Market** - Large enterprises run bespoke web stacks like SAP UI5, showing huge pockets of specialized web ecosystems. - Learning these enterprise frameworks can be lucrative despite being obscure to modern web dev communities. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Hey, guys, big fan. I really enjoy the podcast. In my daily job, I work with modern web technologies. But over the last year, due to a new direction in our company, I've had to start learning SAP UI5. It's basically a web world inside SAP. Have you ever come across this technology? I'm still surprised how big the ecosystem of languages and frameworks is inside of larger enterprises and how little it's talked about. It feels like a hidden world with a lot of potential. Wes, I'm going to say I have zero clue. I have no clue. Nothing. Wes Bos Yeah, I thought this was an interesting question because when I was in school, a big thing that we had to learn was called ERP. And like these large companies who do accounting and inventory sourcing products. Like I remember the one example we had to do for SAP was somebody was making granola. And you had 18 vendors from around the world to get all of the pieces to make your granola. You know, you had to get almonds from Mexico and you had to get, I don't know, chocolate chips from Canada. And like they all had different prices and they all have different lead times. And in order to make a simple granola, it was a very complex thing. And then you had accounts payable, ledgers, all of that stuff sort of built into it. And these huge companies are built on SAP. SAP is a massive, massive company. And I remember hating my life doing this because it was a Java app where it was just looked awful and you never knew where to click. And nothing ever worked. And it was errors out the wazoo. And you had to do it on a desktop. And I was thinking that there's like I wonder where SAP is that you know so this guy says that SAP and I just looked it up there's this thing called SAP UI 5 it looks like they moved everything Over to their own custom MVC JavaScript framework and that cool because like, obviously this stuff needs to be able to run everywhere. This is why you should bet on the web. This like massive company, which was built on Java is now the entire UI is all done in JavaScript. I went to the docs and I thought it was hilarious because they have a chart of like how things work together. And that chart is done in a png that's probably exported from photoshop or something so i just thought it was so funny like these big companies are just like they can't even make labels And boxes with text right yeah yeah have to export it yeah right yeah why does this have to be an image what in the world? But it's kind of, they built their own, like it's not built on React or Angular or Svelte or anything. They made their own MVC framework. Probably makes sense for how big of a piece of software this is. But that is certainly an area where you can, I remember in school, everyone's like, you can make a bank. ([Time 0:38:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e97531be-b925-466b-96e5-936b44134bbb))