Creator of Bun Jarred Sumner on Building Bun, Node.js Compatibility & AI in Dev Workflows

We intend for Bun to be a drop‑in replacement for the existing Node.js ecosystem. Most of our engineering time is not actually spent on new features — it's spent on Node.js compatibility. Join our conversation with Jarred Sumner, creator of Bun — a fast, all‑in‑one toolkit for installing, bundling, running, and testing JavaScript & TypeScript. Previously, he was a frontend engineer at Stripe. The host is Patrick Akil, Beyond Coding podcast host. In this conversation with Jarred, we explore the story behind Bun — why it was created, how adoption is going, and what makes it exciting. Jarred also talks about compatibility with Node.js, upcoming features, how AI is shaping developer workflows today — and more! Timecodes: 0:00 – Intro 0:24 – React Summit impressions 1:33 – What do you do outside of coding? 2:09 – Why did you start Bun? 3:44 – What excites you most about Bun? 5:33 – How has adoption been since putting Bun into production? 7:25 – How close is Bun to being a drop‑in replacement for the Node.js ecosystem? 8:03 – How easy is it to migrate to Bun with an existing codebase? 10:36 – "The real challenge today is larger codebases" 12:34 – How is your role changing now that more people are working on Bun? 14:15 – What big features are planned for Bun? 16:20 – What makes a candidate stand out when applying to the Bun team? 17:38 – How good is AI tooling in less established languages like Zig? 19:28 – Will AI tooling make engineers better? 23:07 – Bun & AI tooling 26:34 – Random question of the day!