zlacker

Handmade Cities founder here.

We never associated with Bun other than extending an invitation to rent a job booth at a conference: this was years ago when I had a Twitter account, so it's fair if Jarred doesn't remember.

If Handmade Cities had the opportunity to collaborate with Bun today, we would not take it, even prior to this acquisition. HMC wants to level up systems while remaining performant, snappy and buttery smooth. Notable examples include File Pilot [0] or my own Terminal Click (still early days) [1], both coming from bootstrapped indie devs.

I'll finish with a quote from a blog post [2]:

> Serious Handmade projects, like my own Terminal Click, don’t gain from AI. It does help at the margins: I’ve delegated website work since last year, and I enjoy seamless CI/CD for my builds. This is meaningful. However, it fails at novel problems and isn’t practical for my systems programming work.

All that said, I congratulate Bun even as we disagree on philosophy. I imagine it's no small feat getting acquired!

[0] https://filepilot.tech

[1] https://terminal.click

[2] https://handmadecities.com/news/summer-update-2025/

>>abnerc+(OP)
back in my day we used to write code on punch cards.

>>abnerc+(OP)
Finding this comment interesting, parent comment didn't suggest any past association but it seemingly uses project reference as pivot point to do various outgroup counter signaling / neg bun?

>>kopoch+je
I understand the concern, but really? I found this quote enough to offer proper comments:

> had a vague idea that "Zig people" were generally "Software You Can Love" or "Handmade Software Movement" types

Folks at Bun are "Zig people" for obvious reasons, and a link was made with Handmade software. This happened multiple times before with Bun specifically, so my response is not a "pivot" of any kind. I've highlighted and constrasted our differences to prevent further associations inside a viral HN thread. That's not unreasonable.

I also explicitly congratulated them for the acquisition.

>>abnerc+Ym
Indeed, you cleared up exactly the misconception I had. Thanks for chiming in to clarify

>>abnerc+(OP)
I like that the filepilot download is 2.1MB. That really illustrates the difference between handmade style stuff and well, most other stuff.

>>abnerc+Ym
> and a link was made with Handmade software

I'm willing to wager that 99.99% of readers do not associate "Handmade" with the org you're associated with, and that most didn't know it existed until this comment. So yes "really", without OP replying, it's understandable that the poster you're replying inferred it had nothing to do with you.

>>abnerc+(OP)
I might missing some context. Just to check my understanding: HMC and Bun aren't a good match anymore because Bun devs use LLM/AI tooling more than HMC? Basically to really level up a system is incompatible these tools? (IYHO)

Thank you! I appreciated how you wrote up this clarifying.

>>abnerc+(OP)
I think you may have confused parent commenter's "Handmade software movement" types comment to Handmade cities which doesn't seem related to me other than the common word handmade

>>abnerc+(OP)
I'm pretty sure the GP was referring to https://handmade.network as their manifesto made multiple rounds here, was discussed at length and far more obviously related to "handmade movement" remark than your org.

>>tomnip+yJ
Yeah, I don't think of Handmade Cities when I hear the word "handmade". I think of Handmade Network and Casey Muratori, who actually coined the term and started the movement. I didn't even know about Handmade Cities before this comment, either. This is just shameless marketing/insertion on their part.

>>abnerc+Ym
Nobody associates the word handmade with whatever you're talking about here. You hijacked a super common word and are now pretending it's related.

>>eps+dC1
Yes, I was referring to Handmade Network, but check out who you're responding to[0]. Honestly, I wasn't too sure about the Handmade Cities thing, but I recognized his name as someone thick in the middle of my question, so I assumed it was a rebranding or something since I don't follow so closely.

[0] https://handmade.network/m/abnercoimbre

>>losved+Bm3
Yeah, I looked the GP up too, because I never heard of this Cities thing.

I took your comment as referring to people who like to manually unroll their loops rather than members of some particular community, so GP's nitpicking on specifics of that interpretation looked out of place.

>>throw1+Y12
As another comment pointed out, GP founded Handmade Network: https://handmade.network/m/abnercoimbre

>>gfaste+jb4
Still doesn't change the reality that few people know of this org exists, and fewer people still will associate it with the word "Handmade" in this context.