全部文章0
Hacker NewstheMackabu··访问 1

Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

原网页

Hello HN!

I'm the author of Ant, a JavaScript ecosystem built around a runtime with its own JavaScript engine. Ant also includes a package manager, the ants.land package registry, a platform for deploying and hosting applications, and Ant Desktop for building native desktop apps with web technologies, similar to Electron.

The goal is for these pieces to work as one coherent platform while remaining compatible with the wider JavaScript ecosystem. It's still early, and I'd appreciate any feedback on the overall direction or what you'd like to see from an e2e alternative to the existing JavaScript stacks.

P.S. I’ve shared Ant here before as a runtime; since then, it has grown into the broader ecosystem you see today.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875377

Points: 263

# Comments: 111

Hacker News 讨论

265 points · 113 comments · 查看原帖

  1. tekacs

    I code with AI all day, every day. But I do think that it's worth pointing to this issue (from March). The author has said that they've redone it since, but the "from-scratch hand-built" framing specifically – for me – somewhat grates given the original heavy lifting from an existing AGPL codebase. https://github.com/cesanta/elk/issues/75 I want to acknowledge that the original authors don't seem to have minded too much – per that thread – after older versions were dropped. For context, the current code doesn't look like it is the same shape, the same structure, etc., etc. – it _has_ been rewritten since (the 'since Feb' rewrite mentioned adjacent is related to this, AFAICT). To the author: I absolutely love what you're doing overall. Keep going! Just be careful, folks.

  2. lucb1e

    Why call it "Ant" and not "Antjs" or "Ant.js" when there is already Ant from Apache? https://ant.apache.org

  3. curtisblaine

    I see benchmarks for cold start, why there are no benchmarks for runtime performance Vs Node, Deno and Bun? (and quickjs et al.)?

  4. m3h

    The author shared their experience building the first version in a month: https://themackabu.dev/blog/js-in-one-month And then the follow up few months later: https://themackabu.dev/blog/ant-part-two I'm not sure what the economics of building a new runtime and ecosystem from scratch are but it seems we're already in a phase where individual developers are creating software which previously took a whole team. And its only getting started...

  5. h1696UOuk

    I get the runtime, the engine, and the colony as a monetization angle. What I don't get is: - Another registry (looks like jsr.io)? - Another package manager - Ant Desktop? - Sandboxes? - treatjs (what even is that)? I'd love to see a JS runtime that does one thing: run JavaScript. I don't get why everyone is aiming for an all-in-one toolbox. To me this project already seems convoluted.

  6. carimura

    i was just joking about Anthropic's `ant` CLI not caring about Apache `ant` (maybe one person got it), and now we're talking about Javascript `ant`!

  7. colinhb

    I’m not that deep in the JS ecosystem or runtimes, but I’m a little surprised by some of the claims here about being smaller, having fast starts, sandboxing, performance-competitive, etc. Does anyone have a sense of what insights, design choices, big bets, etc, unlock all these advantages against already mature and highly optimised JS stacks?

  8. egnehots

    You're stating: "delivers near-V8 speeds" But according to zoo.js benchmarks that is far from the case: https://zoo.js.org/ Unless there were major perf gains since 2026-02-10?