This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Patrick Organ
Welcome to Developer Tooling #006, a newsletter enhancement for Freek Van der Herten's popular and high-quality newsletter, geared towards Software Engineering and related fields. If you haven't checked out his newsletter, take the time to now. It's worth it.
For this edition, we're experimenting with a themed approach for all of the showcased tools. Please let us know if you prefer it (or not!)
Theme: ECMAScript/TypeScript native-binary bundlers & compilers (built with Go, Rust, etc.)
rspack
Description: A modern, rust-based javascript compiler that replaces webpack.
What we like: Rich feature set that attempts to have feature parity with webpack; it's part of a growing ecosystem that appears well-maintained.
What we don't like: It supports similar complexity in its configuration due to feature parity with webpackesbuild
Description: a Javascript/TypeScript/React compiler written in Go.
What we like: It's the OG compiler/bundler for JS/TS. It was orders of magnitude faster than anything else before it was cool.
What we don't like: It's lost some ground to tools such as bun.bun
Description: A feature-rich, extremely fast bundler, compiler, and package manager all in one.
What we like: it's incredibly fast not only when bundling, but also as an NPM replacement - it's working on feature parity with the npm cli and API;bun installis so much faster than npm it's hard to believe.
What we don't like: It's written in Zig, which may have been a poor choice for long-term maintainability.rolldown
Description: A rust-based tool that aims to replace rollup.
What we like: Highly active development. Aims to replace rollup, which is too slow.
What we don't like: Documentation leaves something to be desired (it's not bad, but it could be better)farm
Description: Another rust-based bundler
What we like: Excellent documentation; has been under active development for quite some time; if its history is a reliable indicator, it will (hopefully) be reliably maintained for years to come.
What we don't like: The speed comparisons on their website feel dishonest - we don't like that it claims to be faster than everything but doesn't offer direct comparisons for tools like bun. (Note: we're not commenting on the accuracy of their comparisons - only noting that the comparisons aren't presented in the best light)
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Patrick Organ
Patrick Organ | Sciencx (2025-09-13T08:53:05+00:00) Developer Tooling #006. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/09/13/developer-tooling-006/
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