The point of Bare isn't to do what Node.js already does. If that had been the case we'd just have continued using Node.js. The point of Bare is that on its own it can't really do anything. To do actually useful stuff, you have to resort to userland modules and those can evolve independently of Bare itself. Contrast that with the Node.js standard library which is tied to a particular version of Node.js and brings with it tons of legacy that's still there for the sake of backwards compatibility. Bare has none of that, not just because it's newer but because it ships with nothing but a handful of solid fundamentals that we don't expect will evolve much, if at all.

As someone who isn't well versed in this Node ecosystem, why is omitting a standard library a separate project? It sounds like something you'd do as a Node feature, or variant of Node, or some command line switch or env var or whatever else is needed to avoid whatever it is you are trying to avoid.

There's no way to not bring along the entire Node.js standard library when you're using Node.js. It also doesn't provide a way to fully abstract over the underlying JavaScript engine, which Bare needs to be able to support swapping out the underlying JavaScript engine without any code changes. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43559532 for more on that.

I still can’t tell if this is an April Fool’s joke or not.