15 ms·

Deno 1.9

670 points by searchableguy 6y ago

GenerocUsername 6y ago
I feel like I have hit a point in my life where I don't want another framework to learn, and due to this I am not giving Deno a fair shake... Does anyone have a short anecdote why I might bother to invest in yet another JS framework?
- hayd 6y ago
  It's not a framework, it's a JS runtime on top of v8 (like node).
- johnfn 6y ago
  Deno isn't a framework, it's a node.js alternative. The best pitch I've heard is that it's written by the same guy who did node.js, with the intent to fix everything he thought he got wrong with node.js.
- FractalHQ 6y ago
  Is it technically a framework? I thought it was an entire alternative runtime to NodeJS.
- remexre 6y ago
  Well, Deno's not really a framework, it's a runtime (like node.js). If you're writing Typescript, it makes that way easier. If you're doing lots of IO, it makes that easier (promises). If you want sandboxing, it has that (though if it's for server software, you should use firejail or Docker or something around it anyway).
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    does it interop with libs made for node.js and are on npm? e.g. using the official the AWS node.js library
    - brundolf 6y ago
      It doesn't load libs from NPM directly, it has its own package management system based around URLs. Most JavaScript/TypeScript logic should port to it trivially, unless they use system APIs, in which case those will have to be converted to Deno's system APIs. But mostly that just comes down to "swap out function X for Y and rearrange the parameters a bit". So in practice: it's super easy to port something, but most of the time you do actually have to port it, unfortunately.
    - remexre 6y ago
      Can't comment on sibling, but https://www.skypack.dev/ https://www.skypack.dev/ lets you import many npm packages; I haven't tried the AWS library, though.
      - brundolf 6y ago
        That looks pretty cool; it's unsurprising that there's an automated solution since the differences are so small and predictable Edit: Does this do automated conversion? I can't actually tell
        remexre 6y ago
        Yes, it's automated.
    - wperron 6y ago
      The canonical answer is _maybe_. If your Node lib relies on Node built-ins, you won't be able to import it directly from GitHub for example. However, CDNs like Skypack and esm.sh do polyfill some of those to Deno. Your mileage may vary depending on the lib you're trying to import. Some will work better on one CDN, some on another -- you really just have to try it for yourself. A surprising amount of libs work without issues. The AWS sdk v3 works really well from Skypack, check out our docs for our Deploy platform, it has an example with DynamoDB https://deno.com/deploy/docs/tutorial-dynamodb#write-the-application https://deno.com/deploy/docs/tutorial-dynamodb#write-the-app...
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Deno isn't a JS framework?
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    You mean it's a runtime, like Node.js? /s
    - turbinerneiter 6y ago
      I guess roughly a billion people were just as triggered as I was and now there are all these redundant "actshually" comments :D
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- k__ 6y ago
  Good news. Deno tries to be as close to the browser API as possible. So it's easier to learn than Node.js if you come from frontend development.
- brundolf 6y ago
  It isn't a framework, it's a runtime. You use it instead of Node, and the headlining feature is you can run TypeScript without a separate build step. The system APIs are different than Node's but those are analogous/easy to learn, and the language itself is still just JavaScript/TypeScript, so there isn't really much to learn. With that said: I've used it for a couple projects because I'm really interested in its value-proposition, but so far I'm not impressed with the dev experience when it comes to editor integration. It brings its own language server because it has a few tiny caveats, and the language server doesn't work nearly as well as the official TypeScript one. Type changes sometimes don't propagate across files, auto-imports are lacking the file extension (which Deno requires, so you have to go and manually edit them all), etc. Given that frictionless TypeScript support is the major draw, this is a pretty serious issue for me. I hope it gets there some day, but for me it isn't there yet.
  - wperron 6y ago
    Sorry you've had this experience -- the LSP is improving a lot with every release, this one included, try it out and let us know what you think. We really appreciate issues for the LSP on GH
    - brundolf 6y ago
      Thanks- I should probably actually file bug reports :) I am curious though: why roll your own? It seems like the only real differences are a) URLs/file extensions in the module names, and b) some type declarations for the system APIs (which I'd think just come down to some .d.ts files, not custom LSP logic). Microsoft's TypeScript language server is a wonder of engineering, and I doubt any small independent team would ever be able to go toe-to-toe with it. Seems like a waste to forego that if there's any possibility of utilizing it. A minimal fork maybe, if nothing else?
      - lucacasonato 6y ago
        TypeScript does not actually have a native language server. TSC is just directly shoehorned into VS Code. It is very difficult to extend (we tried with the 1.x and 2.x branch of our extension). We needed to do a lot of trickery to get TSC to do what we want, and even then it would not always work. That solution also only worked on VS Code. Our new LSP works on all editors with LSP support. We are hoping that in the coming few weeks / months the Deno LSP will be just as featureful as TSC + Node in VS Code, and way more performant. We still have some ways to go, but we are slowly getting there.
- konart 6y ago
  Should we tell him that this is not a framework? Anyone?
  - croes 6y ago
    No.
    - asidiali 6y ago
      ...de alternative!
- dubcanada 6y ago
  That's a rather ignorant thing to say. You are basically saying "I feel like I have hit a point in my life where I don't want to learn." It doesn't matter if it's a framework, language, protocol, specification, book, way of coding, or anything else. Learning is how you gain knowledge and stopping ones desire to gain knowledge is never a "point in ones life". It's just being lazy.
  - tehbeard 6y ago
    Then why are you on here blathering about someone being ignorant when you are being "just as lazy" and not spending this time learning new$x.js instead of arguing on the internet? Have some compassion/empathy for those of us that don't have the luxury to be able to constantly keep up with what gets churned out every day.
    - dubcanada 6y ago
      Who said anything about compassion/empathy? There is a difference between saying I won't try and convivence me otherwise. Versus saying I can't I don't have the time. OP is very clearly saying I won't, they have given no indication as to the fact they don't have time to learn.
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    Kind of a leap to go from not wanting to learn the JavaScript techology du jour to not wanting to learn anything.
- pupdogg 6y ago
  short_anecdote: don't switch, it's not for you!
- programmarchy 6y ago
  Deno has first-class support for TypeScript. Refactoring code without types is not a pleasant experience.
- tolmasky 6y ago
  It's really weird that most responses to you are that Deno isn't a framework, as if changing the category the thing is in would somehow magically remove your choice fatigue, especially considering that the most likely interpretation of your fatigue would make the distinction between runtime and framework fairly meaningless in this case: they are both for practical purposes a set of APIs you must learn on top of an existing language you probably already know. Whether under the hood they are implemented as Rust bindings that require you to run your app in a specific binary, vs. being written in JS, probably doesn't matter, and if anything would make the endeavor more complicated and raise the bar necessary to convince you to learn it even more. Either way, barring your work forcing you to learn something, or you running into a specific problem that requires you to learn something new, you should really treat frameworks/runtimes/languages/etc. the same as TV shows or comics, and I mean this in a very positive way. If you enjoy it and have the bandwidth for it, then of course pick up a new show or comic and invest some time into it! Especially if a trusted friend recommends it to you. It might introduce you to new ideas or give you a different perspective. And most importantly, you probably won't get as much as you would out of it if it doesn't seem exciting. You won't miss out on it if you decide to punt it until later, I promise you. This isn't some Thanksgiving Day sale, if in a year it's more popular than it is today, there'll only be better articles and tutorials that have been written, more bugs having been fixed, and more libraries already existing for it than today. And if it ended up not being that great, you probably won't hear about it in a year anymore, and you will have spent your time on a thing you do enjoy. So don't force it, if it seems cool to you or resonates with you for any reason, try it, otherwise, no big deal!
  - croes 6y ago
    Maybe because there are way more JS frameworks than runtimes. It feels like dozens of frameworks pop up every day.
    - tolmasky 6y ago
      Yes but my point is that this doesn't address the OP's frustration: learning new APIs without a clear sense of what one is getting out of it. Many of Deno's fundamental features are basically framework features. Learning the Deno for-await API for answering HTTP requests is an identical experience to learning a framework that offers that API. "But Deno has fundamental performance improvements" -- Frameworks can also offer fundamental performance improvements. In fact, I can write a Rust-backed binary package for node.js and now we're really in a grey area. The point is that "its a runtime not a framework" is not an answer as to why he should learn it or not. At least, not without attaching to it a meaningful explanation as to the benefits he'll get from it because its a runtime, but at that point, we're back where we started: just pitch him on what he'll get out of it, don't correct him on technical terminology.
- oehpr 6y ago
  You're getting a lot of responses. I just want to say that I empathize with you. I'm not at that point in my life where new technologies don't excite me. I'm still happy to learn new things. But I fully expect I'm going to get tired of the next wiz bang language, the next gee wow framework, the next hot stuff server. I get it. There's still value in knowing what you know. I wish people didn't think so much otherwise.
zkldi 6y ago
I'd love to use deno, but I really don't understand the point deno's module/package system. The standard practice of deps.ts/dev_deps.ts as described in the docs[1] just seems absolutely asinine to me. Importing everything into one scope and then re-exporting from one file just seems like an awful hack. What do you do if two libraries have functions with the same name? Do you namespace them yourself, or export an object under the name of the library (and therefore give up destructuring?) The URL thing seems similarly cumbersome and unecessary. Is there something wrong with a configuration file that would map 'package names' to the urls to get them from?, and then import { foo } from "packagename"? [1]https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/examples/manage_dependencies https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/examples/manage_dependencies
- eevilspock 6y ago
  You realize Deno is founded by Ryan Dahl, who founded Node 12 years ago, don't you? Perhaps you should be less quick to label anything about it "asinine" or even "awful hack".
  - Twixes 6y ago
    With all respect to Ryan Dahl, I'm sure he'd disagree with the "asinine" characterization but would also disagree he's infallible - as evidenced by the creation of Deno after Node
    - eevilspock 6y ago
      I'm just saying Don't be so quick to judge. Be humble! No one is infallible. That said, creating Deno after Node doesn't imply that Node was a fail or that Deno will be perfect. Obviously not. Consider that someone really smart has reasons for doing (or trying to do) things a certain way. Be humble!
      - goldenkey 6y ago
        Node is a failure. It's standard library is written ad hoc. Riddled with catch 22s and monkey patches. The development style is just to bolt on more and more variables and branches, endlessly, without any cohesive style. Example of the "common caterpillar" genus of node quirks and the awful antagonistic responses by the dev team: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/25857 https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/25857 Just take a look at a random stdlib source file: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/lib/readline.js https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/lib/readline.js ``` if (input && input.input) { // An options object was given output = input.output; completer = input.completer; terminal = input.terminal; history = input.history; historySize = input.historySize; signal = input.signal; ``` It's junior-level code writing all over the project. That is a failure in my mind, especially when I know the library backing my project has to import all that junk hidden from view. See (wontfix) fs.promises.readFile is 40% slower than fs.readFile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26332774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26332774 Not to mention the awkward political nature. There is a BLM banner on their front page: https://nodejs.org https://nodejs.org .The founder of BLM, Patrisse Cullors, just bought 4 mansions, the last for $1.4 Million USD: https://news.yahoo.com/blm-official-calls-investigation-founder-114017918.html https://news.yahoo.com/blm-official-calls-investigation-foun... Node's dev team is not interesting in supporting the community. They are amateurs who are trying to be woke and add "top Node contributor" to their toolbelt of proverbial ego items. Prove me wrong.
maga 6y ago
The often overlooked selling point of Deno that I find most compelling is the (re)use of web APIs. As a full-stack dev writing isomorphic code and libraries, dealing with ideosincracies of nodejs has been a pain.
- FractalHQ 6y ago
  What do you mean by reuse of web apis? I’m curious to read up on this feature.
  - tehbeard 6y ago
    Things like ArrayBuffer/view, fetch(...) and worker threads being the same spec/interfaces as the browser implementations rather than homegrown stuff like Buffer, child_process and any number of npm wrappers around the http module in node.
    - TechBro8615 6y ago
      Hopefully the story is the same in five years after Deno and browsers have both had time to evolve. Are there plans in place for tracking future updates to Web APIs in Deno?
      - mark_and_sweep 6y ago
        I believe so. Recently Deno started running a subset of the Web Platform Tests to test compatibility. See: https://deno.land/manual/contributing/web_platform_tests https://deno.land/manual/contributing/web_platform_tests
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Defaulting to browser based APIs when they exist (like a global 'window' element to access the DOM), rather than reinventing the wheel the way Node did. Although to be fair a lot of Node APIs predate their browser equivalents, and in a lot of ways the browser contains a 2.0 version of a lot of Node APIs.
sadturnip 6y ago
Have they resolved issues where many third party packages are not available for Deno? Like i don't see things such as MikroORM/Pino/Firebase-Admin on deno.land, and even things like AWS-SDK are out of date.
- wperron 6y ago
  Pro tip: don't import those libs from deno.land/x. The runtime is agnostic to where you're pulling libs from, and that's by design. The AWS SDK v3 for example works great through the Skypack CDN, and you're pulling the canonical one, not simply a port maintained by a third party.
- ROARosen 6y ago
  With deno you can import scripts from anywhere on the web you want, my personal favorite is jspm.dev which basically has all npm packages
rsp1984 6y ago
I'm not so familiar with web development and don't quite understand where this fits in. I know I can run JS in my browser. I know I can run JS on a web server using node.js. I know I can compile Typescript to JS. So how does Deno fit in and what is the added value? Not trying to be negative, just curious.
- divbzero 6y ago
  Deno is designed to be a replacement for Node.js on the server. The introduction to the Deno Manual [1] provides a comparison. [1]: https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/introduction https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/introduction
- stevieoop 6y ago
  deno supports typescript out of the box whereas to run typescript in nodejs you need to transpile down to javscript first. deno also has some security features enabled by default like not allowing network communication unless you explicitly enable it. so that prevents malicious packages from making network requests that you might not have noticed. thats a great feature because tons of javascript projects/tools dont need to send http requests so if your tool doednt require that then you can be confident that any dependency you use is not secretly spying on you.
- sod 6y ago
  * Running a linter without granting it write or net access * Running a build tool with only file access to the source files * Trying a cli script without granting it access to everything by just showing the help In times where a linter has 10000 dependencies, I'm in desperate need of sandboxing. People on hackernews are easy to judge companies when they leak customer data. But what if we the developers are actually the problem by executing megabytes of foreign code just with faith.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  Deno is by the original creator of Node.js and seeks to fix/change a few things about Node he regretted while adding first class support for a few things that were new since then like TS. It's also more security minded from the get-go. Not just in a "written in a memory safe language" way but it has a permissions system and strong built in ways to inspect/audit dependencies. So it's not aiming to be revolutionarily different from Node, rather a second shot at Node.
Tarucho 6y ago
What kind of improvement will this bring to the seasoned nodejs dev, that it will leverage the learning effort?
- aikah 6y ago
  > What kind of improvement will this bring to the seasoned nodejs dev, that it will leverage the learning effort? Not much right now, aside from 'native' Typescript support and not relying on NPM hell for everything. But as the project matures, it might be useful to take a look at it. I personally hate having to rely on third party libraries for basic web-server functionalities, so a strong "official ecosystem" with batteries included is an interesting proposition.
worik 6y ago
I have been programming computers since 1988, so I have seen a lot of things come and go. Not often has there been a just relationship between quality and popularity. Never has that been so stark as with Node.js. So many mistakes, mistakes that have been made before. Such a mind boggling lack of purpose. There has never been a need for Node.js - except to play with the cool kids that programme Javascript on the client, server, on any &&^^*!! thing! I still do not see the need for Javascript anywhere but in a browser, and with Webassembly, most of the impressive things done in the browser do not need Javascript any more. So my preference is for Javascript to quietly die out in a dignified exit stage left. But I am not always completely correct. So if you must, then use Deno. Node.js is simply awful. Deno is only useless. A vast improvement.
- cztomsik 6y ago
  Do you have an actual experience with nodejs/deno? There are many (server-side) things where javascript is not a good choice but "smart-proxies" or micro-service-orchestration kinds of things are definitely super-easy to do in nodejs. I've also done many languages, like really, and I don't know any better for this task. What's your choice BTW?
- aikah 6y ago
  Often the worth of a language comes from its ecosystem. Node.js for now has perhaps the biggest ecosystem in history of computer languages and since Javascript is supported natively by browsers, well it makes the number of developers knowing Javascript quite substantial. It's no worse than Python, Perl or others.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    I would argue that much of the Node ecosystem suffers from the same flaw as "millions of apps" advertised by Apple and Google on their mobile platform: most of it is useless one-liners, or abandonware. Now, when you filter it all out, it's still not any worse than Python etc - but it's not any better, either.
- jorisd 6y ago
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
I'm not looking forward to when I lose all my productivity with Node.js because the industry collectively agrees to move on to Deno and rebuild or port things that have been working just fine for the past decade, but OK, here we go. Maybe I should just hedge my bets and get on the train now even though I don't want to.
- Soremwar 6y ago
  You don't ever lose productivity or knowledge on a tool when a new one comes out though. A new thing that people like becomes popular and people start using it, old one becomes less used but it doesn't dissapear. You only really "switch" to a new tool if that's what you like the most, not because that's what people like now.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  Having come from the node ecosystem, I find deno pretty welcoming and familiar overall. I'm glad to see a design I think is better, over all - so long as development continues, it seems like it'll be worth the shift.
- coldpie 6y ago
  Welcome to software development, friend. The secret is it's all one big treadmill. You don't get paid for standing still.
- indymike 6y ago
  Deno's not too far off the mark if you know Node.
- smt1 6y ago
  s/Node.js/perl Don't worry, we've all been there.
pictur 6y ago
What exactly does deno promise when it comes to package management?
- woutr_be 6y ago
  Not sure why this got downvoted, but I have the same question. Most of my projects run behind a corporate firewall, where our NPM repository is proxied. Will Deno eventually offer something? As far as I understand, you can import packages from anywhere, which is obviously a major concern for anyone behind a corporate firewall
topicseed 6y ago
Regularly writing Typescript code both for frontend (React) and backend. Most is hosted on GCP. What's the best path to hosting an API (Fastify-based) on GCP with Deno today?
ncmncm 6y ago
I can't see what Deno even is. Clicking the "deno" name at the top of the linked page takes me to another page that says just "cli" and "deploy". Great! Clicking CLI (why?) reveals it is a Javascript runtime in Rust. OK, what does one do with that? We know Javascript runtimes come built into browsers. What would I do with one on its own? Anywhere I could run it, I could run code that actually does something, instead. So I ... run it and use it to run somebody else's JS code? Whose? Or link it into something (what?) that I distribute, that runs somebody else's JS code? Whose? Is this a thing to bolt into an alternative browser, next to a CSS renderer, to compete with Chrome? Or into Chromium, in place of Google's JS engine? I can guess at answers to these questions, but why make me guess?
- lucacasonato 6y ago
  Deno is a secure server side runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. It is an alternative to Node.
- EMM_386 6y ago
  > I can't see what Deno even is. These are just release notes, for developers who already know what it is and want to see what's new. Literally the top result on Google for "Deno": https://deno.land/ https://deno.land/
zomglings 6y ago
I'm curious, if anyone has lived through the experience: What is the migration story like to port an existing codebase from node.js to Deno?
- TranquilMarmot 6y ago
  Even trying this with some toy projects I have it is NOT easy or straightforward. The dependency management alone is different enough to make this almost impossible. I think if you want to use Deno, it would have to be from the ground up or a complete rewrite.
- nikisweeting 6y ago
  Very painful due to the lack of support for importing npm packages.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    You can import npm packages using esm and skypack. import React from "https://esm.sh/react@17.0.2 https://esm.sh/react@17.0.2" should work. For skypack, add ?dts flag at the end to get typescript typing support automatically. Self hosting is an option too with above. if you want more npm modules to work with deno, you can contribute to https://deno.land/std/node https://deno.land/std/node
    - nikisweeting 6y ago
      This is good, but even with integrity hashes it makes me slightly uncomfortable to have a (relatively unknown) SaaS company stand between the original source on npm and us. Self-hosting seems good, but how does one do that? I didn't see any docs on Skypack's site about self-hosting something that would work as a npm-to-deno-repackaging server.
      - searchableguy 6y ago
        Sorry, I was talking about esm.sh https://github.com/postui/esm.sh https://github.com/postui/esm.sh This is written in golang and can be self hosted. > This is good, but even with integrity hashes it makes me slightly uncomfortable to have a (relatively unknown) SaaS company stand between the original source on npm and us. I understand the worries but npm is a private SAAS company which was unknown at the time of node too. Things take time to sort out and become stable. Unlike node, where npm defaults to npmjs - a private company which can go anytime. Deno doesn't make that choice for users. I believe that is the right step. Trust what you need to and have an allow list.
syspec 6y ago
I have a question, how come people do not use Dart in place of this? It runs on the server, it is a typed language, it's faster than v8 javascript (since that is part of the reason for it's existence to eek out more performance) From what I've seen it can be distributed very as well, and your app is self contained ala Go. --- So my question is, why don't more people use Dart where they would use a "Node + 'Typescript compiled to JS'" combination, which seems like it has a lot of headaches once your project grows in size
- mixedCase 6y ago
  Dart is an extremely limited language compared to TypeScript (it doesn't even have sum types), and has access to a much smaller ecosystem. Its runtime isn't much better either, like for example Go's or Haskell's is. Deno has a partial implementation of Node's API, and even without it it's still the same underlying runtime concepts, so porting is easier than porting to another language like Dart.
- s_tec 6y ago
  If your team has invested a lot of time & energy into mastering the Javascript ecosystem (including things like Typescript), it makes sense to use the same language on the server side as well. Server machines are cheaper than good developers, especially if you can share resources between the backend & frontend. As for Deno specifically, it's definitely closer to the "browser" way of doing things than Node is, which is super attractive. The main reason to stick with Node is the huge library ecosystem, but Node itself feels kinda weird & old, since the language has moved in a different direction while Node has remained stagnant (poor support for promises & ES modules, for instance).
- inbx0 6y ago
  How come more people don't use ReasonML in place of this? It runs as OCaml on the server, it is a typed language, it's faster than v8 JavaScript. Or F#? Not a fan of the functional? Then maybe Kotlin? Nim? No? There are a ton of great languages out there, many arguably better than TS in many ways. But for a language to be popular, being great is not enough. I'm not sure what it is that makes TS so popular, but I am pretty sure that you have to look past mere language qualities for it.
brunoluiz 6y ago
With HTTP 2 implemented in this version, gRPC might be possible in a near future.
de6u99er 6y ago
Having read multiple comments Deno looks to me like somethung I want to get into. Is there somewhere a getting started with Deno guide, tackling setup of a d velopment environment and some typical use cases as examples? How would e.g. a company like CloudFlare run Deno instead of v8 for it's serverless infrastructure?
- searchableguy 6y ago
  > How would e.g. a company like CloudFlare run Deno instead of v8 for it's serverless infrastructure? Raptor is an example project which does that: https://github.com/littledivy/raptor https://github.com/littledivy/raptor deno_runtime crate provides high level abstractions which you can use to execute code for deno. It is used in the cli. You would still need to bring in your own transpiling layer for typescript support. As for getting started, you can go through the manual: https://deno.land/manual https://deno.land/manual
- da39a3ee 6y ago
  Are you a computer program? Your third sentence is much more sophisticated than your first two; they don't seem to have been written by the same human. And the two typos look somewhat inauthentic.
- eloff 6y ago
  > How would e.g. a company like CloudFlare run Deno instead of v8 for it's serverless infrastructure? They're both built on v8.
devgoldm 6y ago
As a primarily C++ dev who's been using nodejs on the side for about a couple years now - so forgive me if this is naive - but am I wrong in seeing Deno as a potential Electron replacement with standalone binary builds + webview? If so, the introduction of interactive permission prompts is pretty cool. I see a few comments from more experienced web developers that are quite negative about Deno that seem to generally be centred around the fact it offers very little compared to nodejs, and isn't worth the effort to learn. Does it have potential as a safer, lightweight Electron alternative? Or are there better options than Deno in that regard?
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  I think it's not its main goal right now, but it could be and would be really interesting if it happened.
- rektide 6y ago
  there's webgl, webgpu, and dom, but it's a headless dom (jsdom) not a webview. I wouldn't be surprised to see packages developed for a webview but atm demo seems to target server side web platform compatibility... except rendering html! I wouldn't be surprised to see some packages try to fill the gap, & deno has a much stronger basis for implementation than node (a rpc layer between rust & v8 defines the core character of the project, and an native addon that adds webview methods to the rpc would be natural in Deno, vs a hack in electron).
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    The most updated webview bindings I know of for deno: https://github.com/webview/webview_deno https://github.com/webview/webview_deno It's likely you will find some hiccups in latest deno release because it uses rust plug-ins and they are getting overhauled at the moment. Maybe a few more months before getting stabilized.
- oscargrouch 6y ago
  > Does it have potential as a safer, lightweight Electron alternative? Or are there better options than Deno in that regard? If they target this, the big chunk of code will still be the same ones on Electron, so i don't think it would get to be safer or lightweight as compared to Electron.
mekster 6y ago
What are the conditions for people feel the urge to migrate over to deno? Currently, I don't see enough reasons to switch to deno for primary projects.
jadbox 6y ago
I wonder what the general performance difference difference there is between the new Rust-based server and Express?
fatiherikli 6y ago
So probably Deno is something like that: console.log('Deno')
- fatiherikli 6y ago
  Or (node = 'Node', 'Node'.substr(2, 4) + 'Node'.substr(0, 2)) Can we stop implementing JS engines instead of resetting the router?
jshawl 6y ago
I wish deno files had a different file extension. Editor gets confused often switching between front end typescript and deno typescript.
- Soremwar 6y ago
  For frontend TypeScript I assume you mean TypeScript that doesn't use JS modules but extensionless modules, the TypeScript folks sadly have decided to not bring compatibility here ATM.
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pietroppeter 6y ago
Just realized that de-no is reverse of no-de
- raulytpro 6y ago
  I just created this account because I made the exact same comment 54 minutes ago to my co-worker and he was seeing this post. Mate, maybe we're linked souls or smth like that, what do you think? Could it be possible?
  - HatchedLake721 6y ago
    No
- rvieira 6y ago
  Actually, it's not :) According to the official Deno releases it's: "node".split("").sort().join("") Which makes the pun even wittier.
fctorial 6y ago
Does the single executable distribution change anything? node/python/google-chrome are all single executable programs as far as the users are concerned.
- phplovesong 6y ago
  Deno is a single executable as in you only download one file. Compared to a new python install, it needs all kinds of additional stuff to get up and running.
EugeneOZ 6y ago
> Therefore we have employed Hyper to build a new native HTTP/2 server API in Deno. > The binding improves hello-world throughput by 48% when compared to the std/http pure TypeScript HTTP server. Nice to read it about Hyper - one of my favorite Rust tools!
herodoturtle 6y ago
On the deno.com homepage, if you click on CLI it takes you to https://deno.land/ https://deno.land/ If you then scroll to the bottom, the deno tag say "failing". Just thought I'd share (in case the right people happen to read this).
goldsteinq 6y ago
Deno's interactive permission prompt is still easily bypassed by nicely asking terminal to confirm it: https://github.com/denoland/deno/issues/9750#issuecomment-796702901 https://github.com/denoland/deno/issues/9750#issuecomment-79... Direct link to asciinema: https://asciinema.org/a/9rvK8ANJK0WnQc9nsrFKdC7ir https://asciinema.org/a/9rvK8ANJK0WnQc9nsrFKdC7ir

670 points by searchableguy 6y ago

I feel like I have hit a point in my life where I don't want another framework to learn, and due to this I am not giving Deno a fair shake... Does anyone have a short anecdote why I might bother to invest in yet another JS framework?

hayd 6y ago
It's not a framework, it's a JS runtime on top of v8 (like node).
johnfn 6y ago
Deno isn't a framework, it's a node.js alternative. The best pitch I've heard is that it's written by the same guy who did node.js, with the intent to fix everything he thought he got wrong with node.js.
FractalHQ 6y ago
Is it technically a framework? I thought it was an entire alternative runtime to NodeJS.
remexre 6y ago
Well, Deno's not really a framework, it's a runtime (like node.js). If you're writing Typescript, it makes that way easier. If you're doing lots of IO, it makes that easier (promises). If you want sandboxing, it has that (though if it's for server software, you should use firejail or Docker or something around it anyway).
- devmunchies 6y ago
  does it interop with libs made for node.js and are on npm? e.g. using the official the AWS node.js library
  - brundolf 6y ago
    It doesn't load libs from NPM directly, it has its own package management system based around URLs. Most JavaScript/TypeScript logic should port to it trivially, unless they use system APIs, in which case those will have to be converted to Deno's system APIs. But mostly that just comes down to "swap out function X for Y and rearrange the parameters a bit". So in practice: it's super easy to port something, but most of the time you do actually have to port it, unfortunately.
  - remexre 6y ago
    Can't comment on sibling, but https://www.skypack.dev/ https://www.skypack.dev/ lets you import many npm packages; I haven't tried the AWS library, though.
    - brundolf 6y ago
      That looks pretty cool; it's unsurprising that there's an automated solution since the differences are so small and predictable Edit: Does this do automated conversion? I can't actually tell
      - remexre 6y ago
        Yes, it's automated.
  - wperron 6y ago
    The canonical answer is _maybe_. If your Node lib relies on Node built-ins, you won't be able to import it directly from GitHub for example. However, CDNs like Skypack and esm.sh do polyfill some of those to Deno. Your mileage may vary depending on the lib you're trying to import. Some will work better on one CDN, some on another -- you really just have to try it for yourself. A surprising amount of libs work without issues. The AWS sdk v3 works really well from Skypack, check out our docs for our Deploy platform, it has an example with DynamoDB https://deno.com/deploy/docs/tutorial-dynamodb#write-the-application https://deno.com/deploy/docs/tutorial-dynamodb#write-the-app...
turbinerneiter 6y ago
Deno isn't a JS framework?
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  You mean it's a runtime, like Node.js? /s
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    I guess roughly a billion people were just as triggered as I was and now there are all these redundant "actshually" comments :D
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k__ 6y ago
Good news. Deno tries to be as close to the browser API as possible. So it's easier to learn than Node.js if you come from frontend development.
brundolf 6y ago
It isn't a framework, it's a runtime. You use it instead of Node, and the headlining feature is you can run TypeScript without a separate build step. The system APIs are different than Node's but those are analogous/easy to learn, and the language itself is still just JavaScript/TypeScript, so there isn't really much to learn. With that said: I've used it for a couple projects because I'm really interested in its value-proposition, but so far I'm not impressed with the dev experience when it comes to editor integration. It brings its own language server because it has a few tiny caveats, and the language server doesn't work nearly as well as the official TypeScript one. Type changes sometimes don't propagate across files, auto-imports are lacking the file extension (which Deno requires, so you have to go and manually edit them all), etc. Given that frictionless TypeScript support is the major draw, this is a pretty serious issue for me. I hope it gets there some day, but for me it isn't there yet.
- wperron 6y ago
  Sorry you've had this experience -- the LSP is improving a lot with every release, this one included, try it out and let us know what you think. We really appreciate issues for the LSP on GH
  - brundolf 6y ago
    Thanks- I should probably actually file bug reports :) I am curious though: why roll your own? It seems like the only real differences are a) URLs/file extensions in the module names, and b) some type declarations for the system APIs (which I'd think just come down to some .d.ts files, not custom LSP logic). Microsoft's TypeScript language server is a wonder of engineering, and I doubt any small independent team would ever be able to go toe-to-toe with it. Seems like a waste to forego that if there's any possibility of utilizing it. A minimal fork maybe, if nothing else?
    - lucacasonato 6y ago
      TypeScript does not actually have a native language server. TSC is just directly shoehorned into VS Code. It is very difficult to extend (we tried with the 1.x and 2.x branch of our extension). We needed to do a lot of trickery to get TSC to do what we want, and even then it would not always work. That solution also only worked on VS Code. Our new LSP works on all editors with LSP support. We are hoping that in the coming few weeks / months the Deno LSP will be just as featureful as TSC + Node in VS Code, and way more performant. We still have some ways to go, but we are slowly getting there.
konart 6y ago
Should we tell him that this is not a framework? Anyone?
- croes 6y ago
  No.
  - asidiali 6y ago
    ...de alternative!
dubcanada 6y ago
That's a rather ignorant thing to say. You are basically saying "I feel like I have hit a point in my life where I don't want to learn." It doesn't matter if it's a framework, language, protocol, specification, book, way of coding, or anything else. Learning is how you gain knowledge and stopping ones desire to gain knowledge is never a "point in ones life". It's just being lazy.
- tehbeard 6y ago
  Then why are you on here blathering about someone being ignorant when you are being "just as lazy" and not spending this time learning new$x.js instead of arguing on the internet? Have some compassion/empathy for those of us that don't have the luxury to be able to constantly keep up with what gets churned out every day.
  - dubcanada 6y ago
    Who said anything about compassion/empathy? There is a difference between saying I won't try and convivence me otherwise. Versus saying I can't I don't have the time. OP is very clearly saying I won't, they have given no indication as to the fact they don't have time to learn.
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  Kind of a leap to go from not wanting to learn the JavaScript techology du jour to not wanting to learn anything.
pupdogg 6y ago
short_anecdote: don't switch, it's not for you!
programmarchy 6y ago
Deno has first-class support for TypeScript. Refactoring code without types is not a pleasant experience.
tolmasky 6y ago
It's really weird that most responses to you are that Deno isn't a framework, as if changing the category the thing is in would somehow magically remove your choice fatigue, especially considering that the most likely interpretation of your fatigue would make the distinction between runtime and framework fairly meaningless in this case: they are both for practical purposes a set of APIs you must learn on top of an existing language you probably already know. Whether under the hood they are implemented as Rust bindings that require you to run your app in a specific binary, vs. being written in JS, probably doesn't matter, and if anything would make the endeavor more complicated and raise the bar necessary to convince you to learn it even more. Either way, barring your work forcing you to learn something, or you running into a specific problem that requires you to learn something new, you should really treat frameworks/runtimes/languages/etc. the same as TV shows or comics, and I mean this in a very positive way. If you enjoy it and have the bandwidth for it, then of course pick up a new show or comic and invest some time into it! Especially if a trusted friend recommends it to you. It might introduce you to new ideas or give you a different perspective. And most importantly, you probably won't get as much as you would out of it if it doesn't seem exciting. You won't miss out on it if you decide to punt it until later, I promise you. This isn't some Thanksgiving Day sale, if in a year it's more popular than it is today, there'll only be better articles and tutorials that have been written, more bugs having been fixed, and more libraries already existing for it than today. And if it ended up not being that great, you probably won't hear about it in a year anymore, and you will have spent your time on a thing you do enjoy. So don't force it, if it seems cool to you or resonates with you for any reason, try it, otherwise, no big deal!
- croes 6y ago
  Maybe because there are way more JS frameworks than runtimes. It feels like dozens of frameworks pop up every day.
  - tolmasky 6y ago
    Yes but my point is that this doesn't address the OP's frustration: learning new APIs without a clear sense of what one is getting out of it. Many of Deno's fundamental features are basically framework features. Learning the Deno for-await API for answering HTTP requests is an identical experience to learning a framework that offers that API. "But Deno has fundamental performance improvements" -- Frameworks can also offer fundamental performance improvements. In fact, I can write a Rust-backed binary package for node.js and now we're really in a grey area. The point is that "its a runtime not a framework" is not an answer as to why he should learn it or not. At least, not without attaching to it a meaningful explanation as to the benefits he'll get from it because its a runtime, but at that point, we're back where we started: just pitch him on what he'll get out of it, don't correct him on technical terminology.
oehpr 6y ago
You're getting a lot of responses. I just want to say that I empathize with you. I'm not at that point in my life where new technologies don't excite me. I'm still happy to learn new things. But I fully expect I'm going to get tired of the next wiz bang language, the next gee wow framework, the next hot stuff server. I get it. There's still value in knowing what you know. I wish people didn't think so much otherwise.

zkldi 6y ago

I'd love to use deno, but I really don't understand the point deno's module/package system. The standard practice of deps.ts/dev_deps.ts as described in the docs[1] just seems absolutely asinine to me. Importing everything into one scope and then re-exporting from one file just seems like an awful hack. What do you do if two libraries have functions with the same name? Do you namespace them yourself, or export an object under the name of the library (and therefore give up destructuring?) The URL thing seems similarly cumbersome and unecessary. Is there something wrong with a configuration file that would map 'package names' to the urls to get them from?, and then import { foo } from "packagename"? [1]https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/examples/manage_dependencies https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/examples/manage_dependencies

eevilspock 6y ago
You realize Deno is founded by Ryan Dahl, who founded Node 12 years ago, don't you? Perhaps you should be less quick to label anything about it "asinine" or even "awful hack".
- Twixes 6y ago
  With all respect to Ryan Dahl, I'm sure he'd disagree with the "asinine" characterization but would also disagree he's infallible - as evidenced by the creation of Deno after Node
  - eevilspock 6y ago
    I'm just saying Don't be so quick to judge. Be humble! No one is infallible. That said, creating Deno after Node doesn't imply that Node was a fail or that Deno will be perfect. Obviously not. Consider that someone really smart has reasons for doing (or trying to do) things a certain way. Be humble!
    - goldenkey 6y ago
      Node is a failure. It's standard library is written ad hoc. Riddled with catch 22s and monkey patches. The development style is just to bolt on more and more variables and branches, endlessly, without any cohesive style. Example of the "common caterpillar" genus of node quirks and the awful antagonistic responses by the dev team: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/25857 https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/25857 Just take a look at a random stdlib source file: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/lib/readline.js https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/lib/readline.js ``` if (input && input.input) { // An options object was given output = input.output; completer = input.completer; terminal = input.terminal; history = input.history; historySize = input.historySize; signal = input.signal; ``` It's junior-level code writing all over the project. That is a failure in my mind, especially when I know the library backing my project has to import all that junk hidden from view. See (wontfix) fs.promises.readFile is 40% slower than fs.readFile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26332774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26332774 Not to mention the awkward political nature. There is a BLM banner on their front page: https://nodejs.org https://nodejs.org .The founder of BLM, Patrisse Cullors, just bought 4 mansions, the last for $1.4 Million USD: https://news.yahoo.com/blm-official-calls-investigation-founder-114017918.html https://news.yahoo.com/blm-official-calls-investigation-foun... Node's dev team is not interesting in supporting the community. They are amateurs who are trying to be woke and add "top Node contributor" to their toolbelt of proverbial ego items. Prove me wrong.

maga 6y ago

The often overlooked selling point of Deno that I find most compelling is the (re)use of web APIs. As a full-stack dev writing isomorphic code and libraries, dealing with ideosincracies of nodejs has been a pain.

FractalHQ 6y ago
What do you mean by reuse of web apis? I’m curious to read up on this feature.
- tehbeard 6y ago
  Things like ArrayBuffer/view, fetch(...) and worker threads being the same spec/interfaces as the browser implementations rather than homegrown stuff like Buffer, child_process and any number of npm wrappers around the http module in node.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Hopefully the story is the same in five years after Deno and browsers have both had time to evolve. Are there plans in place for tracking future updates to Web APIs in Deno?
    - mark_and_sweep 6y ago
      I believe so. Recently Deno started running a subset of the Web Platform Tests to test compatibility. See: https://deno.land/manual/contributing/web_platform_tests https://deno.land/manual/contributing/web_platform_tests
- monocasa 6y ago
  Defaulting to browser based APIs when they exist (like a global 'window' element to access the DOM), rather than reinventing the wheel the way Node did. Although to be fair a lot of Node APIs predate their browser equivalents, and in a lot of ways the browser contains a 2.0 version of a lot of Node APIs.

sadturnip 6y ago

Have they resolved issues where many third party packages are not available for Deno? Like i don't see things such as MikroORM/Pino/Firebase-Admin on deno.land, and even things like AWS-SDK are out of date.

wperron 6y ago
Pro tip: don't import those libs from deno.land/x. The runtime is agnostic to where you're pulling libs from, and that's by design. The AWS SDK v3 for example works great through the Skypack CDN, and you're pulling the canonical one, not simply a port maintained by a third party.
ROARosen 6y ago
With deno you can import scripts from anywhere on the web you want, my personal favorite is jspm.dev which basically has all npm packages

rsp1984 6y ago

I'm not so familiar with web development and don't quite understand where this fits in. I know I can run JS in my browser. I know I can run JS on a web server using node.js. I know I can compile Typescript to JS. So how does Deno fit in and what is the added value? Not trying to be negative, just curious.

divbzero 6y ago
Deno is designed to be a replacement for Node.js on the server. The introduction to the Deno Manual [1] provides a comparison. [1]: https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/introduction https://deno.land/manual@v1.9.0/introduction
stevieoop 6y ago
deno supports typescript out of the box whereas to run typescript in nodejs you need to transpile down to javscript first. deno also has some security features enabled by default like not allowing network communication unless you explicitly enable it. so that prevents malicious packages from making network requests that you might not have noticed. thats a great feature because tons of javascript projects/tools dont need to send http requests so if your tool doednt require that then you can be confident that any dependency you use is not secretly spying on you.
sod 6y ago
* Running a linter without granting it write or net access * Running a build tool with only file access to the source files * Trying a cli script without granting it access to everything by just showing the help In times where a linter has 10000 dependencies, I'm in desperate need of sandboxing. People on hackernews are easy to judge companies when they leak customer data. But what if we the developers are actually the problem by executing megabytes of foreign code just with faith.
zamadatix 6y ago
Deno is by the original creator of Node.js and seeks to fix/change a few things about Node he regretted while adding first class support for a few things that were new since then like TS. It's also more security minded from the get-go. Not just in a "written in a memory safe language" way but it has a permissions system and strong built in ways to inspect/audit dependencies. So it's not aiming to be revolutionarily different from Node, rather a second shot at Node.

Tarucho 6y ago

What kind of improvement will this bring to the seasoned nodejs dev, that it will leverage the learning effort?

aikah 6y ago
> What kind of improvement will this bring to the seasoned nodejs dev, that it will leverage the learning effort? Not much right now, aside from 'native' Typescript support and not relying on NPM hell for everything. But as the project matures, it might be useful to take a look at it. I personally hate having to rely on third party libraries for basic web-server functionalities, so a strong "official ecosystem" with batteries included is an interesting proposition.

worik 6y ago

I have been programming computers since 1988, so I have seen a lot of things come and go. Not often has there been a just relationship between quality and popularity. Never has that been so stark as with Node.js. So many mistakes, mistakes that have been made before. Such a mind boggling lack of purpose. There has never been a need for Node.js - except to play with the cool kids that programme Javascript on the client, server, on any &&^^*!! thing! I still do not see the need for Javascript anywhere but in a browser, and with Webassembly, most of the impressive things done in the browser do not need Javascript any more. So my preference is for Javascript to quietly die out in a dignified exit stage left. But I am not always completely correct. So if you must, then use Deno. Node.js is simply awful. Deno is only useless. A vast improvement.

cztomsik 6y ago
Do you have an actual experience with nodejs/deno? There are many (server-side) things where javascript is not a good choice but "smart-proxies" or micro-service-orchestration kinds of things are definitely super-easy to do in nodejs. I've also done many languages, like really, and I don't know any better for this task. What's your choice BTW?
aikah 6y ago
Often the worth of a language comes from its ecosystem. Node.js for now has perhaps the biggest ecosystem in history of computer languages and since Javascript is supported natively by browsers, well it makes the number of developers knowing Javascript quite substantial. It's no worse than Python, Perl or others.
- int_19h 6y ago
  I would argue that much of the Node ecosystem suffers from the same flaw as "millions of apps" advertised by Apple and Google on their mobile platform: most of it is useless one-liners, or abandonware. Now, when you filter it all out, it's still not any worse than Python etc - but it's not any better, either.
jorisd 6y ago

andrewmcwatters 6y ago

I'm not looking forward to when I lose all my productivity with Node.js because the industry collectively agrees to move on to Deno and rebuild or port things that have been working just fine for the past decade, but OK, here we go. Maybe I should just hedge my bets and get on the train now even though I don't want to.

Soremwar 6y ago
You don't ever lose productivity or knowledge on a tool when a new one comes out though. A new thing that people like becomes popular and people start using it, old one becomes less used but it doesn't dissapear. You only really "switch" to a new tool if that's what you like the most, not because that's what people like now.
steve_adams_86 6y ago
Having come from the node ecosystem, I find deno pretty welcoming and familiar overall. I'm glad to see a design I think is better, over all - so long as development continues, it seems like it'll be worth the shift.
coldpie 6y ago
Welcome to software development, friend. The secret is it's all one big treadmill. You don't get paid for standing still.
indymike 6y ago
Deno's not too far off the mark if you know Node.
smt1 6y ago
s/Node.js/perl Don't worry, we've all been there.

pictur 6y ago

What exactly does deno promise when it comes to package management?

woutr_be 6y ago
Not sure why this got downvoted, but I have the same question. Most of my projects run behind a corporate firewall, where our NPM repository is proxied. Will Deno eventually offer something? As far as I understand, you can import packages from anywhere, which is obviously a major concern for anyone behind a corporate firewall

topicseed 6y ago

Regularly writing Typescript code both for frontend (React) and backend. Most is hosted on GCP. What's the best path to hosting an API (Fastify-based) on GCP with Deno today?

ncmncm 6y ago

I can't see what Deno even is. Clicking the "deno" name at the top of the linked page takes me to another page that says just "cli" and "deploy". Great! Clicking CLI (why?) reveals it is a Javascript runtime in Rust. OK, what does one do with that? We know Javascript runtimes come built into browsers. What would I do with one on its own? Anywhere I could run it, I could run code that actually does something, instead. So I ... run it and use it to run somebody else's JS code? Whose? Or link it into something (what?) that I distribute, that runs somebody else's JS code? Whose? Is this a thing to bolt into an alternative browser, next to a CSS renderer, to compete with Chrome? Or into Chromium, in place of Google's JS engine? I can guess at answers to these questions, but why make me guess?

lucacasonato 6y ago
Deno is a secure server side runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. It is an alternative to Node.
EMM_386 6y ago
> I can't see what Deno even is. These are just release notes, for developers who already know what it is and want to see what's new. Literally the top result on Google for "Deno": https://deno.land/ https://deno.land/

zomglings 6y ago

I'm curious, if anyone has lived through the experience: What is the migration story like to port an existing codebase from node.js to Deno?

TranquilMarmot 6y ago
Even trying this with some toy projects I have it is NOT easy or straightforward. The dependency management alone is different enough to make this almost impossible. I think if you want to use Deno, it would have to be from the ground up or a complete rewrite.
nikisweeting 6y ago
Very painful due to the lack of support for importing npm packages.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  You can import npm packages using esm and skypack. import React from "https://esm.sh/react@17.0.2 https://esm.sh/react@17.0.2" should work. For skypack, add ?dts flag at the end to get typescript typing support automatically. Self hosting is an option too with above. if you want more npm modules to work with deno, you can contribute to https://deno.land/std/node https://deno.land/std/node
  - nikisweeting 6y ago
    This is good, but even with integrity hashes it makes me slightly uncomfortable to have a (relatively unknown) SaaS company stand between the original source on npm and us. Self-hosting seems good, but how does one do that? I didn't see any docs on Skypack's site about self-hosting something that would work as a npm-to-deno-repackaging server.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      Sorry, I was talking about esm.sh https://github.com/postui/esm.sh https://github.com/postui/esm.sh This is written in golang and can be self hosted. > This is good, but even with integrity hashes it makes me slightly uncomfortable to have a (relatively unknown) SaaS company stand between the original source on npm and us. I understand the worries but npm is a private SAAS company which was unknown at the time of node too. Things take time to sort out and become stable. Unlike node, where npm defaults to npmjs - a private company which can go anytime. Deno doesn't make that choice for users. I believe that is the right step. Trust what you need to and have an allow list.

syspec 6y ago

I have a question, how come people do not use Dart in place of this? It runs on the server, it is a typed language, it's faster than v8 javascript (since that is part of the reason for it's existence to eek out more performance) From what I've seen it can be distributed very as well, and your app is self contained ala Go. --- So my question is, why don't more people use Dart where they would use a "Node + 'Typescript compiled to JS'" combination, which seems like it has a lot of headaches once your project grows in size

mixedCase 6y ago
Dart is an extremely limited language compared to TypeScript (it doesn't even have sum types), and has access to a much smaller ecosystem. Its runtime isn't much better either, like for example Go's or Haskell's is. Deno has a partial implementation of Node's API, and even without it it's still the same underlying runtime concepts, so porting is easier than porting to another language like Dart.
s_tec 6y ago
If your team has invested a lot of time & energy into mastering the Javascript ecosystem (including things like Typescript), it makes sense to use the same language on the server side as well. Server machines are cheaper than good developers, especially if you can share resources between the backend & frontend. As for Deno specifically, it's definitely closer to the "browser" way of doing things than Node is, which is super attractive. The main reason to stick with Node is the huge library ecosystem, but Node itself feels kinda weird & old, since the language has moved in a different direction while Node has remained stagnant (poor support for promises & ES modules, for instance).
inbx0 6y ago
How come more people don't use ReasonML in place of this? It runs as OCaml on the server, it is a typed language, it's faster than v8 JavaScript. Or F#? Not a fan of the functional? Then maybe Kotlin? Nim? No? There are a ton of great languages out there, many arguably better than TS in many ways. But for a language to be popular, being great is not enough. I'm not sure what it is that makes TS so popular, but I am pretty sure that you have to look past mere language qualities for it.

brunoluiz 6y ago

With HTTP 2 implemented in this version, gRPC might be possible in a near future.

de6u99er 6y ago

Having read multiple comments Deno looks to me like somethung I want to get into. Is there somewhere a getting started with Deno guide, tackling setup of a d velopment environment and some typical use cases as examples? How would e.g. a company like CloudFlare run Deno instead of v8 for it's serverless infrastructure?

searchableguy 6y ago
> How would e.g. a company like CloudFlare run Deno instead of v8 for it's serverless infrastructure? Raptor is an example project which does that: https://github.com/littledivy/raptor https://github.com/littledivy/raptor deno_runtime crate provides high level abstractions which you can use to execute code for deno. It is used in the cli. You would still need to bring in your own transpiling layer for typescript support. As for getting started, you can go through the manual: https://deno.land/manual https://deno.land/manual
da39a3ee 6y ago
Are you a computer program? Your third sentence is much more sophisticated than your first two; they don't seem to have been written by the same human. And the two typos look somewhat inauthentic.
eloff 6y ago
> How would e.g. a company like CloudFlare run Deno instead of v8 for it's serverless infrastructure? They're both built on v8.

devgoldm 6y ago

As a primarily C++ dev who's been using nodejs on the side for about a couple years now - so forgive me if this is naive - but am I wrong in seeing Deno as a potential Electron replacement with standalone binary builds + webview? If so, the introduction of interactive permission prompts is pretty cool. I see a few comments from more experienced web developers that are quite negative about Deno that seem to generally be centred around the fact it offers very little compared to nodejs, and isn't worth the effort to learn. Does it have potential as a safer, lightweight Electron alternative? Or are there better options than Deno in that regard?

tambourine_man 6y ago
I think it's not its main goal right now, but it could be and would be really interesting if it happened.
rektide 6y ago
there's webgl, webgpu, and dom, but it's a headless dom (jsdom) not a webview. I wouldn't be surprised to see packages developed for a webview but atm demo seems to target server side web platform compatibility... except rendering html! I wouldn't be surprised to see some packages try to fill the gap, & deno has a much stronger basis for implementation than node (a rpc layer between rust & v8 defines the core character of the project, and an native addon that adds webview methods to the rpc would be natural in Deno, vs a hack in electron).
- searchableguy 6y ago
  The most updated webview bindings I know of for deno: https://github.com/webview/webview_deno https://github.com/webview/webview_deno It's likely you will find some hiccups in latest deno release because it uses rust plug-ins and they are getting overhauled at the moment. Maybe a few more months before getting stabilized.
oscargrouch 6y ago
> Does it have potential as a safer, lightweight Electron alternative? Or are there better options than Deno in that regard? If they target this, the big chunk of code will still be the same ones on Electron, so i don't think it would get to be safer or lightweight as compared to Electron.

mekster 6y ago

What are the conditions for people feel the urge to migrate over to deno? Currently, I don't see enough reasons to switch to deno for primary projects.

jadbox 6y ago

I wonder what the general performance difference difference there is between the new Rust-based server and Express?

fatiherikli 6y ago

So probably Deno is something like that: console.log('Deno')

fatiherikli 6y ago
Or (node = 'Node', 'Node'.substr(2, 4) + 'Node'.substr(0, 2)) Can we stop implementing JS engines instead of resetting the router?

jshawl 6y ago

I wish deno files had a different file extension. Editor gets confused often switching between front end typescript and deno typescript.

Soremwar 6y ago
For frontend TypeScript I assume you mean TypeScript that doesn't use JS modules but extensionless modules, the TypeScript folks sadly have decided to not bring compatibility here ATM.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pietroppeter 6y ago

Just realized that de-no is reverse of no-de

raulytpro 6y ago
I just created this account because I made the exact same comment 54 minutes ago to my co-worker and he was seeing this post. Mate, maybe we're linked souls or smth like that, what do you think? Could it be possible?
- HatchedLake721 6y ago
  No
rvieira 6y ago
Actually, it's not :) According to the official Deno releases it's: "node".split("").sort().join("") Which makes the pun even wittier.

fctorial 6y ago

Does the single executable distribution change anything? node/python/google-chrome are all single executable programs as far as the users are concerned.

phplovesong 6y ago
Deno is a single executable as in you only download one file. Compared to a new python install, it needs all kinds of additional stuff to get up and running.

EugeneOZ 6y ago

> Therefore we have employed Hyper to build a new native HTTP/2 server API in Deno. > The binding improves hello-world throughput by 48% when compared to the std/http pure TypeScript HTTP server. Nice to read it about Hyper - one of my favorite Rust tools!

herodoturtle 6y ago

On the deno.com homepage, if you click on CLI it takes you to https://deno.land/ https://deno.land/ If you then scroll to the bottom, the deno tag say "failing". Just thought I'd share (in case the right people happen to read this).

goldsteinq 6y ago

Deno's interactive permission prompt is still easily bypassed by nicely asking terminal to confirm it: https://github.com/denoland/deno/issues/9750#issuecomment-796702901 https://github.com/denoland/deno/issues/9750#issuecomment-79... Direct link to asciinema: https://asciinema.org/a/9rvK8ANJK0WnQc9nsrFKdC7ir https://asciinema.org/a/9rvK8ANJK0WnQc9nsrFKdC7ir