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Deno overstates the problem it is intended to solve because its founders needed to justify achieving funding by being developer-famous. Let's say a company wer

by vcryan 4y ago

Deno overstates the problem it is intended to solve because its founders needed to justify achieving funding by being developer-famous. Let's say a company were to adopt this tech over Node, well, it seems like it would be slightly better, but probably not much of a game-changer. I'll leave it to y'all to talk about what tech is truly interesting as I don't want to seem ideological/biased, I just don't see how Deno is particularly notable.

Androider 4y ago
It's usually not enough to be a bit better than what you're trying to displace, you have to be 10X better than the status quo to have any real impact. For example, SVN tried to be a better CVS, while Git came out of left field and destroyed the competition by being 10X better. In that, Deno reminds me of the once-hyped Meteor.js. Meteor.js also though that funding could be the answer, but it wasn't. They're both clever, great for demos, but not sufficiently so to overcome the sheer inertia of Node+NPM et al. When something truly 10X better arrives, it will be quite apparent. Just like how React spawned a new generation of frameworks, nothing has unseated it yet because all the competition is React-like and not 10X better.
- stack_framer 4y ago
  This explanation resonates with me. I first saw Ryan Dahl's talk about his Node.js regrets[0] during the early days of the pandemic. I thought I'd be eager to try Deno when it became more mature, but I still haven't tried it. I guess I'm not convinced that it's 10x better than Node.js. [0] https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA
- javajosh 4y ago
  >Deno reminds me of the once-hyped Meteor.js In substance they are similar in that they both want/ed tighter "vertical integration" of tools ("DX") in an opinionated way, with the money-making plan being convenient paid hosting. "Look how easy and fun it is to make powerful stuff; we hope you give us money to host it for you!" So far the only company that's had success with this pitch is Amazon of all people, by offering a staggering array of partially specialized EC2 instances behind an API. For whatever reason, it does seem like devs really like their app authoring tools to be independent of their distribution mechanisms. Maybe AWS doesn't trigger this because it doesn't feel like hosting (even though it is). When a whole diverse community seems to act coherently in this way, it's probably a good idea to listen to them. (Alternatively, when a community acts coherently, its ALSO a good idea to try something new.) Deno is quite good. It may even be 10x node, if only because it avoids npm and has a much more thoughtful module system. It's a (much) better DX, too. Can they make money? Time will tell and, luckily, that's not my problem!
  - bengale 4y ago
    > In substance they are similar in that they both want/ed tighter "vertical integration" of tools ("DX") in an opinionated way, with the money-making plan being convenient paid hosting. "Look how easy and fun it is to make powerful stuff; we hope you give us money to host it for you!" So far the only company that's had success with this pitch is Amazon of all people, by offering a staggering array of partially specialized EC2 instances behind an API. I think NextJS and Vercel probably fall into this bucket as well.
    - javajosh 4y ago
      There is also the "closed loop DX" strat where the tools hosted with your code. For example, Mike Bostocks ObservableHQ, jupyter notebooks hosted for free (at least for now) on Google Drive, codepen, and a bunch more especially for server-side demos. And of course there's no way they will all become profitable companies. In fact I believe there is a "DX metagame" which governs the entire space, because devs can get fatigued by too much choice, and just say "fuck it, I'm coding my thing in notepad and pushing with ftp."
- The_Colonel 4y ago
  > For example, SVN tried to be a better CVS, while Git came out of left field and destroyed the competition by being 10X better. I agree with the overall sentiment, but this is a bad example. SVN was pretty successful at replacing CVS, even though it was not 10x better. Until, of course the new generation came in (git, mercurial...).
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Git was developed by Linux's creator and a requirement to take part into Linux development. xckd is full of examples of much "better" it happens to be in reality.
alephnan 4y ago
> its founders needed to justify achieving funding by being developer-famous I agree here, but > Let's say a company were to adopt this tech over Node, well, it seems like it would be slightly better, but probably not much of a game-changer. If I'm starting a new project, Deno will be compelling if it means zero configuration with sufficiently sane defaults. It's like Rails vs Ruby. With Node.JS, you can pick and choose then configure things like TypeScript, but then you have to manage configuration files for TypeScript, linting, and all these things not relevant to the app code.
- emilsedgh 4y ago
  What makes node _fantastic_ is actually a huge ecosystem of packages, tooling, cloud providers, talent pool, shared knowledge. etc. There's a massive network effect here. As far as I'm concerned, as of right now Deno is _not_ better that node due to reasons above. It has the potential to be, and I wish the authors massive success and root for them. But I'm not gonna start a project on Deno due to lack of a proper ecosystem yet.
  - paulgb 4y ago
    At this point I’d say node’s ecosystem of packages is an advantage, but its ecosystem of tooling is a disadvantage. It’s not node’s fault, but Javascript package management wasn’t a thing when it started out, and now we are still haunted by the legacy approaches of the past. I’ve wasted too many hours mucking with babel/webpack/tsconfig files just to get some stupid code to run. If there’s any area of modern software development that could benefit from a clean slate like Deno is attempting, it’s JS development.
pier25 4y ago
Maybe not the tech, but consider the vision. Deno is working on the runtime, the cloud infrastructure, the dx, and a framework (fresh). Nobody is doing that afaik. I think this is where the value lies.
- brabel 4y ago
  Sounds like Dark to me: https://darklang.com/ https://darklang.com/
erikpukinskis 4y ago
> I just don't see how Deno is particularly notable. I think the place they can really sell me is: - source maps - debugging It’s an absolutely PITA to get those two things working across a JavaScript stack. There are so many runtime contexts to deal with: 1) the browser 2) your API server 3) your frontend test env 4) your API server test env 5) browser and backend for your end to end/integration tests 6) pre-packaged code from secondary repos you are importing into all of the above 7) All of the above in CI 8) Special production builds of much of the above It’s truly a nightmare. I’ve been trying to set up a fresh JavaScript full stack and it’s so much work. Every step of the way I need to take days off to do deep research into how to set this stuff up. And it starts to make sense why no company I’ve ever worked at had all of that stuff working. You just deal with wrong stack traces and use console.log instead of a debugger in the places where it doesn’t work. If Deno can provide all of those runtimes in an integrated way, with debugging and source maps working automatically that’s a total game changer. And I’m honestly not sure who else could do it. Maybe like Next/Nuxt and all them? But do those projects handle build/packaging across multiple repos? I don’t think so… Deno can nail that because they own packaging, and they can just skip the whole build/sourcemap step entirely and just distribute .ts files.
intothemild 4y ago
> its founders needed to justify achieving funding by being developer-famous. If I remember my Javascript-of-the-week-drama correctly, didn't Deno become a thing because a couple node/npm devs were upset that there was someone in the core node/npm team who did a bad thing? Am I remembering this right?
- yencabulator 4y ago
  Deno is very much the technically-justified next generation clean rewrite to get rid of NodeJS/NPM warts. Mr. Occam says it's doubtful there's both a technical and a social explanation.
ignoramous 4y ago
TFA goes: Try Deno Deploy - you will be surprised at the speed and simplicity. Deno Deploy (and Cloudflare Workers) is a big deal. At least for a small tech shop like ours, I've come to found it useful for >50% of the solutions we have to implement. Its simplicity and cost-effectiveness reminds me of S3 back when it launched: 5 APIs and pay-what-you-use billing. Sure, right now, Deno Deploy's capabilities are limited, but there's nothing stopping them from building a platform around it as they go along, and now they've got $21M reasons to keep at it. I see parallels of Zeit/Vercel meteoric rise (no pun) in Deno.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by vcryan 4y ago

Androider 4y ago

It's usually not enough to be a bit better than what you're trying to displace, you have to be 10X better than the status quo to have any real impact. For example, SVN tried to be a better CVS, while Git came out of left field and destroyed the competition by being 10X better. In that, Deno reminds me of the once-hyped Meteor.js. Meteor.js also though that funding could be the answer, but it wasn't. They're both clever, great for demos, but not sufficiently so to overcome the sheer inertia of Node+NPM et al. When something truly 10X better arrives, it will be quite apparent. Just like how React spawned a new generation of frameworks, nothing has unseated it yet because all the competition is React-like and not 10X better.

stack_framer 4y ago
This explanation resonates with me. I first saw Ryan Dahl's talk about his Node.js regrets[0] during the early days of the pandemic. I thought I'd be eager to try Deno when it became more mature, but I still haven't tried it. I guess I'm not convinced that it's 10x better than Node.js. [0] https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA
javajosh 4y ago
>Deno reminds me of the once-hyped Meteor.js In substance they are similar in that they both want/ed tighter "vertical integration" of tools ("DX") in an opinionated way, with the money-making plan being convenient paid hosting. "Look how easy and fun it is to make powerful stuff; we hope you give us money to host it for you!" So far the only company that's had success with this pitch is Amazon of all people, by offering a staggering array of partially specialized EC2 instances behind an API. For whatever reason, it does seem like devs really like their app authoring tools to be independent of their distribution mechanisms. Maybe AWS doesn't trigger this because it doesn't feel like hosting (even though it is). When a whole diverse community seems to act coherently in this way, it's probably a good idea to listen to them. (Alternatively, when a community acts coherently, its ALSO a good idea to try something new.) Deno is quite good. It may even be 10x node, if only because it avoids npm and has a much more thoughtful module system. It's a (much) better DX, too. Can they make money? Time will tell and, luckily, that's not my problem!
- bengale 4y ago
  > In substance they are similar in that they both want/ed tighter "vertical integration" of tools ("DX") in an opinionated way, with the money-making plan being convenient paid hosting. "Look how easy and fun it is to make powerful stuff; we hope you give us money to host it for you!" So far the only company that's had success with this pitch is Amazon of all people, by offering a staggering array of partially specialized EC2 instances behind an API. I think NextJS and Vercel probably fall into this bucket as well.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    There is also the "closed loop DX" strat where the tools hosted with your code. For example, Mike Bostocks ObservableHQ, jupyter notebooks hosted for free (at least for now) on Google Drive, codepen, and a bunch more especially for server-side demos. And of course there's no way they will all become profitable companies. In fact I believe there is a "DX metagame" which governs the entire space, because devs can get fatigued by too much choice, and just say "fuck it, I'm coding my thing in notepad and pushing with ftp."
The_Colonel 4y ago
> For example, SVN tried to be a better CVS, while Git came out of left field and destroyed the competition by being 10X better. I agree with the overall sentiment, but this is a bad example. SVN was pretty successful at replacing CVS, even though it was not 10x better. Until, of course the new generation came in (git, mercurial...).
pjmlp 4y ago
Git was developed by Linux's creator and a requirement to take part into Linux development. xckd is full of examples of much "better" it happens to be in reality.

alephnan 4y ago

> its founders needed to justify achieving funding by being developer-famous I agree here, but > Let's say a company were to adopt this tech over Node, well, it seems like it would be slightly better, but probably not much of a game-changer. If I'm starting a new project, Deno will be compelling if it means zero configuration with sufficiently sane defaults. It's like Rails vs Ruby. With Node.JS, you can pick and choose then configure things like TypeScript, but then you have to manage configuration files for TypeScript, linting, and all these things not relevant to the app code.

emilsedgh 4y ago
What makes node _fantastic_ is actually a huge ecosystem of packages, tooling, cloud providers, talent pool, shared knowledge. etc. There's a massive network effect here. As far as I'm concerned, as of right now Deno is _not_ better that node due to reasons above. It has the potential to be, and I wish the authors massive success and root for them. But I'm not gonna start a project on Deno due to lack of a proper ecosystem yet.
- paulgb 4y ago
  At this point I’d say node’s ecosystem of packages is an advantage, but its ecosystem of tooling is a disadvantage. It’s not node’s fault, but Javascript package management wasn’t a thing when it started out, and now we are still haunted by the legacy approaches of the past. I’ve wasted too many hours mucking with babel/webpack/tsconfig files just to get some stupid code to run. If there’s any area of modern software development that could benefit from a clean slate like Deno is attempting, it’s JS development.

pier25 4y ago

Maybe not the tech, but consider the vision. Deno is working on the runtime, the cloud infrastructure, the dx, and a framework (fresh). Nobody is doing that afaik. I think this is where the value lies.

brabel 4y ago
Sounds like Dark to me: https://darklang.com/ https://darklang.com/

erikpukinskis 4y ago

> I just don't see how Deno is particularly notable. I think the place they can really sell me is: - source maps - debugging It’s an absolutely PITA to get those two things working across a JavaScript stack. There are so many runtime contexts to deal with: 1) the browser 2) your API server 3) your frontend test env 4) your API server test env 5) browser and backend for your end to end/integration tests 6) pre-packaged code from secondary repos you are importing into all of the above 7) All of the above in CI 8) Special production builds of much of the above It’s truly a nightmare. I’ve been trying to set up a fresh JavaScript full stack and it’s so much work. Every step of the way I need to take days off to do deep research into how to set this stuff up. And it starts to make sense why no company I’ve ever worked at had all of that stuff working. You just deal with wrong stack traces and use console.log instead of a debugger in the places where it doesn’t work. If Deno can provide all of those runtimes in an integrated way, with debugging and source maps working automatically that’s a total game changer. And I’m honestly not sure who else could do it. Maybe like Next/Nuxt and all them? But do those projects handle build/packaging across multiple repos? I don’t think so… Deno can nail that because they own packaging, and they can just skip the whole build/sourcemap step entirely and just distribute .ts files.

intothemild 4y ago

> its founders needed to justify achieving funding by being developer-famous. If I remember my Javascript-of-the-week-drama correctly, didn't Deno become a thing because a couple node/npm devs were upset that there was someone in the core node/npm team who did a bad thing? Am I remembering this right?

yencabulator 4y ago
Deno is very much the technically-justified next generation clean rewrite to get rid of NodeJS/NPM warts. Mr. Occam says it's doubtful there's both a technical and a social explanation.

ignoramous 4y ago

TFA goes: Try Deno Deploy - you will be surprised at the speed and simplicity. Deno Deploy (and Cloudflare Workers) is a big deal. At least for a small tech shop like ours, I've come to found it useful for >50% of the solutions we have to implement. Its simplicity and cost-effectiveness reminds me of S3 back when it launched: 5 APIs and pay-what-you-use billing. Sure, right now, Deno Deploy's capabilities are limited, but there's nothing stopping them from building a platform around it as they go along, and now they've got $21M reasons to keep at it. I see parallels of Zeit/Vercel meteoric rise (no pun) in Deno.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]