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The thing I don't quite get yet about Deno (and maybe some other similar things), is that do so much that they need to be perfect to be worth using. Deno is ef

The thing I don't quite get yet about Deno (and maybe some other similar things), is that do so much that they need to be perfect to be worth using. Deno is effectively a language and runtime, webserver, package ecosystem, and arguably infrastructure and database. When choosing the technology to use for something that feels like a lot of eggs to put in one basket. Sure there are benefits to bundling like this, but the downside is that you're more exposed to bits of that bundle being insufficient. Maybe this criticism doesn't play out in practice, but Deno and some other things trying to re-invent Javascript again, seem to be trying to do too much at once, and are risking ending up too far away from the original ecosystem to be able to return. Now maybe the only way to re-invent JS in a convincing way is to do these wholesale rewrites making big divergences, but then again, perhaps that just indicates that JS is not the foundation that it needs to be for some kinds of development. Note, I've said JS as a grouping of the JS/TS ecosystem and existing packages. I don't think TS changes things that much as it's still the same ecosystem of tooling for the most part.

jitl 3y ago
The status quo comes from tools that do just one thing or that compose a lot of other tools. And I don’t think too many people are excited about the status quo. Deno’s pitch to me is to take everything that makes Golang work so well, and apply it to JS/Typescript. I can’t switch yet but I sure would like to!
G4BB3R 3y ago
They are doing too much at once, but I think it's possible, since they are a company, and last year raised $21M. https://deno.com/blog/series-a https://deno.com/blog/series-a
sondr3 3y ago
I like Deno for many of the same reasons I like Rust and Go, the tooling comes bundled with the runtime. No fussing about with ESLint/prettier/tsconfig/bundling and all that jazz, Deno includes it all. The dependency story was a little rough for a while but with import maps now it’s really quite nice. With the npm ecosystem integrations it’s starting to be a very nice developer experience.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  I guess this is part of my criticism. It's nice to have all that stuff bundled, but it's banking a lot on the decisions being the right ones for your project. When it's just the language, linter, formatter, that might be fine. Adding the package manager is often ok as well, but even Rust/Cargo aren't fully coupled. But then adding a package ecosystem (that isn't fully compatible), a server, infrastructure, database.... it's a lot of decisions that all need to be good enough.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    No one's forcing anyone to use those things, though. I think the benefit of having those wrapped into Deno is that they'll presumably be performance optimized, but it's just as easy to use JS instead of TS, use ESLint instead of `deno lint`, Prettier instead of `deno fmt`, or whatever. Those are kind of evergreen toolchain concepts that I think benefit from being standard to Deno, even if their implementations are minimalistic.
pjmlp 3y ago
I think similarly, note my usual comments about guest languages. Typescript gets the pass, because it basically a JavaScript linter, with an easier way to get modern JavaScript features, without wrestling with babel and friends. Projects dictate language toolchains, not the other way around, and so far I haven't seen any project or product SDK placing Deno on the tooling requirements.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Maybe this doesn’t count, but Deno Deploy dictates Deno. I’m finding it pretty nice so far. It will be more compelling when the FoundationDB-based KV store is finished. At that point there will be enough to write full web apps without any external API’s, so I can use it to build the simple hobby websites that I used to use AppEngine for. (For now I’m trying it out using Neon for Postgres.) It’s still for developers rather than nontechnical users, but this may be simple enough to deal with that it does some of what Sandstorm promised to do for things like blogging. Or maybe a personal Fediverse server? It would be nice to have a second source for Deno-based hosting, but in a pinch I could put Deno and my apps in a Docker container and run it anywhere, though probably not for free.
user6723 3y ago
Deno was created by the guy who created NodeJS, so it might be good for JS projects.
brundolf 3y ago
> a language and runtime, webserver, package ecosystem, and arguably infrastructure and database Some gentle pushbacks: Runtime and webserver yes (though not web framework), language sorta, though Node is already just as much all of these things Package ecosystem also sorta. Any Deno module that doesn't use the Deno APIs is isomorphically runnable in the browser and most other JS contexts. This is actually more true than with Node, because idiomatic Node code uses CommonJS imports which are incompatible with the browser without transpilation Infrastructure I don't think is really true; obviously there's Deno Deploy, but I don't use that for any of my Deno projects. If anything, the fact that it's so self-contained makes it more flexible to different kinds of infrastructure. All you need installed is the runtime, and then you run a single command and you're off to the races (with dependencies downloaded automatically as needed) I think it strikes a great balance between batteries-included and compatibility. It's become my favorite default way to write a CLI or a web server
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  I had similar hang ups about deno but my experience aligns with what you’re saying. I hit far fewer snags than I thought I would (none I suppose), and the tooling off the shelf was excellent. I was off and running within 30m or so. I got a little confused about importing packages properly but it might be down to how my IDE handles stuff and not really deno-specific. I also love it for CLI work. I was using Go pretty much exclusively for years, but I’ve used Deno twice for real work and a bit for experimentation. Go offers some features I prefer, but Deno offers TypeScript which — for better or worse — is where I think best in code. I like to maintain it more, which means a lot for something I have to deal with next year.
  - j1elo 3y ago
    Wait, Node or Deno for CLI tools? I was reading this and thinking "Go would make a much better tool for that job", so after seeing that you have actually used it in the past, I cannot but ask about some more info or comments your might have about it. A language that is designed from the ground up to compile into standalone binaries seems so much more apt for CLI tools... Deno/Node, on the other side of the spectrum, requires a whole environment and runtime, which seems like a hassle. I know of vercel/pkg but that's not a first-class citizen of the ecosystem and has its shortcomings.
IshKebab 3y ago
Decades of experience has taught us that when you don't integrate the language, runtime, packaging and infrastructure properly you get a total mess, like Python or C++.

jitl 3y ago

The status quo comes from tools that do just one thing or that compose a lot of other tools. And I don’t think too many people are excited about the status quo. Deno’s pitch to me is to take everything that makes Golang work so well, and apply it to JS/Typescript. I can’t switch yet but I sure would like to!

G4BB3R 3y ago

They are doing too much at once, but I think it's possible, since they are a company, and last year raised $21M. https://deno.com/blog/series-a https://deno.com/blog/series-a

sondr3 3y ago

I like Deno for many of the same reasons I like Rust and Go, the tooling comes bundled with the runtime. No fussing about with ESLint/prettier/tsconfig/bundling and all that jazz, Deno includes it all. The dependency story was a little rough for a while but with import maps now it’s really quite nice. With the npm ecosystem integrations it’s starting to be a very nice developer experience.

danpalmer 3y ago
I guess this is part of my criticism. It's nice to have all that stuff bundled, but it's banking a lot on the decisions being the right ones for your project. When it's just the language, linter, formatter, that might be fine. Adding the package manager is often ok as well, but even Rust/Cargo aren't fully coupled. But then adding a package ecosystem (that isn't fully compatible), a server, infrastructure, database.... it's a lot of decisions that all need to be good enough.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  No one's forcing anyone to use those things, though. I think the benefit of having those wrapped into Deno is that they'll presumably be performance optimized, but it's just as easy to use JS instead of TS, use ESLint instead of `deno lint`, Prettier instead of `deno fmt`, or whatever. Those are kind of evergreen toolchain concepts that I think benefit from being standard to Deno, even if their implementations are minimalistic.

pjmlp 3y ago

I think similarly, note my usual comments about guest languages. Typescript gets the pass, because it basically a JavaScript linter, with an easier way to get modern JavaScript features, without wrestling with babel and friends. Projects dictate language toolchains, not the other way around, and so far I haven't seen any project or product SDK placing Deno on the tooling requirements.

skybrian 3y ago
Maybe this doesn’t count, but Deno Deploy dictates Deno. I’m finding it pretty nice so far. It will be more compelling when the FoundationDB-based KV store is finished. At that point there will be enough to write full web apps without any external API’s, so I can use it to build the simple hobby websites that I used to use AppEngine for. (For now I’m trying it out using Neon for Postgres.) It’s still for developers rather than nontechnical users, but this may be simple enough to deal with that it does some of what Sandstorm promised to do for things like blogging. Or maybe a personal Fediverse server? It would be nice to have a second source for Deno-based hosting, but in a pinch I could put Deno and my apps in a Docker container and run it anywhere, though probably not for free.

user6723 3y ago

Deno was created by the guy who created NodeJS, so it might be good for JS projects.

brundolf 3y ago

> a language and runtime, webserver, package ecosystem, and arguably infrastructure and database Some gentle pushbacks: Runtime and webserver yes (though not web framework), language sorta, though Node is already just as much all of these things Package ecosystem also sorta. Any Deno module that doesn't use the Deno APIs is isomorphically runnable in the browser and most other JS contexts. This is actually more true than with Node, because idiomatic Node code uses CommonJS imports which are incompatible with the browser without transpilation Infrastructure I don't think is really true; obviously there's Deno Deploy, but I don't use that for any of my Deno projects. If anything, the fact that it's so self-contained makes it more flexible to different kinds of infrastructure. All you need installed is the runtime, and then you run a single command and you're off to the races (with dependencies downloaded automatically as needed) I think it strikes a great balance between batteries-included and compatibility. It's become my favorite default way to write a CLI or a web server

steve_adams_86 3y ago
I had similar hang ups about deno but my experience aligns with what you’re saying. I hit far fewer snags than I thought I would (none I suppose), and the tooling off the shelf was excellent. I was off and running within 30m or so. I got a little confused about importing packages properly but it might be down to how my IDE handles stuff and not really deno-specific. I also love it for CLI work. I was using Go pretty much exclusively for years, but I’ve used Deno twice for real work and a bit for experimentation. Go offers some features I prefer, but Deno offers TypeScript which — for better or worse — is where I think best in code. I like to maintain it more, which means a lot for something I have to deal with next year.
- j1elo 3y ago
  Wait, Node or Deno for CLI tools? I was reading this and thinking "Go would make a much better tool for that job", so after seeing that you have actually used it in the past, I cannot but ask about some more info or comments your might have about it. A language that is designed from the ground up to compile into standalone binaries seems so much more apt for CLI tools... Deno/Node, on the other side of the spectrum, requires a whole environment and runtime, which seems like a hassle. I know of vercel/pkg but that's not a first-class citizen of the ecosystem and has its shortcomings.

IshKebab 3y ago

Decades of experience has taught us that when you don't integrate the language, runtime, packaging and infrastructure properly you get a total mess, like Python or C++.