Node.js Creator Announces Replacement – Deno

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Of the many ways to program computers scripting languages – the simplest and most practical option. Among them, the Web Browser Scripting Language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and only one that applies the industrial standardization process. It is clear that the Internet will be with us for a long time, and therefore JavaScript will be with us for a long time.

Extending web programming beyond the browser is not a new idea. Indeed, we have done so with moderate success on our Node.js project. But over a decade later, we find that server-side JavaScript is hopelessly fragmented, deeply tied to poor infrastructure, and irrevocably run by committees with no incentive to innovate. As the browser platform evolves at a rapid pace, server-side JavaScript has stagnated.

Deno is our attempt to breathe new life into this ecosystem. Provide a modern, productive programming system that adheres to browser APIs. Deno is not a monolithic system, but rather a collection of technologies that we believe can be used for different needs. Not every server-side JavaScript use case requires access to the filesystem; our infrastructure allows unnecessary bindings to be compiled. This in turn allows us to create our own runtimes for various applications: e-style GUIs, Cloudflare Worker style serverless functions, embedded scripts for databases, etc.

To actively pursue these ideas, we raised $ 4.9 million in seed capital. Our investors include Dan Scholnik of Four Rivers Ventures, Guillermo of Rauch Capital, Lee Jacobs of Long Journey Ventures, Mozilla Corporation, Shasta Ventures and our longtime collaborator Ben Nordhuis. This investment means we will have a staff of experienced engineers working to improve the Deno. We will make sure that issues are resolved, bugs are fixed, and releases are released in a timely manner, and we will make sure Deno is a platform others can rely on with confidence.

Rest assured that Deno will remain under the MIT license. For Deno to grow and be as useful as possible, it must remain relatively free. We do not believe that the open core business model is appropriate for a programming platform such as Deno. We don’t want to be in a bad position to decide if certain features are for paying customers only. If you watch our talks at the conference, you will find that we have hinted at commercial uses of this infrastructure for many years. We are optimistic about the technology stack we have created and intend to develop these commercial applications ourselves. Our business will rely on an open source project rather than trying to monetize it directly.

Many are more familiar with the Chrome DevTools console than the Unix command line. More familiar with WebSockets than BSD, MDN, or man pages. Bash and Zsh scripts calling native code will never go away. But JavaScript and TypeScript scripts that invoke WebAssembly code will become more common. We think a lot of developers prefer web abstraction layers first.

Deno hopes to enable millions of web programmers to make the most of their prowess in other areas.

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