12 ms·

The Deno Company

883 points by elisee 5y ago

rvz 5y ago
> In order to vigorously pursue these ideas, we have raised 4.9 million dollars of seed capital. Our investors are Dan Scholnick from Four Rivers Ventures, Guillermo from Rauch Capital, Lee Jacobs from Long Journey Ventures, the Mozilla Corporation, Shasta Ventures, and our long-time collaborator Ben Noordhuis. This investment means we will have a staff of full-time expert engineers working to improving Deno. We will ensure that issues are addressed, bugs are fixed, timely releases are made; we will ensure Deno is a platform others can build on with trust. From there I stopped reading.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > From there I stopped reading. Why? Is it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286 ? Because the next paragraph goes: Rest assured that Deno will remain MIT licensed. For Deno to grow and be maximally useful, it must remain permissively free. We don’t believe the “open core” business model is right for a programming platform like Deno. We do not want to find ourselves in the unfortunate position where we have to decide if certain features are for paid customers only. If you watch our conference talks, you will find we've been hinting at commercial applications of this infrastructure for years. We are bullish about the technology stack we've built and intend to pursue those commercial applications ourselves. Our business will build on the open source project, not attempt to monetize it directly.
  - KingOfCoders 5y ago
    "it must remain permissively free." ... until the VCs change their mind or AWS uses our code to make more money than we do.
    - nindalf 5y ago
      I just don't understand this. This project uses distributed version control. This implies 2 things 1. It is impossible to delete every copy of this project. If the authors wanted to restrict access by taking the repo private, they can't. It will always be out there. 2. Every commit is licensed with MIT. So even if there is a licensing change, you have access to every commit licensed by MIT. You've lost nothing except rights to future work. Even if they change their mind, you can still use their existing code to run your software. If it's popular enough to be forked by the community, you can use the fork if you prefer. You only need to be concerned if you're heavily invested on their platform and it's not popular enough for community support and you need new features added. In this unlikely scenario, yes, you won't have any option but to buy in to their new business model.
      - KingOfCoders 5y ago
        "If it's popular enough to be forked by the community" Yes. And if it isn't you need to switch. If you are tied in in a way to proprietary tools or APIs then you have some major migration in front of you. If you don't you you might be able to use Node. If you have a tight schedule already, or no development capacity for the migration, you will need to buy a license because you might not want to run your code on a plattform that no longer gets security updates and you no longer get support. When this happend to me in the past, I've got some major bills for licenses b/c most of them are server based (or core based) and also count development, testing, staging and CI servers (>$100k/y). "You only need to be concerned if you're heavily invested on their platform and it's not popular enough for community support and you need new features added. In this unlikely scenario, [...]" s/unlikely/likely/g I have no data but would assume this is the default ending, because most projects are not being forked (Mongo, ...) and create a successful community around a fork and most companies I work with are heavily invested in a plattform and do not adhere to the standard APIs and tools (e.g. I'd say 10% of my customers use AWS in a standard way, 90% are heavily invested in the plattform, same for GCP.) If you have other numbers and/or studies, I would be interested.
        vinay_ys 5y ago
        If it is run by an established foundation like Apache with established procedures for how to manage large complex projects, then you can be sure that the project will remain open-source and usable for your purposes. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.
    - rvz 5y ago
      > ... until the VCs change their mind or AWS uses our code to make more money than we do. That is the correct answer. Amazon (AWS) can lift Deno and use it as a service on AWS for devs and effortlessly compete, out scale and out do them 100 times over and supersede the Deno Company. Thanks to using the '...permissively free' MIT license (Being AGPL will also make no difference) AWS can do just that. Just like how they did that to MongoDB, Redis and Elasticsearch who were all victims of Amazon's ruthless tactics on open-source.
colesantiago 5y ago
congrats, i guess but not a fan of the VC route, we all know how this ends.
- spark3k 5y ago
  Which route on an independent MIT licensed project would you suggest?
  - rukshn 5y ago
    It is matter of time until they release a proprietary version which is better than the MIT version. Chrome vs chromium etc
    - lucacasonato 5y ago
      The blog post specifically says that that will not happen
      - rukshn 5y ago
        Yes, but Facebook said it will not monetize WhatsApp, and something similar when they bought WhatsApp Instagram. We all know how that turned out to be History repeats itself, the above two are the recent incidents that comes to my mind
        croes 5y ago
        And you will never need a FB account for Oculus
      - exhaze 5y ago
        Let's make a gentlemens' bet. If Deno is still completely free in 5 years, I'll give you $500. You up for that?
        spark3k 5y ago
alfl 5y ago
I met Bert in the StrongLoop days after the IBM acquisition. Good guy and good luck to him. We were consultants scaling node to production for a major international bank, circa 2016. Love the security improvements in deno, will have to give it a look.
oauea 5y ago
I've always been very skeptical of the value-add of Deno over Node, and this only increased my skepticism. Good luck making money, I guess.
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  I've only dipped my toes in the water with Deno, but it solves a few pain points I've felt with Node. Direct deps via url vs npm as middleman, a standard library (thank goodness!), and single binary distribution. Types are great too, but these other things would be enough for me.
  - yulaow 5y ago
    Honestly a standard library was needed since a decade but... I would have preferred a coordinated effort between browsers and node/deno. At this point even if just the browsers and deno get two different stdlib we risk _a_lot_ of useless fragmentation and headaches.
    - wperron 5y ago
      _If_ the browsers do get a std lib akin to what we've built for deno, I would be comfortable archiving the deno_std repo and pointing people to use the browser one. We're not yet 100% compatible with browsers in the stdlib, but being compatible as much as possible is one of our goals, specifically to address the browser/server-side divide and generally make it simpler and more enjoyable to program in JavaScript
  - hobofan 5y ago
    > a standard library (thank goodness!) Then what are all these modules, if not a standard library? https://nodejs.org/api https://nodejs.org/api
    - aenario 5y ago
      libuv bindings ?
  - 5y ago
kostarelo 5y ago
> Extending web programming beyond the browser is not a novel idea. Indeed, we have done that with moderate success in our “Node.js” project. But over a decade later, we find server-side JavaScript hopelessly fragmented, deeply tied to bad infrastructure, and irrevocably ruled by committees without the incentive to innovate. As the browser platform moves forward at a rapid pace, server-side JavaScript has stagnated. wow lots of bold statements there. And another one for the usual "JavaScript is fragmented, let's create another tool to fix 'em all.".
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ Can't we have a chuckle? No? OK.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Literally everyone has seen this. There's no chuckle.
  - kybernetikos 5y ago
    It doesn't really apply here. When you create something in a field that already has other entrants, that's a completely different thing from trying to unify all the other entrants, and ending up just creating another also-ran. There's nothing wrong with identifying an area that you think you can contribute something innovative to and building something opinionated for it.
- yulaow 5y ago
  It feels like the old IO.js vs node.js. I hope this time too the two ecosystems get merged, but this time it feels much harder to happen
  - sbarre 5y ago
    Wasn't that more of an ideological than technical split? Deno is more of an ecosystem reboot than a fork, I would think.
kostarelo 5y ago
From the last paragraph: > But JavaScript and TypeScript scripts calling into WebAssembly code will be increasingly common. Why is WebAssembly a key concept here? How does Deno uses it?
- lucacasonato 5y ago
  We use it for the hash module in our standard library for example: https://deno.land/std@0.91.0/hash https://deno.land/std@0.91.0/hash. The wasm version is magnitudes faster than a pure JS implementation. Another example is sqlite, running in WASM: https://deno.land/x/sqlite@v2.4.0 https://deno.land/x/sqlite@v2.4.0. Fully sandboxed sqlite :-)
  - int_19h 5y ago
    It will be the ultimate irony if, 20 years down the line, Deno is still around, but solely as a de facto standard / cross-platform WebAssembly execution engine.
    - e12e 5y ago
      Why would that be ironic? It's essentially the route Java is taking with graal/truffle - allowing heterogeneous mix of languages to be compiled and optimized. Why not allow typescript to use Fortran numeric libraries via wasm?
      - int_19h 5y ago
        JavaScript in Deno doesn't itself run on top of WebAssembly, so this isn't really quite like Graal. If you use Deno to run wasm, all the JS bits are basically ignored. It's a bit like using a web renderer solely for <canvas>.
- tsujp 5y ago
  You can write in other languages beyond JavaScript or TypeScript and generate WebAssembly. This means that say someone wrote a nice library or utility in C# you can compile that C# down to WebAssembly and use that library or utility in JavaScript or TypeScript (or anything else that can access WebAssembly). This is analogous perhaps to C# and F# within .NET currently. C# and F# have the same BCL (base common layer) so you can use C# code in F# and vice versa. WebAssembly is like that and much more.
elisee 5y ago
Happy to see Deno get some financial backing! I've been building my new multiplayer games website [1] with Deno over the last 4 months and apart from some minor growing pains, it's been a joy to use. The lack of unnecessary package management, and the TypeScript-by-default approach makes Web dev much nicer. We're also using TypeScript on the client-side, relying on VSCode for error reporting. We use sucrase to strip the types just as we're serving the script files, so that there is no extra build time, it feels like TypeScript is Web-native and we can share typed code with the server. [1] Not yet launched but we ran a preview past weekend with hundreds of players over WebSockets: https://twitter.com/MasterOfTheGrid/status/1375758300717973508 https://twitter.com/MasterOfTheGrid/status/13757583007179735... - https://sparks.land https://sparks.land
- sbarre 5y ago
  Peeking at sparks.land I see that you're serving .ts files, I assume that's what you mean by using sucrase, you're transpiling "live" instead of building/deploying bundles offline? I notice your script files are all pretty small, have you run into any upper limits on performance or scalability so far with this approach?
  - elisee 5y ago
    Correct! In production we've got Cloudflare in the middle, so we're only using sucrase on-the-fly for each .ts file during development. So far it's unnoticeable in terms of loading times. > I notice your script files are all pretty small, have you run into any upper limits on performance or scalability so far with this approach? Not that I can tell. But if we need to, we can always do a minified bundle in production later on. So far it's just nice to not have to even think about it!
    - sbarre 5y ago
      Wait, so you're running Sucrase in a Cloudflare Worker? It compiles, and then caches the output I assume? That's a really cool use case I hadn't thought of..
syrusakbary 5y ago
Excited to see a commercial company centered around the TypeScript ecosystem (both server and client) and betting on WebAssembly. Any successful Open Source must provide commercial value to become sustainable. Funnily enough that assures its longevity long term. Keep up the great work Ryan, Bert & team. Exciting times!
gnrlst 5y ago
I'm incredibly slow, and only just realized that Deno is an anagram of Node.
PudgePacket 5y ago
This is super cool to see! Deno is really refreshing coming from node fulltime.
not_knuth 5y ago
If I understood correctly this is how they intend to make money: > Not every use-case of server-side JavaScript needs to access the file system; our infrastructure makes it possible to compile out unnecessary bindings. This allows us to create custom runtimes for different applications: Electron-style GUIs, Cloudflare Worker-style Serverless Functions, embedded scripting for databases, etc. So it's basically more of a Redhat approach to making money from open source? They intend to build tailored services on top of Deno for companies that request them?
- sbarre 5y ago
  I'm not sure that they meant those specific runtimes would be premium products. My read was that anyone could more easily configure a runtime to expose (or not expose) the underlying bindings that it requires, vs. just having them all in there by default. I think "us" in that statement is the Deno community, not Deno the company. But maybe I'm wrong.
  - not_knuth 5y ago
    Clicking around the website and reading more comments leads me to believe that this is the product they intend to monetize with: https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy I still find it strange that there is no mention of it in the post...
    - sbarre 5y ago
      That makes sense... So if you're up for it, you can still roll your own deployment infrastructure and tailor your builds as needed etc.. and support all of that internally. Or you can pay Deno to handle it for you and you can focus on building your apps.
- why_Mr_Anderson 5y ago
  Javascript embedded scripting for databases .../shivers
  - 5y ago
psim1 5y ago
> Of these, the web browser scripting language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and the only one with an industrial standardization process. Most popular, I can agree. Fastest, & only one with industrial standardization process? Have they met Erlang? edit: you have to be kidding me, downvoted to oblivion for an honest observation. Sorry I hurt javascript's feelings.
- iends 5y ago
  Erlang is compiled to bytecode, right? So is it considered a scripting language?
  - psim1 5y ago
    It "feels" like a scripting language and is run in a runtime shell environment. But I would concede to your point, as well.
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    I don't understand the connection being made between having a bytecode compiler and being a scripting language.
    - glutamate 5y ago
      Java is definitely not a scripting language
      - eatonphil 5y ago
        Is JavaScript? Python? Ruby? All major implementations of all three are bytecode compilers/VMs.
huhtenberg 5y ago
Woah. Clicking on this link crashes Firefox. Version 86 on Windows. I don't remember seeing FF crash in several years now. Anyone else is running into this?
- jetrink 5y ago
  No problems with 87.0 on Windows for me.
- pqb 5y ago
  > [...] Firefox. Version 86 Few days ago, there was new version released (87). In certain situations, when silent upgrade had been made during using the browser it displays an "Oops, something went wrong" notification with a button to refresh. If you will close and reopen the Firefox the problem will vanish. It is less kind of crash but more likely as problem to free/monkeypatch resources. I have run into the same problem on Linux but I have quite complicated Firefox configuration with at least few extra profiles (about:profiles).
franciscop 5y ago
Nice to see! How do they plan to monetize? I either became blind or missed it somehow. The article does say how they DON'T plan on monetize: "Rest assured that Deno will remain MIT licensed. For Deno to grow and be maximally useful, it must remain permissively free. We don’t believe the “open core” business model is right for a programming platform like Deno." There are some hints though: "If you watch our conference talks, you will find we've been hinting at commercial applications of this infrastructure for years. We are bullish about the technology stack we've built and intend to pursue those commercial applications ourselves. Our business will build on the open source project, not attempt to monetize it directly." Does anyone have some insight into those? I haven't watch any Deno talk (maybe one actually?) so it feel a bit strange to make people watch technical talks to find hints of the monetization strategy. PS, if I was a rich investor I'd throw money at this project even as a donation, so no complain at all, but I'm very curious on the monetization plan.
- xiaq 5y ago
  Sounds to me that they will build some sort of hosted service or maybe PaaS based on the Deno runtime (like AppEngine or AWS lambda), but yeah it's pretty vague.
  - DyingAdonis 5y ago
    Looks like CDN with Serverless edge functions. https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy
  - throwaway99x99 5y ago
    > Sounds to me that they will build some sort of hosted service or maybe PaaS based on the Deno runtime (like AppEngine or AWS lambda) or like Joyent
    - skrebbel 5y ago
      How did Joyent manage to turn Nodejs into money though? I mean weren't they mostly selling unix services?
csbartus 5y ago
I'm very pleased Javascript / Node evolves. But thanks, too late, I'll skip it as soon as possible. It has so many unpleasant surprises. I'll move the ladder up, to something which compiles to Javascript, or whatever else, but no Javascript anymore please.
- turdnagel 5y ago
  You can write TypeScript natively with Deno.
appleflaxen 5y ago
Deno is licensed as MIT. Awesome! But how will they prevent from being freeloaded? My sense is that GPL3 gets a ton of criticism on HN, but isn't it the perfect defense against freeloaders? * license the code for proprietary use in your stack * use GPL3 if you have a non-commercial use, and are willing to accept the requirement to open source your own code. I don't understand why this option isn't used more by open source projects that want to be able to fund themselves. Can anyone explain? (Even better if there are examples / case studies)
- jen20 5y ago
  > I don't understand why this option isn't used more by open source projects that want to be able to fund themselves. One possible reason is that such dual licensing requires copyright assignment from external contributors.
- breck 5y ago
  The best IMO is to go public domain. SQLite is a great example: (https://sqlite.org/copyright.html https://sqlite.org/copyright.html).
  - hu3 5y ago
    SQLite's case is super interesting. It is said that they can get away with having it as Public Domain because a key part of their business is SQLite's reliability which is asserted by their large and closed source test codebase.
    - breck 5y ago
      > which is asserted by their large and closed source test codebase. Oh I didn't know (or forgot about) this! Super interesting. I love that strategy. That's competition at its best. Don't assert any control over someone else, but do keep a few secrets to yourself so people know to come to you for the best stuff.
spark3k 5y ago
I feel like the mass adoption tipping point of Deno will be when Create React App moves over to it or has a Deno specific branch.
- the_duke 5y ago
  Why would that be a benchmark?
  - spark3k 5y ago
    You want me to google Create React App for you or you good to do it yourself?
davnicwil 5y ago
What I find most exciting here is: > Our infrastructure makes it possible to... create custom runtimes for different applications [like] Cloudflare Worker-style Serverless Functions Fascinated to see what happens here. The serverless / edge compute paradigm fits Javascript hand-in-glove philosophically, but until now it's always felt quite clunky to me. When I've tried it out, I've always been left thinking "but this would just be so much easier with a server". Reading this has made it click for me why that is. A new paradigm needs a new set of tools native to that paradigm. The entire server-side JS ecosystem is currently structured around Node, a fundamentally stateful-server paradigm. You can try to abstract over it, but only so far. It's not the serverless paradigm that's clunky, per se, it's that the tools right now were built for another way of doing things. As a concrete example - Deno has an import system based on URLs, rather than on-disk node_modules. I thought that was a cool feature for convenience, less overhead, more open and sharable packages, etc. But now I realise the full intent of it. It's much more than all that, it's a fundamental shift in the paradigm: no implied dependency on stateful disk in the runtime itself.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Yep, that will be something to follow. It will be really interesting to see what kind of market emerges here by allowing new custom runtimes to compete, with specializations for a different niches and environments.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  Their comparison to Cloudflare workers doesn't seem right. The benefit of cloudflare workers is that they run on the edges of a CDN. Putting Deno on one server wouldn't achieve that.
  - lucacasonato 5y ago
    Then you put Deno on the edge : https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy
    - youngtaff 5y ago
sublimefire 5y ago
Deno makes sense in a variety of situations. The build pipelines of Typescript are excessively complicated and Deno hides that complication away (less dev effort). Furthermore Node has its own maintenance/risk issues in production systems (think permissions), and Deno reduces those with custom built runtimes. I cannot see it replacing Node though. Node has created a vast ecosystem that includes modules (npmjs), client side bundlers (eg webpack), serverside frameworks (eg express), etc. But because Deno is solving some of the issues for those who run sensitive code in production (eg Lambda functions) it'll most likely gonna become another VM on the public cloud providers' list. All in all Javascript interpreter is becoming something like a JVM. Everyone wants to use it but without writing vanilla Javascript.
- oblio 5y ago
  I think raw (framework-less), modern (no J2EE, Spring) Java is most likely a much better language than raw, modern Javascript. Plus, aren't Deno libs compatible with Node libs?
  - sublimefire 5y ago
    > much better language Maybe but who cares when your code does not execute instantly on Lambda and requires you to use GaalVM to convert bytecode to binary. Besides you have a lot of people who would say Kotlin is better. Javascript, like Python wins here. Well Javascript kind of wins because it is interpreted but devs do not use it directly but rather with a bundler/compiler. > Plus, aren't Deno libs compatible with Node libs Not really, if your dependency relies on say `https` module then it'll not work on Deno as it does not have it. And in the case of Deno modules, they are not on `npm` to begin with but even if you import them then they are written in Typescript.
  - murukesh_s 5y ago
    Better language or not Java is reigning king in enterprise companies. We have built our platform on top of Node.js assuming it would gain popularity but Node.js is nowhere near production use in large enterprises. Somehow the enterprise adoption has been miniscule. JVM performance is top notch. Many features like distributed transactions, messaging support, official libraries for enterprise applications like SAP is severely lacking in Node.js and hindering its adoption in enterprises.
mellosouls 5y ago
I understand that the authors have very strong pedigree in their field, but given a lot of the motivation stems from regretted node design decisions, is the rust etc expertise on the project deep enough to not make equivalent mistakes that will be rued in another few years? Genuine question (I assume it is, but presumably it was before with c++) - it just strikes me that once something becomes as successful as node, and given that nothing is ever perfect it might be useful to clarify why the technical insight might be better this time around - at least regarding the idioms of the underlying tech; the added experience at the architectural and implementation side a given.
celeritascelery 5y ago
> Many are more familiar with the Chrome DevTools console than they are with a Unix command-line prompt. More familiar with WebSockets than BSD sockets, MDN than man pages. Bash and Zsh scripts calling into native code will never go away. But JavaScript and TypeScript scripts calling into WebAssembly code will be increasingly common. Many developers, we think, prefer web-first abstraction layers. Every time I read something like this I realize how much in the minority I am. I am not a web developer. I have never written JavaScript before in my life. I hate working with “web-first abstractions”. I feel like it is just massive bloat on top of true native application. But given the popularity of things like electron, react-native, Node, and Deno I don’t speak for the majority. And the thing is, I don’t know if I just learned web dev if I would love this new approach to software that is eating the world and I would “get it”. Or if it just exists because JavaScript developers don’t want to learn something new.
- oblio 5y ago
  > Or if it just exists because JavaScript developers don’t want to learn something new. It's probably a big reason. But if you think about it from the other angle... you don't want to learn Javascript, which would be new to you :-)
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Speaking for myself, I have already learned JavaScript - I just don't want to have to use it.
    - hinkley 5y ago
      What I learned about myself working as a NodeJS developer: I’m okay writing JavaScript as long as I don’t have to spend all day every day writing it.
      - joshmanders 5y ago
        This is an interesting thing to think about. I was primarily a PHP backend dev for 15 years who only used jQuery to toggle classes on click actions, but decided to try something new and switched to Node in 2015. Node + ECMAScript 2015 just BLEW my mind and was so fun, that not only am I now primarily a Node dev, but I've excelled extensively in the frontend. I've never enjoyed building websites or web apps as much as I have in the last 5 years.
munro 5y ago
I know this sounds crazy on the surface level, but I really wish I could do data engineering and machine learning with TypeScript instead of Python. TypeScript's type system is so good, it makes refactoring large projects so easy. Python's typing module leaves a lot to be desired, and on top of that PyCharm doesn't properly support everything. Perhaps I should switch to VSCode--but I do like IntelliJ, and it works really well for TypeScript.
- searchableguy 5y ago
  Deno has built in support for web gpu. You might wanna check that out. It's very early stage.
- breck 5y ago
  There are a number of newer projects in this area. Arquero from Heer's Group (https://observablehq.com/collection/@uwdata/arquero https://observablehq.com/collection/@uwdata/arquero), TensorFlowJs (https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs), and (biased) CoreTable from OurWorldInData (https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher/tree/next/coreTable https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher/tree/next/coreTable).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
> Of the myriad ways to program computers, scripting languages are the most effortless and practical variety. Of these, the web browser scripting language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and the only one with an industrial standardization process. I haven't fully investigated in a few years, but isn't it still true that LuaJIT is is faster than V8 JavaScript? The last I saw it was outperforming V8 by a lot. The practical use of LuaJIT is still very niche though. The lack of a comprehensive standard library, and being forever stuck on Lua 5.1 makes it even less generally appealing. I still love it for programming Nginx though..
- spion 5y ago
  AFAIK it hasn't been faster for a while, especially not in the GC area.
- gutino 5y ago
  Probably the benchamark you saw was just a iteration of any math calc. In real programs V8 js is orders of magnitude faster than LuaJit https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/lua.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
  - igouy 5y ago
    fyi as-it-says — Lua 5.4.2 — not LuaJIT
  - thysultan 5y ago
    >In real programs V8 js is orders of magnitude faster than LuaJit Fact Check: False LuaJIT is fastest than all JavaScript JIT implementations in existence.
rglover 5y ago
This is cool and exciting to see. I've mostly watched Deno from the sidelines, only playing with code a little bit, but it's clear Ryan and co. are serious about applying the lessons learned from Node. Best wishes to him and the team.
madjam002 5y ago
I have never used Deno, but I just wanted to say that I really love the branding and graphics on the website, especially https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy
- kizer 5y ago
  I love the Deno dinosaur. Side note: I wish it were "deno" (uncapitalized). Just a stylistic annoyance for me.
  - zmix 5y ago
    Agreed. I also would love it to be "deno" (I always thought it was).
Freknf 5y ago
Sounds like total bullshit. Deno hasn't put any dint in nodejs and never will because nobody is rewriting all of their stuff for the new API. It is just that all the scummy founders and rockstars of silicon valley have found that offering higher level services is a great way to scam people of their money because it is the only way the new "average" programmer can even make anything. The only problem is long-term the people using these services will need to find actual programmers.
Freknf 5y ago
>But over a decade later, we find server-side JavaScript hopelessly fragmented, deeply tied to bad infrastructure, and irrevocably ruled by committees without the incentive to innovate. Trying to sell something based on FUD is always a bad sign.
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feb 5y ago
>>> Our investors are Dan Scholnick from Four Rivers Ventures, Guillermo from Rauch Capital, Lee Jacobs from Long Journey Ventures, the Mozilla Corporation, Shasta Ventures, and our long-time collaborator Ben Noordhuis. Why is the Mozilla Corporation an investor in a Chrome based technology startup ?
- kizer 5y ago
  Well, Deno is using Rust extensively and V8 is the only "Chrome" part.
  - hu3 5y ago
    Didn't Mozilla fire a substantial amount of their Rust developers? And all Servo developers according to: https://paulrouget.com/bye_mozilla.html https://paulrouget.com/bye_mozilla.html
    - steveklabnik 5y ago
      No, they laid off a substantial amount of their Rust team, but the number of overall developers employed by Mozilla was quite small. Mozilla continues to be interested in Rust even though they did that, they’re a founding sponsor of the Rust Foundation, for example, and are continuing to use Rust even though they do not employ people to work on the language itself.
- afiori 5y ago
  Deno poses itself partially as node with web standards, Mozilla likes when things are webby
kizer 5y ago
I hope that Deno can maximize TS performance. Right now they compile TS internally, but especially with this new financially-backed focus I hope that they can perhaps modify V8 or fork it to create a TS engine that takes advantage of type information for optimization. That's really what's needed; in a "no implicit any" application performance would near native. Also, it's nice that they're using Tokio for the HTTP server instead of a JS implementation (from what I understand). I want to see Deno near the top of the TechEmpower benchmarks.
jedahan 5y ago
Trying to signup for Deno Deploy, it asks for the 'Act on your behalf' github permission to make an account. Clicking on 'Learn more about Deno Deploy' leads to https://github.com/apps/deno-deploy https://github.com/apps/deno-deploy , which does not tell me more. What does 'act on your behalf' mean for Deno Deploy?
- jacobwg 5y ago
  I believe it's a very poorly written description in the newer GitHub App permission system. My understanding it describes something akin to "can act on your behalf, but only in the scope of what other permissions are being requested" but it's overall very unclear wording. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26485844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26485844
  - jedahan 5y ago
    Deno's response here seems to confirm that https://github.com/denoland/deploy_examples/issues/15 https://github.com/denoland/deploy_examples/issues/15
bullen 5y ago
If you want hot-deployed distributed Java VM HTTP app. server + JSON database you can use my open-source alternative: http://host.binarytask.com http://host.binarytask.com It uses comet-stream instead of WebSockets. But it's fully "joint" parallel on all cores.
kibleopard 5y ago
The issue with Deno, personally, is that it feels like it doesn’t deviate enough from NodeJS to even make it worth taking the time to learn/migrate projects over to it. From what I recall, the only really new and nice features are: a) sandboxed by default b) no need for a node_modules folder since you can directly import from a URL And is that really worth dumping loads of money into developing further? I just find it hard to believe people are going to bother with Deno any time soon - we’ve gone too far down the NodeJS road.
- clarle 5y ago
  I think sandboxed by default can make a lot of sense for the large companies that can potentially suffer heavy losses if an unauthorized attacker got into the file system. The other feature is TypeScript as a first class citizen which is pretty great for devs.
- adkadskhj 5y ago
  I feel like sandboxing could be huge, but WASM might be cutting the legs out from that feature. Sandboxing doesn't sound so unique or innovative when WASM is coming along and doing the same thing, and with a much wider audience and thus more likely to have massive traction.
  - afiori 5y ago
    They compete on different use cases, most js/ts apps cannot be (reasonably) compiled to wasm and also wasm sandbox doesn't limit what the environment can do. As a glaring strawman if you expose eval to wasm it will not help you. Deno's sandbox will allow you to crate a dedicated worker with no network/disk access to handle sensitive informations, or to force your application to use a specific worker as a proxy (by making it the only thing with network acess)
- cloverich 5y ago
  The standard library will be a killer feature. Even for people that know the existing ecosystem (as I do), as more libraries fall out of fashion or become abandoned, and people have to pick up (several) new libraries from scratch for basic tasks, they'll realize (as I did) its not actually any different than just using Deno. I don't know if that will be enough, but that's one of the angle's I'm watching closely now. I'm partly biased because I like playing with streams, and those can be a nightmare in Node.
semitones 5y ago
"We are bullish about the technology stack we've built" - I would sure hope so!
turadg 5y ago
Deno seems well poised to replace Nodejs for isomorphic Web programming. The leading app framework for that is Nextjs and I hope the Rauch Capital investment sígnals Vercel will be supporting Deno. Anyone know?
loopback_device 5y ago
> To provide a modern, productive programming system that adheres to browser APIs. In my opinion, the best part of node is (or was) that it didn't adhere to the browser APIs. That brought in some fresh air, and gave us buffers, native bindings, streams etc.
- searchableguy 5y ago
  Web does have streams and buffers. Web assembly seems to fill in the gaps for native code but deno supports rust plugins which removes any sandbox guarantees so it's a trade off.
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TheMagicHorsey 5y ago
This is probably unpopular here, but I wish people would just stop using Javascript on the server. Well, I wish they would stop using it period, but at least in the browser it makes some sense. Edit: to be clear, I have no beef with Typescript, Dart, Clojurescript, and the many other languages that compile into JS. It's JS itself I have issue with. I feel like it gives too much flexibility to young programmers to screw things up. There don't seem to be enough safeguards or training wheels. On large projects its my nightmare.
- e12e 5y ago
  > be clear, I have no beef with Typescript One of Deno's main selling points is that it runs typescript out of the box?
- speedgoose 5y ago
  If you have to use JavaScript, you can configure eslint with some plug-ins to have pretty good safeguards or training wheels. You will still miss some strong typing but eslint will warn or prevent most of the awful or stupid code.
ravenstine 5y ago
A lot of people seem to think the difference between Deno and Node is trivial, but having actually used Deno, I think they're wrong. Here's why: - Typescript as a first class citizen - An actual `window` global with familiar browser APIs - Sandboxing w/ permissions - URL-based imports (no need for NPM) - Bundling into self-contained binaries - Things like top-level-await which Node.js still treats as experimental. - Better-designed APIs than the Node standard lib (esp. when it comes to promises instead of callbacks) To me, those aren't just minor details. This has the potential to create a new epoch in server-size JavaScript.
- ivan888 5y ago
  > URL-based imports (no need for NPM) What happens when there is the next Codehaus-like shutdown, and so much source code just won't work? Or when a bad actor takes control of a domain that commonly hosted packages (perhaps through completely legitimate means, such as registration expiration), can get a completely legitimate SSL certificate for it, and responds to requests for packages with malicious code? I think the abstraction, and to some degree the centralization, of package management is generally a good thing
  - pknopf 5y ago
    There will likely be some kind of npm at some point.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      If the goal is to get rid of NPM, why would you add another one in the future?
      - afiori 5y ago
        The goal is not to eliminate npm, but to decouple it from the runtime itself
    - forty 5y ago
      Yes, i think recreating an npm kind of central place for your project dependencies seems almost required if you want to avoid depending on a different version of a lib in each file of your project. I cannot understand the benefit of this scheme honestly. I would have preferred they fix something npm is lacking, like adding the ability to sign packages
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Article left me wondering what the plan is for them here - why is it becoming 'The Company Deno'... other than they have a bunch of investors. Is it just to get a team in to properly manage the project as a whole?
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camdenlock 5y ago
Prediction: Microsoft will be buying Deno. Screencap this.
- hu3 5y ago
  It's cheaper and gentler to the ecosystem to just add Typescript support to node and call it a day.
paperwork 5y ago
I'm excited about Deno, but I'm finding that the docs still need to be improved. For example, I'm trying to build a tcp server. I'm not able to get information on how back-pressure is handled. I can see that Deno.listen returns an object which implements reader and writer interfaces, but it isn't clear to my how to look for events, such as disconnect or that new data is available. I wish there were examples showing how to correctly parse frames or implement protocols. I'm sure these things will be expanded over time, partly by programmers in the community, but from the outside, things are still a bit rough.
_qua_di_q_ 5y ago
It's the absolutely right move to get investors. Deno has substantial advantages over NodeJS. However, I personally would prefer Go or .NET Core for my backend any day. We need to wait and see where it's going ... Good luck and success anyway!
justicezyx 5y ago
This is a great news! Ryan and the team should be capturing some of the value produced by their creation. And because of Deno's a developer tool, it's actually capturing the far minor part of the whole value and enable a much bigger value creation!
xixixao 5y ago
> The Deno company hopes to enable the millions of web programmers out there to maximally leverage their craft in other domains. I know this might be hard to see, but Rust is actually in the same domain. It is also, among other things, enabling product/frontend/web engineers to build backend/native/browser-less applications. I'd bet Rust will be more successful here, especially given its amazing ability to change itself and innovate.
- shusson 5y ago
  > It is also, among other things, enabling product/frontend/web engineers to build backend/native/browser-less applications. Care to explain? I can imagine web programmers being productive in deno in a few minutes vs however long it takes to learn an entire new language, not to mention a language that requires memory management.
  - xixixao 5y ago
    See the Rust Foundation announcement: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-02-08-hello-world/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-02-08-hello-worl... > "A language empowering everyone, but especially folks who thought that systems programming wasn’t for them.”
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skratlo 5y ago
> Of these, the web browser scripting language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and the only one with an industrial standardization process Haha, this made me laugh hard, stopped reading
nilshauk 5y ago
From a distance I think Deno has a lot of promising features going for it. Expressing modules as URLs seems like a small difference but I believe it has big ramifications. With clever use of DNS resolving and caching I wonder how fast new instances will be able to spin up. I'm guessing it'll be fast! My only gripe with the Deno company is that taking investor funding is a double-edged sword. Yes, they'll get to hire very skilled developers. However naturally the investors want a tidy exit, and I wonder if that would be to be bought out by Amazon, Microsoft or Google. Edit: Just realized that there's a key difference in that Deno does not have something like NPM to be bought and sold because dependencies are URLs and thus decentralized. Also, Deno itself is open-source.
Woung1938 5y ago
It seems there are many toothing problems with Deno. I just tried stuff from their blog (https://deno.com/blog/v1.8 https://deno.com/blog/v1.8): $ deno run --unstable --allow-write=output.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crowlKats/webgpu-examples/f3b979f57fd471b11a28c5b0c91d0447221ba77b/hello-triangle/mod.ts Download https://crux.land/2arQ9t Download https://crux.land/api/get/2arQ9t error: Import 'https://crux.land/api/get/2arQ9t' failed: 404 Not Found at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crowlKats/webgpu-examples/f3b979f57fd471b11a28c5b0c91d0447221ba77b/deps.ts:4:0 (A dependency got removed?) Another one: $ deno run https://deno.land/v1.8/permission_api.ts error: An unsupported media type was attempted to be imported as a module. Specifier: https://deno.land/v1.8/permission_api.ts MediaType: Unknown (The site is a 404 returning status code 200... just... why?)
- wperron 5y ago
  Thanks for reporting, we recently moved our blog to deno.com/blog and haven't updated the post -- we'll fix that as soon as possible
latexr 5y ago
> Many developers, we think, prefer web-first abstraction layers. Many developers, I think, don’t look past web-first abstraction layers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen CLI tools which are huge chunks of node wrapping a thin bash command. They are multiple files, orders of magnitude larger than they need to be, and require external dependencies because these developers are fixated on their proverbial hammer.

883 points by elisee 5y ago

rvz 5y ago

> In order to vigorously pursue these ideas, we have raised 4.9 million dollars of seed capital. Our investors are Dan Scholnick from Four Rivers Ventures, Guillermo from Rauch Capital, Lee Jacobs from Long Journey Ventures, the Mozilla Corporation, Shasta Ventures, and our long-time collaborator Ben Noordhuis. This investment means we will have a staff of full-time expert engineers working to improving Deno. We will ensure that issues are addressed, bugs are fixed, timely releases are made; we will ensure Deno is a platform others can build on with trust. From there I stopped reading.

ignoramous 5y ago
> From there I stopped reading. Why? Is it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286 ? Because the next paragraph goes: Rest assured that Deno will remain MIT licensed. For Deno to grow and be maximally useful, it must remain permissively free. We don’t believe the “open core” business model is right for a programming platform like Deno. We do not want to find ourselves in the unfortunate position where we have to decide if certain features are for paid customers only. If you watch our conference talks, you will find we've been hinting at commercial applications of this infrastructure for years. We are bullish about the technology stack we've built and intend to pursue those commercial applications ourselves. Our business will build on the open source project, not attempt to monetize it directly.
- KingOfCoders 5y ago
  "it must remain permissively free." ... until the VCs change their mind or AWS uses our code to make more money than we do.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    I just don't understand this. This project uses distributed version control. This implies 2 things 1. It is impossible to delete every copy of this project. If the authors wanted to restrict access by taking the repo private, they can't. It will always be out there. 2. Every commit is licensed with MIT. So even if there is a licensing change, you have access to every commit licensed by MIT. You've lost nothing except rights to future work. Even if they change their mind, you can still use their existing code to run your software. If it's popular enough to be forked by the community, you can use the fork if you prefer. You only need to be concerned if you're heavily invested on their platform and it's not popular enough for community support and you need new features added. In this unlikely scenario, yes, you won't have any option but to buy in to their new business model.
    - KingOfCoders 5y ago
      "If it's popular enough to be forked by the community" Yes. And if it isn't you need to switch. If you are tied in in a way to proprietary tools or APIs then you have some major migration in front of you. If you don't you you might be able to use Node. If you have a tight schedule already, or no development capacity for the migration, you will need to buy a license because you might not want to run your code on a plattform that no longer gets security updates and you no longer get support. When this happend to me in the past, I've got some major bills for licenses b/c most of them are server based (or core based) and also count development, testing, staging and CI servers (>$100k/y). "You only need to be concerned if you're heavily invested on their platform and it's not popular enough for community support and you need new features added. In this unlikely scenario, [...]" s/unlikely/likely/g I have no data but would assume this is the default ending, because most projects are not being forked (Mongo, ...) and create a successful community around a fork and most companies I work with are heavily invested in a plattform and do not adhere to the standard APIs and tools (e.g. I'd say 10% of my customers use AWS in a standard way, 90% are heavily invested in the plattform, same for GCP.) If you have other numbers and/or studies, I would be interested.
      - vinay_ys 5y ago
        If it is run by an established foundation like Apache with established procedures for how to manage large complex projects, then you can be sure that the project will remain open-source and usable for your purposes. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.
  - rvz 5y ago
    > ... until the VCs change their mind or AWS uses our code to make more money than we do. That is the correct answer. Amazon (AWS) can lift Deno and use it as a service on AWS for devs and effortlessly compete, out scale and out do them 100 times over and supersede the Deno Company. Thanks to using the '...permissively free' MIT license (Being AGPL will also make no difference) AWS can do just that. Just like how they did that to MongoDB, Redis and Elasticsearch who were all victims of Amazon's ruthless tactics on open-source.

colesantiago 5y ago

congrats, i guess but not a fan of the VC route, we all know how this ends.

spark3k 5y ago
Which route on an independent MIT licensed project would you suggest?
- rukshn 5y ago
  It is matter of time until they release a proprietary version which is better than the MIT version. Chrome vs chromium etc
  - lucacasonato 5y ago
    The blog post specifically says that that will not happen
    - rukshn 5y ago
      Yes, but Facebook said it will not monetize WhatsApp, and something similar when they bought WhatsApp Instagram. We all know how that turned out to be History repeats itself, the above two are the recent incidents that comes to my mind
      - croes 5y ago
        And you will never need a FB account for Oculus
    - exhaze 5y ago
      Let's make a gentlemens' bet. If Deno is still completely free in 5 years, I'll give you $500. You up for that?
      - spark3k 5y ago

alfl 5y ago

I met Bert in the StrongLoop days after the IBM acquisition. Good guy and good luck to him. We were consultants scaling node to production for a major international bank, circa 2016. Love the security improvements in deno, will have to give it a look.

oauea 5y ago

I've always been very skeptical of the value-add of Deno over Node, and this only increased my skepticism. Good luck making money, I guess.

gorjusborg 5y ago
I've only dipped my toes in the water with Deno, but it solves a few pain points I've felt with Node. Direct deps via url vs npm as middleman, a standard library (thank goodness!), and single binary distribution. Types are great too, but these other things would be enough for me.
- yulaow 5y ago
  Honestly a standard library was needed since a decade but... I would have preferred a coordinated effort between browsers and node/deno. At this point even if just the browsers and deno get two different stdlib we risk _a_lot_ of useless fragmentation and headaches.
  - wperron 5y ago
    _If_ the browsers do get a std lib akin to what we've built for deno, I would be comfortable archiving the deno_std repo and pointing people to use the browser one. We're not yet 100% compatible with browsers in the stdlib, but being compatible as much as possible is one of our goals, specifically to address the browser/server-side divide and generally make it simpler and more enjoyable to program in JavaScript
- hobofan 5y ago
  > a standard library (thank goodness!) Then what are all these modules, if not a standard library? https://nodejs.org/api https://nodejs.org/api
  - aenario 5y ago
    libuv bindings ?
- 5y ago

kostarelo 5y ago

> Extending web programming beyond the browser is not a novel idea. Indeed, we have done that with moderate success in our “Node.js” project. But over a decade later, we find server-side JavaScript hopelessly fragmented, deeply tied to bad infrastructure, and irrevocably ruled by committees without the incentive to innovate. As the browser platform moves forward at a rapid pace, server-side JavaScript has stagnated. wow lots of bold statements there. And another one for the usual "JavaScript is fragmented, let's create another tool to fix 'em all.".

bayindirh 5y ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ Can't we have a chuckle? No? OK.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Literally everyone has seen this. There's no chuckle.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  It doesn't really apply here. When you create something in a field that already has other entrants, that's a completely different thing from trying to unify all the other entrants, and ending up just creating another also-ran. There's nothing wrong with identifying an area that you think you can contribute something innovative to and building something opinionated for it.
yulaow 5y ago
It feels like the old IO.js vs node.js. I hope this time too the two ecosystems get merged, but this time it feels much harder to happen
- sbarre 5y ago
  Wasn't that more of an ideological than technical split? Deno is more of an ecosystem reboot than a fork, I would think.

kostarelo 5y ago

From the last paragraph: > But JavaScript and TypeScript scripts calling into WebAssembly code will be increasingly common. Why is WebAssembly a key concept here? How does Deno uses it?

lucacasonato 5y ago
We use it for the hash module in our standard library for example: https://deno.land/std@0.91.0/hash https://deno.land/std@0.91.0/hash. The wasm version is magnitudes faster than a pure JS implementation. Another example is sqlite, running in WASM: https://deno.land/x/sqlite@v2.4.0 https://deno.land/x/sqlite@v2.4.0. Fully sandboxed sqlite :-)
- int_19h 5y ago
  It will be the ultimate irony if, 20 years down the line, Deno is still around, but solely as a de facto standard / cross-platform WebAssembly execution engine.
  - e12e 5y ago
    Why would that be ironic? It's essentially the route Java is taking with graal/truffle - allowing heterogeneous mix of languages to be compiled and optimized. Why not allow typescript to use Fortran numeric libraries via wasm?
    - int_19h 5y ago
      JavaScript in Deno doesn't itself run on top of WebAssembly, so this isn't really quite like Graal. If you use Deno to run wasm, all the JS bits are basically ignored. It's a bit like using a web renderer solely for <canvas>.
tsujp 5y ago
You can write in other languages beyond JavaScript or TypeScript and generate WebAssembly. This means that say someone wrote a nice library or utility in C# you can compile that C# down to WebAssembly and use that library or utility in JavaScript or TypeScript (or anything else that can access WebAssembly). This is analogous perhaps to C# and F# within .NET currently. C# and F# have the same BCL (base common layer) so you can use C# code in F# and vice versa. WebAssembly is like that and much more.

elisee 5y ago

Happy to see Deno get some financial backing! I've been building my new multiplayer games website [1] with Deno over the last 4 months and apart from some minor growing pains, it's been a joy to use. The lack of unnecessary package management, and the TypeScript-by-default approach makes Web dev much nicer. We're also using TypeScript on the client-side, relying on VSCode for error reporting. We use sucrase to strip the types just as we're serving the script files, so that there is no extra build time, it feels like TypeScript is Web-native and we can share typed code with the server. [1] Not yet launched but we ran a preview past weekend with hundreds of players over WebSockets: https://twitter.com/MasterOfTheGrid/status/1375758300717973508 https://twitter.com/MasterOfTheGrid/status/13757583007179735... - https://sparks.land https://sparks.land

sbarre 5y ago
Peeking at sparks.land I see that you're serving .ts files, I assume that's what you mean by using sucrase, you're transpiling "live" instead of building/deploying bundles offline? I notice your script files are all pretty small, have you run into any upper limits on performance or scalability so far with this approach?
- elisee 5y ago
  Correct! In production we've got Cloudflare in the middle, so we're only using sucrase on-the-fly for each .ts file during development. So far it's unnoticeable in terms of loading times. > I notice your script files are all pretty small, have you run into any upper limits on performance or scalability so far with this approach? Not that I can tell. But if we need to, we can always do a minified bundle in production later on. So far it's just nice to not have to even think about it!
  - sbarre 5y ago
    Wait, so you're running Sucrase in a Cloudflare Worker? It compiles, and then caches the output I assume? That's a really cool use case I hadn't thought of..

syrusakbary 5y ago

Excited to see a commercial company centered around the TypeScript ecosystem (both server and client) and betting on WebAssembly. Any successful Open Source must provide commercial value to become sustainable. Funnily enough that assures its longevity long term. Keep up the great work Ryan, Bert & team. Exciting times!

gnrlst 5y ago

I'm incredibly slow, and only just realized that Deno is an anagram of Node.

PudgePacket 5y ago

This is super cool to see! Deno is really refreshing coming from node fulltime.

not_knuth 5y ago

If I understood correctly this is how they intend to make money: > Not every use-case of server-side JavaScript needs to access the file system; our infrastructure makes it possible to compile out unnecessary bindings. This allows us to create custom runtimes for different applications: Electron-style GUIs, Cloudflare Worker-style Serverless Functions, embedded scripting for databases, etc. So it's basically more of a Redhat approach to making money from open source? They intend to build tailored services on top of Deno for companies that request them?

sbarre 5y ago
I'm not sure that they meant those specific runtimes would be premium products. My read was that anyone could more easily configure a runtime to expose (or not expose) the underlying bindings that it requires, vs. just having them all in there by default. I think "us" in that statement is the Deno community, not Deno the company. But maybe I'm wrong.
- not_knuth 5y ago
  Clicking around the website and reading more comments leads me to believe that this is the product they intend to monetize with: https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy I still find it strange that there is no mention of it in the post...
  - sbarre 5y ago
    That makes sense... So if you're up for it, you can still roll your own deployment infrastructure and tailor your builds as needed etc.. and support all of that internally. Or you can pay Deno to handle it for you and you can focus on building your apps.
why_Mr_Anderson 5y ago
Javascript embedded scripting for databases .../shivers
- 5y ago

psim1 5y ago

> Of these, the web browser scripting language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and the only one with an industrial standardization process. Most popular, I can agree. Fastest, & only one with industrial standardization process? Have they met Erlang? edit: you have to be kidding me, downvoted to oblivion for an honest observation. Sorry I hurt javascript's feelings.

iends 5y ago
Erlang is compiled to bytecode, right? So is it considered a scripting language?
- psim1 5y ago
  It "feels" like a scripting language and is run in a runtime shell environment. But I would concede to your point, as well.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  I don't understand the connection being made between having a bytecode compiler and being a scripting language.
  - glutamate 5y ago
    Java is definitely not a scripting language
    - eatonphil 5y ago
      Is JavaScript? Python? Ruby? All major implementations of all three are bytecode compilers/VMs.

huhtenberg 5y ago

Woah. Clicking on this link crashes Firefox. Version 86 on Windows. I don't remember seeing FF crash in several years now. Anyone else is running into this?

jetrink 5y ago
No problems with 87.0 on Windows for me.
pqb 5y ago
> [...] Firefox. Version 86 Few days ago, there was new version released (87). In certain situations, when silent upgrade had been made during using the browser it displays an "Oops, something went wrong" notification with a button to refresh. If you will close and reopen the Firefox the problem will vanish. It is less kind of crash but more likely as problem to free/monkeypatch resources. I have run into the same problem on Linux but I have quite complicated Firefox configuration with at least few extra profiles (about:profiles).

franciscop 5y ago

Nice to see! How do they plan to monetize? I either became blind or missed it somehow. The article does say how they DON'T plan on monetize: "Rest assured that Deno will remain MIT licensed. For Deno to grow and be maximally useful, it must remain permissively free. We don’t believe the “open core” business model is right for a programming platform like Deno." There are some hints though: "If you watch our conference talks, you will find we've been hinting at commercial applications of this infrastructure for years. We are bullish about the technology stack we've built and intend to pursue those commercial applications ourselves. Our business will build on the open source project, not attempt to monetize it directly." Does anyone have some insight into those? I haven't watch any Deno talk (maybe one actually?) so it feel a bit strange to make people watch technical talks to find hints of the monetization strategy. PS, if I was a rich investor I'd throw money at this project even as a donation, so no complain at all, but I'm very curious on the monetization plan.

xiaq 5y ago
Sounds to me that they will build some sort of hosted service or maybe PaaS based on the Deno runtime (like AppEngine or AWS lambda), but yeah it's pretty vague.
- DyingAdonis 5y ago
  Looks like CDN with Serverless edge functions. https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy
- throwaway99x99 5y ago
  > Sounds to me that they will build some sort of hosted service or maybe PaaS based on the Deno runtime (like AppEngine or AWS lambda) or like Joyent
  - skrebbel 5y ago
    How did Joyent manage to turn Nodejs into money though? I mean weren't they mostly selling unix services?

csbartus 5y ago

I'm very pleased Javascript / Node evolves. But thanks, too late, I'll skip it as soon as possible. It has so many unpleasant surprises. I'll move the ladder up, to something which compiles to Javascript, or whatever else, but no Javascript anymore please.

turdnagel 5y ago
You can write TypeScript natively with Deno.

appleflaxen 5y ago

Deno is licensed as MIT. Awesome! But how will they prevent from being freeloaded? My sense is that GPL3 gets a ton of criticism on HN, but isn't it the perfect defense against freeloaders? * license the code for proprietary use in your stack * use GPL3 if you have a non-commercial use, and are willing to accept the requirement to open source your own code. I don't understand why this option isn't used more by open source projects that want to be able to fund themselves. Can anyone explain? (Even better if there are examples / case studies)

jen20 5y ago
> I don't understand why this option isn't used more by open source projects that want to be able to fund themselves. One possible reason is that such dual licensing requires copyright assignment from external contributors.
breck 5y ago
The best IMO is to go public domain. SQLite is a great example: (https://sqlite.org/copyright.html https://sqlite.org/copyright.html).
- hu3 5y ago
  SQLite's case is super interesting. It is said that they can get away with having it as Public Domain because a key part of their business is SQLite's reliability which is asserted by their large and closed source test codebase.
  - breck 5y ago
    > which is asserted by their large and closed source test codebase. Oh I didn't know (or forgot about) this! Super interesting. I love that strategy. That's competition at its best. Don't assert any control over someone else, but do keep a few secrets to yourself so people know to come to you for the best stuff.

spark3k 5y ago

I feel like the mass adoption tipping point of Deno will be when Create React App moves over to it or has a Deno specific branch.

the_duke 5y ago
Why would that be a benchmark?
- spark3k 5y ago
  You want me to google Create React App for you or you good to do it yourself?

davnicwil 5y ago

What I find most exciting here is: > Our infrastructure makes it possible to... create custom runtimes for different applications [like] Cloudflare Worker-style Serverless Functions Fascinated to see what happens here. The serverless / edge compute paradigm fits Javascript hand-in-glove philosophically, but until now it's always felt quite clunky to me. When I've tried it out, I've always been left thinking "but this would just be so much easier with a server". Reading this has made it click for me why that is. A new paradigm needs a new set of tools native to that paradigm. The entire server-side JS ecosystem is currently structured around Node, a fundamentally stateful-server paradigm. You can try to abstract over it, but only so far. It's not the serverless paradigm that's clunky, per se, it's that the tools right now were built for another way of doing things. As a concrete example - Deno has an import system based on URLs, rather than on-disk node_modules. I thought that was a cool feature for convenience, less overhead, more open and sharable packages, etc. But now I realise the full intent of it. It's much more than all that, it's a fundamental shift in the paradigm: no implied dependency on stateful disk in the runtime itself.

dgellow 5y ago
Yep, that will be something to follow. It will be really interesting to see what kind of market emerges here by allowing new custom runtimes to compete, with specializations for a different niches and environments.
unityByFreedom 5y ago
Their comparison to Cloudflare workers doesn't seem right. The benefit of cloudflare workers is that they run on the edges of a CDN. Putting Deno on one server wouldn't achieve that.
- lucacasonato 5y ago
  Then you put Deno on the edge : https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy
  - youngtaff 5y ago

sublimefire 5y ago

Deno makes sense in a variety of situations. The build pipelines of Typescript are excessively complicated and Deno hides that complication away (less dev effort). Furthermore Node has its own maintenance/risk issues in production systems (think permissions), and Deno reduces those with custom built runtimes. I cannot see it replacing Node though. Node has created a vast ecosystem that includes modules (npmjs), client side bundlers (eg webpack), serverside frameworks (eg express), etc. But because Deno is solving some of the issues for those who run sensitive code in production (eg Lambda functions) it'll most likely gonna become another VM on the public cloud providers' list. All in all Javascript interpreter is becoming something like a JVM. Everyone wants to use it but without writing vanilla Javascript.

oblio 5y ago
I think raw (framework-less), modern (no J2EE, Spring) Java is most likely a much better language than raw, modern Javascript. Plus, aren't Deno libs compatible with Node libs?
- sublimefire 5y ago
  > much better language Maybe but who cares when your code does not execute instantly on Lambda and requires you to use GaalVM to convert bytecode to binary. Besides you have a lot of people who would say Kotlin is better. Javascript, like Python wins here. Well Javascript kind of wins because it is interpreted but devs do not use it directly but rather with a bundler/compiler. > Plus, aren't Deno libs compatible with Node libs Not really, if your dependency relies on say `https` module then it'll not work on Deno as it does not have it. And in the case of Deno modules, they are not on `npm` to begin with but even if you import them then they are written in Typescript.
- murukesh_s 5y ago
  Better language or not Java is reigning king in enterprise companies. We have built our platform on top of Node.js assuming it would gain popularity but Node.js is nowhere near production use in large enterprises. Somehow the enterprise adoption has been miniscule. JVM performance is top notch. Many features like distributed transactions, messaging support, official libraries for enterprise applications like SAP is severely lacking in Node.js and hindering its adoption in enterprises.

mellosouls 5y ago

I understand that the authors have very strong pedigree in their field, but given a lot of the motivation stems from regretted node design decisions, is the rust etc expertise on the project deep enough to not make equivalent mistakes that will be rued in another few years? Genuine question (I assume it is, but presumably it was before with c++) - it just strikes me that once something becomes as successful as node, and given that nothing is ever perfect it might be useful to clarify why the technical insight might be better this time around - at least regarding the idioms of the underlying tech; the added experience at the architectural and implementation side a given.

celeritascelery 5y ago

> Many are more familiar with the Chrome DevTools console than they are with a Unix command-line prompt. More familiar with WebSockets than BSD sockets, MDN than man pages. Bash and Zsh scripts calling into native code will never go away. But JavaScript and TypeScript scripts calling into WebAssembly code will be increasingly common. Many developers, we think, prefer web-first abstraction layers. Every time I read something like this I realize how much in the minority I am. I am not a web developer. I have never written JavaScript before in my life. I hate working with “web-first abstractions”. I feel like it is just massive bloat on top of true native application. But given the popularity of things like electron, react-native, Node, and Deno I don’t speak for the majority. And the thing is, I don’t know if I just learned web dev if I would love this new approach to software that is eating the world and I would “get it”. Or if it just exists because JavaScript developers don’t want to learn something new.

oblio 5y ago
> Or if it just exists because JavaScript developers don’t want to learn something new. It's probably a big reason. But if you think about it from the other angle... you don't want to learn Javascript, which would be new to you :-)
- int_19h 5y ago
  Speaking for myself, I have already learned JavaScript - I just don't want to have to use it.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    What I learned about myself working as a NodeJS developer: I’m okay writing JavaScript as long as I don’t have to spend all day every day writing it.
    - joshmanders 5y ago
      This is an interesting thing to think about. I was primarily a PHP backend dev for 15 years who only used jQuery to toggle classes on click actions, but decided to try something new and switched to Node in 2015. Node + ECMAScript 2015 just BLEW my mind and was so fun, that not only am I now primarily a Node dev, but I've excelled extensively in the frontend. I've never enjoyed building websites or web apps as much as I have in the last 5 years.

munro 5y ago

I know this sounds crazy on the surface level, but I really wish I could do data engineering and machine learning with TypeScript instead of Python. TypeScript's type system is so good, it makes refactoring large projects so easy. Python's typing module leaves a lot to be desired, and on top of that PyCharm doesn't properly support everything. Perhaps I should switch to VSCode--but I do like IntelliJ, and it works really well for TypeScript.

searchableguy 5y ago
Deno has built in support for web gpu. You might wanna check that out. It's very early stage.
breck 5y ago
There are a number of newer projects in this area. Arquero from Heer's Group (https://observablehq.com/collection/@uwdata/arquero https://observablehq.com/collection/@uwdata/arquero), TensorFlowJs (https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs), and (biased) CoreTable from OurWorldInData (https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher/tree/next/coreTable https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher/tree/next/coreTable).
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VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

> Of the myriad ways to program computers, scripting languages are the most effortless and practical variety. Of these, the web browser scripting language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and the only one with an industrial standardization process. I haven't fully investigated in a few years, but isn't it still true that LuaJIT is is faster than V8 JavaScript? The last I saw it was outperforming V8 by a lot. The practical use of LuaJIT is still very niche though. The lack of a comprehensive standard library, and being forever stuck on Lua 5.1 makes it even less generally appealing. I still love it for programming Nginx though..

spion 5y ago
AFAIK it hasn't been faster for a while, especially not in the GC area.
gutino 5y ago
Probably the benchamark you saw was just a iteration of any math calc. In real programs V8 js is orders of magnitude faster than LuaJit https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/lua.html https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...
- igouy 5y ago
  fyi as-it-says — Lua 5.4.2 — not LuaJIT
- thysultan 5y ago
  >In real programs V8 js is orders of magnitude faster than LuaJit Fact Check: False LuaJIT is fastest than all JavaScript JIT implementations in existence.

rglover 5y ago

This is cool and exciting to see. I've mostly watched Deno from the sidelines, only playing with code a little bit, but it's clear Ryan and co. are serious about applying the lessons learned from Node. Best wishes to him and the team.

madjam002 5y ago

I have never used Deno, but I just wanted to say that I really love the branding and graphics on the website, especially https://deno.com/deploy https://deno.com/deploy

kizer 5y ago
I love the Deno dinosaur. Side note: I wish it were "deno" (uncapitalized). Just a stylistic annoyance for me.
- zmix 5y ago
  Agreed. I also would love it to be "deno" (I always thought it was).

Freknf 5y ago

Sounds like total bullshit. Deno hasn't put any dint in nodejs and never will because nobody is rewriting all of their stuff for the new API. It is just that all the scummy founders and rockstars of silicon valley have found that offering higher level services is a great way to scam people of their money because it is the only way the new "average" programmer can even make anything. The only problem is long-term the people using these services will need to find actual programmers.

Freknf 5y ago

>But over a decade later, we find server-side JavaScript hopelessly fragmented, deeply tied to bad infrastructure, and irrevocably ruled by committees without the incentive to innovate. Trying to sell something based on FUD is always a bad sign.

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feb 5y ago

>>> Our investors are Dan Scholnick from Four Rivers Ventures, Guillermo from Rauch Capital, Lee Jacobs from Long Journey Ventures, the Mozilla Corporation, Shasta Ventures, and our long-time collaborator Ben Noordhuis. Why is the Mozilla Corporation an investor in a Chrome based technology startup ?

kizer 5y ago
Well, Deno is using Rust extensively and V8 is the only "Chrome" part.
- hu3 5y ago
  Didn't Mozilla fire a substantial amount of their Rust developers? And all Servo developers according to: https://paulrouget.com/bye_mozilla.html https://paulrouget.com/bye_mozilla.html
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    No, they laid off a substantial amount of their Rust team, but the number of overall developers employed by Mozilla was quite small. Mozilla continues to be interested in Rust even though they did that, they’re a founding sponsor of the Rust Foundation, for example, and are continuing to use Rust even though they do not employ people to work on the language itself.
afiori 5y ago
Deno poses itself partially as node with web standards, Mozilla likes when things are webby

kizer 5y ago

I hope that Deno can maximize TS performance. Right now they compile TS internally, but especially with this new financially-backed focus I hope that they can perhaps modify V8 or fork it to create a TS engine that takes advantage of type information for optimization. That's really what's needed; in a "no implicit any" application performance would near native. Also, it's nice that they're using Tokio for the HTTP server instead of a JS implementation (from what I understand). I want to see Deno near the top of the TechEmpower benchmarks.

jedahan 5y ago

Trying to signup for Deno Deploy, it asks for the 'Act on your behalf' github permission to make an account. Clicking on 'Learn more about Deno Deploy' leads to https://github.com/apps/deno-deploy https://github.com/apps/deno-deploy , which does not tell me more. What does 'act on your behalf' mean for Deno Deploy?

jacobwg 5y ago
I believe it's a very poorly written description in the newer GitHub App permission system. My understanding it describes something akin to "can act on your behalf, but only in the scope of what other permissions are being requested" but it's overall very unclear wording. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26485844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26485844
- jedahan 5y ago
  Deno's response here seems to confirm that https://github.com/denoland/deploy_examples/issues/15 https://github.com/denoland/deploy_examples/issues/15

bullen 5y ago

If you want hot-deployed distributed Java VM HTTP app. server + JSON database you can use my open-source alternative: http://host.binarytask.com http://host.binarytask.com It uses comet-stream instead of WebSockets. But it's fully "joint" parallel on all cores.

kibleopard 5y ago

The issue with Deno, personally, is that it feels like it doesn’t deviate enough from NodeJS to even make it worth taking the time to learn/migrate projects over to it. From what I recall, the only really new and nice features are: a) sandboxed by default b) no need for a node_modules folder since you can directly import from a URL And is that really worth dumping loads of money into developing further? I just find it hard to believe people are going to bother with Deno any time soon - we’ve gone too far down the NodeJS road.

clarle 5y ago
I think sandboxed by default can make a lot of sense for the large companies that can potentially suffer heavy losses if an unauthorized attacker got into the file system. The other feature is TypeScript as a first class citizen which is pretty great for devs.
adkadskhj 5y ago
I feel like sandboxing could be huge, but WASM might be cutting the legs out from that feature. Sandboxing doesn't sound so unique or innovative when WASM is coming along and doing the same thing, and with a much wider audience and thus more likely to have massive traction.
- afiori 5y ago
  They compete on different use cases, most js/ts apps cannot be (reasonably) compiled to wasm and also wasm sandbox doesn't limit what the environment can do. As a glaring strawman if you expose eval to wasm it will not help you. Deno's sandbox will allow you to crate a dedicated worker with no network/disk access to handle sensitive informations, or to force your application to use a specific worker as a proxy (by making it the only thing with network acess)
cloverich 5y ago
The standard library will be a killer feature. Even for people that know the existing ecosystem (as I do), as more libraries fall out of fashion or become abandoned, and people have to pick up (several) new libraries from scratch for basic tasks, they'll realize (as I did) its not actually any different than just using Deno. I don't know if that will be enough, but that's one of the angle's I'm watching closely now. I'm partly biased because I like playing with streams, and those can be a nightmare in Node.

semitones 5y ago

"We are bullish about the technology stack we've built" - I would sure hope so!

turadg 5y ago

Deno seems well poised to replace Nodejs for isomorphic Web programming. The leading app framework for that is Nextjs and I hope the Rauch Capital investment sígnals Vercel will be supporting Deno. Anyone know?

loopback_device 5y ago

> To provide a modern, productive programming system that adheres to browser APIs. In my opinion, the best part of node is (or was) that it didn't adhere to the browser APIs. That brought in some fresh air, and gave us buffers, native bindings, streams etc.

searchableguy 5y ago
Web does have streams and buffers. Web assembly seems to fill in the gaps for native code but deno supports rust plugins which removes any sandbox guarantees so it's a trade off.

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TheMagicHorsey 5y ago

This is probably unpopular here, but I wish people would just stop using Javascript on the server. Well, I wish they would stop using it period, but at least in the browser it makes some sense. Edit: to be clear, I have no beef with Typescript, Dart, Clojurescript, and the many other languages that compile into JS. It's JS itself I have issue with. I feel like it gives too much flexibility to young programmers to screw things up. There don't seem to be enough safeguards or training wheels. On large projects its my nightmare.

e12e 5y ago
> be clear, I have no beef with Typescript One of Deno's main selling points is that it runs typescript out of the box?
speedgoose 5y ago
If you have to use JavaScript, you can configure eslint with some plug-ins to have pretty good safeguards or training wheels. You will still miss some strong typing but eslint will warn or prevent most of the awful or stupid code.

ravenstine 5y ago

A lot of people seem to think the difference between Deno and Node is trivial, but having actually used Deno, I think they're wrong. Here's why: - Typescript as a first class citizen - An actual `window` global with familiar browser APIs - Sandboxing w/ permissions - URL-based imports (no need for NPM) - Bundling into self-contained binaries - Things like top-level-await which Node.js still treats as experimental. - Better-designed APIs than the Node standard lib (esp. when it comes to promises instead of callbacks) To me, those aren't just minor details. This has the potential to create a new epoch in server-size JavaScript.

ivan888 5y ago
> URL-based imports (no need for NPM) What happens when there is the next Codehaus-like shutdown, and so much source code just won't work? Or when a bad actor takes control of a domain that commonly hosted packages (perhaps through completely legitimate means, such as registration expiration), can get a completely legitimate SSL certificate for it, and responds to requests for packages with malicious code? I think the abstraction, and to some degree the centralization, of package management is generally a good thing
- pknopf 5y ago
  There will likely be some kind of npm at some point.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    If the goal is to get rid of NPM, why would you add another one in the future?
    - afiori 5y ago
      The goal is not to eliminate npm, but to decouple it from the runtime itself
  - forty 5y ago
    Yes, i think recreating an npm kind of central place for your project dependencies seems almost required if you want to avoid depending on a different version of a lib in each file of your project. I cannot understand the benefit of this scheme honestly. I would have preferred they fix something npm is lacking, like adding the ability to sign packages

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Article left me wondering what the plan is for them here - why is it becoming 'The Company Deno'... other than they have a bunch of investors. Is it just to get a team in to properly manage the project as a whole?

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camdenlock 5y ago

Prediction: Microsoft will be buying Deno. Screencap this.

hu3 5y ago
It's cheaper and gentler to the ecosystem to just add Typescript support to node and call it a day.

paperwork 5y ago

I'm excited about Deno, but I'm finding that the docs still need to be improved. For example, I'm trying to build a tcp server. I'm not able to get information on how back-pressure is handled. I can see that Deno.listen returns an object which implements reader and writer interfaces, but it isn't clear to my how to look for events, such as disconnect or that new data is available. I wish there were examples showing how to correctly parse frames or implement protocols. I'm sure these things will be expanded over time, partly by programmers in the community, but from the outside, things are still a bit rough.

_qua_di_q_ 5y ago

It's the absolutely right move to get investors. Deno has substantial advantages over NodeJS. However, I personally would prefer Go or .NET Core for my backend any day. We need to wait and see where it's going ... Good luck and success anyway!

justicezyx 5y ago

This is a great news! Ryan and the team should be capturing some of the value produced by their creation. And because of Deno's a developer tool, it's actually capturing the far minor part of the whole value and enable a much bigger value creation!

xixixao 5y ago

> The Deno company hopes to enable the millions of web programmers out there to maximally leverage their craft in other domains. I know this might be hard to see, but Rust is actually in the same domain. It is also, among other things, enabling product/frontend/web engineers to build backend/native/browser-less applications. I'd bet Rust will be more successful here, especially given its amazing ability to change itself and innovate.

shusson 5y ago
> It is also, among other things, enabling product/frontend/web engineers to build backend/native/browser-less applications. Care to explain? I can imagine web programmers being productive in deno in a few minutes vs however long it takes to learn an entire new language, not to mention a language that requires memory management.
- xixixao 5y ago
  See the Rust Foundation announcement: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-02-08-hello-world/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-02-08-hello-worl... > "A language empowering everyone, but especially folks who thought that systems programming wasn’t for them.”

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skratlo 5y ago

> Of these, the web browser scripting language (JavaScript) is the fastest, most popular, and the only one with an industrial standardization process Haha, this made me laugh hard, stopped reading

nilshauk 5y ago

From a distance I think Deno has a lot of promising features going for it. Expressing modules as URLs seems like a small difference but I believe it has big ramifications. With clever use of DNS resolving and caching I wonder how fast new instances will be able to spin up. I'm guessing it'll be fast! My only gripe with the Deno company is that taking investor funding is a double-edged sword. Yes, they'll get to hire very skilled developers. However naturally the investors want a tidy exit, and I wonder if that would be to be bought out by Amazon, Microsoft or Google. Edit: Just realized that there's a key difference in that Deno does not have something like NPM to be bought and sold because dependencies are URLs and thus decentralized. Also, Deno itself is open-source.

Woung1938 5y ago

It seems there are many toothing problems with Deno. I just tried stuff from their blog (https://deno.com/blog/v1.8 https://deno.com/blog/v1.8): $ deno run --unstable --allow-write=output.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crowlKats/webgpu-examples/f3b979f57fd471b11a28c5b0c91d0447221ba77b/hello-triangle/mod.ts Download https://crux.land/2arQ9t Download https://crux.land/api/get/2arQ9t error: Import 'https://crux.land/api/get/2arQ9t' failed: 404 Not Found at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crowlKats/webgpu-examples/f3b979f57fd471b11a28c5b0c91d0447221ba77b/deps.ts:4:0 (A dependency got removed?) Another one: $ deno run https://deno.land/v1.8/permission_api.ts error: An unsupported media type was attempted to be imported as a module. Specifier: https://deno.land/v1.8/permission_api.ts MediaType: Unknown (The site is a 404 returning status code 200... just... why?)

wperron 5y ago
Thanks for reporting, we recently moved our blog to deno.com/blog and haven't updated the post -- we'll fix that as soon as possible

latexr 5y ago

> Many developers, we think, prefer web-first abstraction layers. Many developers, I think, don’t look past web-first abstraction layers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen CLI tools which are huge chunks of node wrapping a thin bash command. They are multiple files, orders of magnitude larger than they need to be, and require external dependencies because these developers are fixated on their proverbial hammer.