Yeah, I use it for anything new, though so far it's been primarily hobby projects, including a sort of larger one I haven't gotten off the ground yet.
I wouldn't necessarily suggest that a newbie programmer go right to Deno yet because today you still have to be prepared to deal with some differences and quirks.
But here is why I like Deno:
- Typescript pretty much Just Works (TM) out of the box without having to think about it
- More web/browser APIs right out of the box with less Node-specific weirdness. Anything that is Deno-specific (such as anything that lives on the Deno global) is, in my opinion, better designed than Node's APIs.
- Requiring file extensions in import specifiers makes total sense to me. Some people think this is stupid, but I see no reason not to make them actual file paths and not this sort of pseudo file path that omits the extension.
- I like how Deno can bundle your application into a single executable.
- Testing framework and linter are built right in. Which is great because, let's face it, most of us have been using such things for a very long time now.
- Being able to pull in modules from the web without NPM is fantastic.
- Node.js and NPM compatibility has gotten way better recently.
- Binary data is handled as Uint8Array rather than using a non-standard Buffer like in Node. Makes total sense. Skip the middle-man and just give me the bytes in a widely compatible form.
- Granular security with strict permissions by default is really nice. Sometimes I do want to import a module but then have a guarantee that third-party code won't phone home. It's also flexible enough that you can allow your own code to reach your own domains but then some module you import from elsewhere doesn't send data to some other domain. I'd still choose to not use such modules, but it's good that you can mitigate the risk of malicious code without having to do anything.
And sure, Node has improved a lot since the inception of Deno and will continue to improve. It can probably do some of these things and may end up having more parity with Deno. I don't think that Node is bad. I still use Node, primarily at work, and in cases where a package has maintainers that refuse to support Deno (ex. Playwright).
I wouldn't necessarily suggest that a newbie programmer go right to Deno yet because today you still have to be prepared to deal with some differences and quirks.
But here is why I like Deno:
- Typescript pretty much Just Works (TM) out of the box without having to think about it
- More web/browser APIs right out of the box with less Node-specific weirdness. Anything that is Deno-specific (such as anything that lives on the Deno global) is, in my opinion, better designed than Node's APIs.
- Requiring file extensions in import specifiers makes total sense to me. Some people think this is stupid, but I see no reason not to make them actual file paths and not this sort of pseudo file path that omits the extension.
- I like how Deno can bundle your application into a single executable.
- Testing framework and linter are built right in. Which is great because, let's face it, most of us have been using such things for a very long time now.
- Being able to pull in modules from the web without NPM is fantastic.
- Node.js and NPM compatibility has gotten way better recently.
- Binary data is handled as Uint8Array rather than using a non-standard Buffer like in Node. Makes total sense. Skip the middle-man and just give me the bytes in a widely compatible form.
- Granular security with strict permissions by default is really nice. Sometimes I do want to import a module but then have a guarantee that third-party code won't phone home. It's also flexible enough that you can allow your own code to reach your own domains but then some module you import from elsewhere doesn't send data to some other domain. I'd still choose to not use such modules, but it's good that you can mitigate the risk of malicious code without having to do anything.
And sure, Node has improved a lot since the inception of Deno and will continue to improve. It can probably do some of these things and may end up having more parity with Deno. I don't think that Node is bad. I still use Node, primarily at work, and in cases where a package has maintainers that refuse to support Deno (ex. Playwright).