A while back, I wrote an article about how Deno works. Deno still isn't ready.
I say that in the nicest possible way. I love it when I get to use it, but I don't get to use it often. I'll give an example of why.
Despite me being a huge advocate for Deno, I still don't feel comfortable risking a project on it.
When I was working for Gated, I had to build a chrome extension that required a backend of some sort. Since I was working alone on this project, I was able to learn some new stuff instead of using the old and reliable "react + node" stack.
For the frontend, I picked SolidJS, which was new to me but looked similar enough to React that I felt comfortable jumping in. I considered Vue or Svelte instead but I disagree with Vue on a philosophical level and Svelte still doesn't have the community needed for such an ambitious framework.
When I got to the backend, I toyed around with bun.sh but it crashed almost instantly, and it doesn't quite support node modules yet in the way it claims it will. After that experience, I was going to go use Deno like I always have and went looking for the modules I needed. For this specific project, I had a non-negotiable need for airtable. The official airtable module obviously didn't work (much of the project hasn't been touched for over 2 years), and the community made one had a really weird quirk where it only supported one table per client?
To make a long story short, I couldn't in good faith use Deno for this project. I ended up just using a standard node project, despite my best efforts to try something new.
Duno.land is my best attempt at getting these stumbling blocks in one place, as a resource for the community to see if there are going to be any hiccups in a project they are planning. I'm going to copy-paste the mission statement from the site:
The javascript community, and I personally, really want to see Deno succeed. This site is not intended to "dunk" on Deno in any way. It's simply my way of listing what I see as its current shortcomings and what I hope it can improve on.
Please star the repo if you can. PRs and issues would be phenomenal.
That's it for me! If you're interested in more from me, subscribe to my blog! I try to post once month so honestly it's not going to fill your inbox.
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