A lot of complexity in computer science stems from duplicating functionality due to developers not wanting to learn the best tools. The best tool when it comes to implicit dependencies are nix/guix. These have solved the issue across languages for almost two decades. Unfortunately, they have a reputation of being 'hard', so instead of someone attempting another try at the actual problem (cross language implicit dependencies), what we have here is yet another javascript runtime that 'solves' this problem, but only if you're using javascript.
Deno sounds well thought out, but the article realistically presented no compelling reason to try it.
And realistically, it presented many reasons not to. Javascript is a horrendous language. Not because of the syntax, not because of the library support, but simply because even self-dubbed javascript 'experts' are often confuddled by its standardized behavior. We could probably count on several fingers the number of people who can accurately describe javascript's semantics. As the rest of the computing world moves towards sane languages, this seems like backwards 'progress'.
Nix still has issues with things going out of date / falling out of support.
One of the good points about deno raised in the article is that deno removes that problem by having first-party solutions to things that developers usually need built-in.
Also while JS has plenty of footguns, Deno being built around TS and deno ts developers using eslint as a standard practice eliminates those footguns.
An incredibly expresive and powerful functional language... With no type system or static analysis to speak of? Hard nope, that's the express path to write once read never.
The reason to try it that I took away was that it's easy to install and then you get all these niceties - LSP, formatter, scripts, with no extra effort! I love that!!!
Deno sounds well thought out, but the article realistically presented no compelling reason to try it.
And realistically, it presented many reasons not to. Javascript is a horrendous language. Not because of the syntax, not because of the library support, but simply because even self-dubbed javascript 'experts' are often confuddled by its standardized behavior. We could probably count on several fingers the number of people who can accurately describe javascript's semantics. As the rest of the computing world moves towards sane languages, this seems like backwards 'progress'.