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Backend EngineeringJune 10, 2018 2 min read 169Updated: June 22, 2026

Deno: Ryan Dahl's Fix for Node.js (2018)

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Deno: Ryan Dahl's Fix for Node.js

It’s 2018, and Ryan Dahl has just given a famous talk: "10 Things I Regret About Node.js." His answer to those regrets is Deno, a brand new runtime built on V8, Rust, and Tokio.

Deno isn't just a faster Node; it's a fundamental rethink of how a server-side JS runtime should work.

Security by Default

In Node, any script can read your ~/.ssh folder or access the network. Deno is sandboxed. You have to explicitly grant permissions.

# This will fail in Deno!
deno run my_script.ts

# This is required
deno run --allow-net --allow-read my_script.ts

No more package.json or node_modules

Deno does away with the complex module resolution of Node. It uses standard ES Modules and imports files by URL, just like the browser.

// No npm install! Just import from a URL.
import { serve } from "https://deno.land/std@0.0.1/http/server.ts";

const s = serve({ port: 8000 });
console.log("http://localhost:8000/");

for await (const req of s) {
  req.respond({ body: "Hello World\\n" });
}

TypeScript Out of the Box

Deno has a built-in TypeScript compiler. You don't need tsconfig.json, webpack, or babel just to run a simple TS file.

Built with Rust

By leveraging Rust and the tokio event loop, Deno aims to be more robust and performant than the C++ internals of Node.

In 2018, Deno feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s a runtime that respects the last 10 years of web evolution instead of being stuck in 2009.


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