Deno 1.0 released! But wait… What’s Deno?
Have you heard of Deno? 🦕 I’m sure you’ve heard about it a lot lately, since its first stable version was released some weeks ago. In this post we’re going to talk about it in order to know what it is, how it works and what can we do with it. Let’s go! 💪
What’s Deno?
Like Node, Deno is a Javascript execution environment built on Chrome’s V8, but:
- Secure by default 🔐.
- It uses ES Module as the default module system 🤘.
- You can use promises!
- Bundled in a single executable file.
- It includes its own package manager, so no need to have 2 separated commands.
- Supports Typescript out of the box 🎉.
- It has some built-in utilities 🧰. You can see them all by running
deno --help.
Installation is pretty straightforward and after following the instructions you’ll have Deno’s CLI available in your OS’s terminal, so you can run something like this:
As I mentioned before, Deno is compatible with TS out of the box, and that’s awesome ✨. In case you’re wondering, yes, you can also run JS code without any problem :)
Following the getting started instructions you’ll find the next example:
If you save that code as a ts file and try to deno run it you’re going to see a nasty surprise…
Remember about that “Secure by default”? That’s why this is not working in a first instance. You need to tell Deno that you want to--allow-net and 💥, everything working as expected.
Wait wait wait… That URL looks like a dependency. How can I manage them?
It looks and IS a dependency and, as you can see, you didn’t need any other external command (cough cough npm) in order to install it 🤯.
If you’re familiar with node dependency system you need to know that Deno manages dependencies a bit differently. It’s not the topic I want to focus in this article, but if you want to know more, this FAQ will solve (probably) all your doubts 🧠.
Is someone using it right now?
Still no big names here for the moment (if I’m wrong do not hesitate to share it in the comments 🙏) but internet is already full of examples and tools for Deno, and I’m pretty sure the number of available toys for it will grow in the near future.
Looks cool. And now?
Well, you can take a look at its documentation 📕, play with some of the standard modules maintained by the Deno team or try creating something for your own 💡. Just take your time and, above all, enjoy it 🥳.
References
