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Deno raises $21M

deno.com

141–150 of 397 posts

Re: Deno raises $21M

#141
post #69

This question is going to make me sound like a jerk, but why do you want to write your back-end in JS? Deno looks like a great improvement over node.js, but I don't feel compelled to use it. It seems like people jumped to node based on some performance promises that didn't really pay off (IMO). And since then, we have newer options like Rust, Go, and Elixir as performant back-end options, and even older choices like…

I've written backends using C#, PHP back in the day, a little bit of Go, Java and naked SQL, and I prefer Typescript language and npm ecosystem, hands down. May be not for writing highload distributed systems that are critical at RAM & CPU, but IO-heavy business logic where managing requirements and their changes is the hardest challenge, it's a godsend.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netlify, Supabase and Slack whitelabelling Deno Deploy for starters, I'm sure there are others out there self-hosting as well

See now that's interesting - All of those have very out-there brand reach and recognition but who knew they were using Deno, nobody heh. Okay, then, so it's a bit under the radar but ticking away down there, hence the raise. Fairplay.

If you're not following those companies' offerings then it stands to reason you haven't heard about it but all three of them did broadcast pretty widely that they were using Deno, I would assume quite a few people were aware of this.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#143
post #23

Deno deploy seems cool and all, but I haven't seen any great rationale for using their service over say Cloudflare Workers.

As someone who dabbled with both workers and Deno Deploy: Deno Deploy actually works.

I was very excited about the idea of workers but their tooling is (or at least was when I tried it last) abysmal, buggy and hard to understand. To this day I don't know how to setup a basic dev vs. production in workers.toml. Local debugging was buggy for naked domains (even found a GitHub issue for it that languished for months with no bugfix or clear explanation / workaround) and very slow.

Great idea killed by poor dev tooling.

Deno deploy is the opposite of that: deploys are instant and it's obvious how to deploy. You can develop and test locally.

Cloudflare released wrangler v2 (which dropped rust for node) and maybe it's better now but the one experience I had with wrangler v2 was trying to deploy a small static website (pages) and it failed due to their backend throwing 50x errors.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#144
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amusing to see a whole generation of senior developers (“senior” as in 5+ years of experience) that haven’t experienced web development without React[0] and who proceed to reinvent PHP/ASP.NET/RoR. [0] Used here as shorthand for “modern js driven development”

Such a tiring take... Nobody is reinventing PHP or RoR development. What is happening is the community taking all our favorite parts of these stacks and combining and implementing them in ways that facilitate a dev experience that we could only have dreamed of back in the PHP/RoR days. - Senior dev that started off in the PHP and then RoR days

Back in RoR days? It's still here with new releases offering modern features. ASP.NET is even more cutting edge.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#145

are there real-world, commercial products actually running on """serverless""" architecture? no matter how much I think about that whole concept, I see no application for it that couldn't be done better, faster and easier with regular tools

There's plenty of real-world, commercial products which do not get extremely high loads but earn much more money on each request. They're mostly in B2B without sexy names and media coverage, though.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#146
post #69

This question is going to make me sound like a jerk, but why do you want to write your back-end in JS? Deno looks like a great improvement over node.js, but I don't feel compelled to use it. It seems like people jumped to node based on some performance promises that didn't really pay off (IMO). And since then, we have newer options like Rust, Go, and Elixir as performant back-end options, and even older choices like…

I think developers knowing JS/TS is a highly compelling argument given the fact that most companies are struggling to find any devs at all. I would argue finding Rust/Go/Elixir developers is going to be _a lot_ harder for a lot of companies than finding JS developers.

Also then sufficiently proficient frontend Devs have an easy in into backend development which has turned out to be a very good thing at 5 different companies I have worked for in the last 4 years.

In addition to that not every backend or service needs much performance. I have written quite a few services that get hit maybe 3 or 4 times a minute at best and Node was great for that. Actually I have yet to work anywhere where performance was limited by the language choice and not by architectural decisions or inconsidered use of databases and data structures. I am not saying this does not exist but it does not mirror my experience with the majority of companies at all.

I'd also say that despite npm and dependency hell being a real problem there is a vast ecosystem of packages out there. I know python has that going for it too. But Elixir is much less developed in that regard - simply by being less popular.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed my view on this―I hated how things were going full circle. But in reality, human civilization loves overdoing a particular direction and then reverts to the mean. You see this with the economy, moral fashions, everything. I am an optimist in that I (have started to) believe that this slowly allows us to converge on better solutions for everything. PHP was easy to set up, easy to host, easy to understand and…

We didn't go back far enough, CGI is still where it's at.

I mean CGI still lives on just moved up the stack a bit with WSGI and Rack.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs see a tiny chance that it can be a 100X return. So raising $20M at say a $50-100M valuation now, that means betting on a $5B+ exit. In return for getting money to take a shot at that level of artificially-fueled revenue growth, the founders are willing to cede control of the community to professional financiers. As others wrote, that's the VC model: make a ton of these bets, and as long as 2-4 turn out, the lotte…

Maybe they see a chance of it but they cannot seriously expect it EDIT: the comment I responded to was completely rewritten and replaced with a different one. Please don’t do this

The main base expectations are that out of all of Sequoias bets, some will become $5B+ co's, and for the next 18mo, deno can grow headcount with salaries unrelated to sustainability

Some people involved might expect more, and I'm sure hope for more, but I'm a language designer & CEO, not a mind reader :)

Re: Deno raises $21M

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xkcd.com/927/

I knew that xkcd before I even clicked. They should update it and increase the number dramatically.

It could store a cookie and increment the number every time you see the comic

Re: Deno raises $21M

#150
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is their actual business model? I know there's Deno Deploy, and presumably they offer some kind of enterprise-support type deal. But the first is easily copied by competitors (in an already-crowded market), and the other isn't super lucrative. Is there anything else? I love Deno and want it to succeed, but it doesn't feel like a unicorn, and I'm worried about it being expected to become one

https://deno.com/deploy/pricing is their business model. They charge you for CPU and bandwidth more than they pay for it.

Right, my point is that any number of cloud providers could swoop in and offer the same product for probably cheaper
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