Reports of Deno’s demise ‘greatly exaggerated,’ Deno creator says

Deno creator Ryan Dahl has responded to reports of Deno’s demise, saying they have been “greatly exaggerated.”

In a May 20 blog post, Dahl, also co-founder of Deno steward Deno Land, addressed criticisms of the Deno Deploy edge hosting service, the Deno KV key-value database, and the Deno Fresh web framework, as well as questions regarding Deno’s momentum. Some of the criticism is valid, Dahl wrote. “In fact, I think it’s fair to say we’ve had a hand in causing some amount of fear and uncertainty by being too quiet about what we’re working on, and the future direction of our company and products. That’s on us.”

But the accusation that Deno is diminishing or fading away could not be further from the truth, Dahl stressed. “Since the release of Deno 2 last October – barely over six months ago! – Deno adoption has more than doubled according to our monthly active user metrics…. The platform has gotten faster, simpler, and more capable. Deno is now used more widely – and more seriously – than ever before.”

Dahl in his blog post did not cite a specific source of the criticism. But UK-based web developer and consultant David Bushell had heralded Deno’s decline in an April 28 blog post. “The future of Deno Land Inc. is not looking bright,” Bushell wrote. “Their commercial product Deno Deploy claims to be ‘edge’ hosting with ‘massive global scale’…. Except that’s a bit of a stretch if we’re being honest.” Bushell noted that Deno Deploy had dropped from 35 regions to just 12 by January 2024 and went on to complain that development of Deno Fresh had slowed, that development of Deno KV had stalled, that Deno packaging is a mess, and that Deno releases are “nothing but Node compatibility fixes” and “an endless chase.” “Yeah, Deno is done,” Bushell warned.

But Dahl defended Deno and its companion technologies. “Deno 2’s robust Node compatibility effectively removed a major adoption barrier, unblocking a wide range of serious use cases, for one,” Dahl wrote. Regarding the scaling back of Deno Deploy regions, Dahl said most applications do not need to run everywhere. “They need to be fast, close to their data, easy to debug, and compliant with local regulations. We are optimizing for that,” Dahl said. Deno Deploy started in 2021 in 25 regions, then scaled to 35 regions, and now runs in six, he noted. The reduction in regions was driven by both cost and usage.

As for Deno KV, described by Dahl as “a zero-setup, globally consistent key-value store with a simple API and real-time capabilities,” Dahl acknowledged that it does not solve everything. “It’s not a general-purpose database, and it doesn’t replace relational systems for most applications,” Dahl said. “Developers love it for what it is: a zero-config global store that just works.” Dahl noted that efforts are under way to address broader needs for state management, and that Deno KV will remain in beta while critical bugs and security issues are addressed.

Dahl said that Deno is no longer just a runtime but a complete platform. It has capabilities including TypeScript and JSX support, granular permissions and sandboxing for secure execution, a full Language Server Protocol, strong Node/NPM compatibility, and Jupyter notebook integration. Deno was built fundamentally on ECMAScript modules and web standards, Dahl stressed. Deno Fresh, meanwhile, “is alive and well,” Dahl said. Significant improvements are coming to Fresh 2, with a stable release planned for later this year. Fresh 2 would be faster, easier to work with, and more extensible.  

“We’re building new products based on everything we’ve learned from Deploy and KV, not yet released. They aim to make persistent, distributed applications simpler. More on that very soon,” Dahl said. “We recognize that our silence has sometimes been a source of uncertainty, and we’re committed to improving our communication as we move forward with these exciting developments,” he said. “We’re not winding down. “We’re winding up.”