+1 for Deno. It seems like it's taking the good ideas that developed from the node+npm ecosystem while filing off the unnecessary complexity that's accumulated in the ecosystem over the years. I've worked with node+npm+typescript/babel/webpack/etc for years and know the ecosystem pretty well, but I get apprehensive when thinking of starting a new project with it because there's such a deluge of not-very-meaningful choices and piles of configs for using best-practices while setting up a project. Getting into using Deno has been so refreshingly simple in comparison, and it's made me enthusiastic about starting new projects or libraries.

I've had some game/mod ideas for a while that involves having players write real code to interact with games, and I would create some tutorials for beginners to get started writing code so they can use it. I love Typescript and think it would make a good language for it, but I absolutely dreaded the idea when I realized using it properly would involve having to onboard users to all the tooling of Node+npm+build configs+testing tools+eslint etc. Onboarding users to Rust properly almost seems simpler in comparison because of its integrated tooling even accounting for the fact that the language itself is so much harder to use! I mostly scrapped the idea for the time being because of this, but now that I've discovered Deno I've been reinvigorated on the idea. A beginner tutorial involving Deno can actually focus on using the language with a few libraries without having the user get sidetracked into being distracted by a dozen other tools.