TL;DR:
Node.js is still alive and well — but newer runtimes like Deno and Bun are shaking things up.
Bun is super fast, modern, and comes with...
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If you're going to use AI to write a post, could you at least fully proofread it before posting it?
Oh lol, I was testing to see if I did something wrong or if Dev.to doesn't support clickable lists. I added it after the article was already published, following a reader's feedback. Thanks for noticing and pointing it out :)
I'd be a hypocrite if I tell you I don't use GPT to help me write the posts, since I write them in Portuguese and later adapt and translate to English. A lot of the idiomatic expressions I use in Portuguese don't have direct equivalents in English, so I need help with that part.
LOL
I've been playing with Bun lately, and its speed really does feel next level, especially with all the built-in tools. Has anyone fully switched to Bun for production yet? Curious about real-world reliability.
I know a software house, where a friend of mine used to work, that tried to use both Bun and Deno in production applications, and that's what prompted me to write this article. Long story short, in the end, they switched back to Node because Bun and Deno slowed developers down, as the community for these two technologies is still small, so it's harder to find solutions to bugs and errors on forums
As you said, this is kinda the same thing as PHP. It's not widely learned anymore, but it's still widely used. I bet a lot of new developers will lean towards using Bun or Deno instead of Node, just as most new developers learn Next or Django instead of PHP.
I agree and I'll add a curiosity: PHP is further from dying than ever lol. Just about a week ago, Platformatic lunched a new NodeJS module that allows you to integrate PHP directly on NodeJS code. In other words, they understand that using PHP is still important and that they need to make it easier to use in newer projects
growth like this is always nice to see. kinda makes me wonder - you think the things that stick around the longest are always the best, or just the ones with the biggest communities behind them?
I'd say it's a mix of both. The community plays an important role, because it's the community - and by community I include you and me, since we're part of that world - that chooses what stack/tech will be used to code new projects. But we're also smart enough not to adopt a time bomb that's going to blow everything up down the line. And after that, it's just a butterfly effect: The more enterprise-level projects you have using a particular stack/technology, the longer it will take for it to “die out”, because it will take a long time to replace/migrate those systems, especially in high-security environments such as the aviation sector. Airplanes still operate with Windows XP, because they know it's safe and won't break or cause unknown bugs that will result in a tragedy. The same goes for some banks using Cobol and medical equipment using Fortran: as long as they meet the needs, there is no reasonable reason to change and risk a breakdown.
Nice post.
I think node.js is still the best among them.
Defeating Node.js in a popularity battle will be a very difficult task. It has been around for too long and has already established itself. The community is enormous; just look at the number of npm modules and libraries. Both Bun and Deno have good ideas, but they still have a long way to go. As long as JavaScript/TypeScript exists, I predict that Node.js will too.
Use of well established software and experience make projects a success. Not frameworks that all serve the same purpose and have some differences in speed
Agreed. A well written software with the correct security protocols will always serve it's purpose. It is true that some techs are better and easier to develop than others for specific applications, but at the end, it all comes down to how good the planning and development was, not the tech itself.
I've tried Deno but it sucks, why would people use it with limited eco-system?
I would risk saying that they use it because of the hype. We know that, in the world of programming, everything changes very quickly, and I think this causes people to be anxious to be the first to “master” a new technology, in order to stay ahead of the market. This creates a “hype train”, which ends up making a technology very well known and used for a short period of time, with narratives like the one in the title of this article (it's worth noting that I tried to create an irony with the contrast between what the title of the article says and what the content says).
But this hype train dies fast, because users realize that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, which, in my opinion, is the case with Deno's terrible ecosystem and community. What's more, Node is already catching up with the features that Deno and Bun promise will be its advantages.