How Deno differs from Node.js

Deno improves upon Node.js in some significant ways.

Modules

Modules are loaded directly from URLs and cached locally.

import confetti from "https://esm.sh/canvas-confetti@1.6.0";

This allows decentralization of packages by removing reliance on npm and enabling developers to self-host their packages.

Consequently, this removes the need for package.json and node_modules, and allows programs to run in the browser since there is no reliance on build tools like webpack.

Security

Because code is executed in a sandbox, the Deno runtime has no access to the file system, and the network. Flags like --allow-write and --allow-net can be used to explicitly enable access.

In addition to the above features, Deno supports TypeScript out of the box, and has a built-in formatter for code similar to ESLint for Node.js.