I really like this idea, but it misses the appeal of nodejs and its ilk...that you can speak the same JSON-native language on the backend as the front.

I think it’s a VERY interesting idea to use a browser for running some tooling, but that’s really just what the idea behind nodejs and deno etc are, aren’t they? It’s just that node tries to be convenient by providing access to things that would need in a non-user context (like filesystem and C interop), thereby breaking the sandbox. Deno tries to give you the best of both.

Running this stuff in the browser is still “just running on V8”, but with extra steps. If you don’t like the npm ecosystem, I get it, but then running nodejs without any packages is comparable to what you’re describing in the link, isn’t it?

> that’s really just what the idea behind nodejs and deno etc are, aren’t they?

Yeah, I guess they're pretty much the same thing, except for all the stuff I mentioned.

> Running this stuff in the browser is still “just running on V8”, but with extra steps.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. I don't know where this quote comes from, or what it's even trying to say. Nobody starts out with a computer with NodeJS and Deno installed and then has to go install a browser. Everyone already has a browser, on the other hand, and it's standardized and forward-compatible by design/commitment. From that perspective, NodeJS and Deno are '"just running on V8", but with extra steps' (truly—V8 exists for the Web browser and has only incidentally been lifted out and made to drive NodeJS, too—after a lot of contortions).

> you can speak the same JSON-native language on the backend as the front

Huh? Not only does this not make sense, but the backend appeal of NodeJS is completely irrelevant in matters of metatooling, aka "devDependencies" in NodeJS terms.