Deno ( https://deno.com/ ) is a runtime for JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly that is based on the V8 JavaScript engine and written in Rust ( https://www.rust-lang.org/ ). Deno was co-created by Ryan Dahl, who also created Node.js.

I have moved away from Node to Deno in part because I can clone the entire Deno source tree and play around in it, and in part because over time I’ve grown tired of Node and its various peculiarities. I can do this because I’m retired, but if I ever decided to venture out back into the world I sincerely doubt that my Deno skills would be consider an asset; the world seems to run overwhelmingly on Node.

While I was tinkering with Deno I kept wondering where its name came from. As I sat staring at the screen, I noticed that Deno has the same four letters as Node, and that Deno is spelled in alphabetical order. That’s when I suddenly tried this:

Both Node and Deno will evaluate the same JavaScript function on the command line, which is: split the string ‘node’ into a list of individual ASCII characters, sort the list, then join the sorted list back into a string. I have no idea if this is what Ryan Dahl did, but it seems a simple enough thing to do.