After years using Deno as his primary runtime, the author finally returned to Node heavily for a Svelte Kit client project. He found the ECMAScript features are fully supported and the outdated `require()` calls are now modernized. While NPM installation via bash remains the official (and risky) method, he switched to PNPM and FNM to manage versions and avoid security risks.
A key frustration is Node's restriction on TypeScript packages within `node_modules`, a philosophical choice by the runtime maintainers. To bridge this, he used `Tsdown` for bundling, accepting the overhead of extra configuration files. Moving a static site generator from Deno to Node v26.10.0 required minimal changes, primarily swapping Deno APIs for `node:fs` and using Hono's adapter.
This migration surprisingly resulted in 15% faster build times. The author notes his codebase still idiomatically favors Deno, suggesting further performance gains are possible by leveraging native Node APIs. He is self-hosting Forgejo due to GitHub concerns and had to adjust PNPM trust policies to manage package provenance for his own modules.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing