huh, I mean idk experiences differ. My main project's service is written in Rust/Axum, and I enjoy it a lot. But I thought it was actually kind of frustrating to find that combination; Axum was the 3rd http client I tried, after the first two failed me in different ways. If I had started with the https client first and hadn't already felt good about building the codebase in Rust, I might have just gotten annoyed and moved on. First impressions can sometimes skew the perspective a little.
fwiw, re finding up-to-date packages, you can also pull in npm dependencies. idk what you found confusing about the deno.json, but it's definitely optional; you can just write imports directly in the .js file if you want. I often make single-file scripts to run some npm package over a local file.
That's the issue, Deno wasn't my first impression of typescript for the backend. Every decision I was took, there was a voice in the back of my head whispering, "it's probably easier on node". Not the actual code, but getting information about how to actually achieve those things.
The problem with making something as important as a package file optional it makes it very confusing for new users to get started because a variety of tutorials and getting started guides end up having a lot variation between them.
I mean... I find deno.json-less scripts to be incredibly convenient for creating single-file scripts, and I've found deno configuration to be pretty clear. You're not wrong for disliking Deno; it has opinions, and those can turn people off. But I happen to find those opinions and decisions to be quite convenient and useful for me.
fwiw, re finding up-to-date packages, you can also pull in npm dependencies. idk what you found confusing about the deno.json, but it's definitely optional; you can just write imports directly in the .js file if you want. I often make single-file scripts to run some npm package over a local file.