Cloudflare, Inc., the Internet security, performance, and reliability company, today announced that it is collaborating with Deno and individual core contributors of the Node.js open source project, which brings together three of the largest JavaScript environments, to give developers flexibility and choice while creating the standards of the future of edge computing. The project will seek to ensure that code produced in one environment will operate in another by working around a shared set of standards. Any developer will be able to write and run code that adheres to the set of standards–as well as simply transfer it–across Cloudflare Workers, Deno, and Node.js without having to redesign an application.
Today, once an application has been written in one environment, it is difficult to migrate it to another. This can lead to development teams retaining expensive architecture and wasting resources in order to ensure that their code and applications continue to work for users when they migrate to new environments. Cloudflare, Deno, and Node.js are three of the most popular JavaScript environments on the market today. Developers will benefit from universal standards as a result of this endeavour, as they will be able to easily work across all settings based on their business needs and have confidence that their code will work for users today and in the future.
“The future of JavaScript is Universal, the ability to move JavaScript between many environments. That future needs to be intentionally designed,” said Myles Borins, member of the Node.js Technical Steering Committee. “Historically developers have had to rely on tacit knowledge and build tools to share code across the various JavaScript runtimes. The promise of ‘write once, run anywhere’ will only be possible with collaborative initiatives like the Web-interoperable Runtimes Community Group.”
“Developers are asking Node.js for more interoperability with APIs defined by Web standards,” said Matteo Collina Ph.D., Chief Software Architect, NearForm and Node.js Technical Steering Committee member. “However, those APIs have not been designed with servers in mind and might require some adaptations. The WinterCG group’s goal is to define how those APIs would behave on servers, paving the way for better interoperability between runtimes.”
The Web-interoperable Runtimes Community Group is collaborating with industry leaders such as NearForm and Vercel to guarantee that developers’ voices are heard in the formation of a new community group that will work inside current standards bodies. Developers can use the API Standards to:
– Use the best tool or framework for the job: Developers will be able to utilise community-developed tools and integrations across runtimes, allowing them to use the best tool for the job.
– Write server-side code in a consistent manner: Developers can ship better code by reducing platform-specific subtleties and the requirement to master numerous platforms and focusing on functionality.
– Move applications when technology requirements change: As application requirements evolve and change over time, there is no need for large-scale rewrites or vendor changes.4
