VII · Modern builders
Ryan Dahl
1981–
Creator of Node.js · creator of Deno · independent
Gave us
Node.js (2009) — JavaScript on the server with non-blocking I/O. Deno (2018) — Node.js with all the things he wished he'd done differently the first time.
The story
Built Node in a few months in 2009 because nginx + JavaScript should have been a thing. Stepped away in 2012, came back in 2018 with a JSConf EU talk titled "10 Things I Regret About Node.js", then shipped Deno. Rare rebooter who didn't fork his own community.
"I think Node.js is the wrong abstraction. Maybe Deno is too. We'll see."
One more thing
The only language designer who has publicly listed his own regrets in a 30-minute conference talk.