tl;dr: a new report from our department of experimental linguistics suggests: there are only 20 JavaScript runtimes left.
Context
The rule is: if you are building a new JavaScript runtime, its name must be a permutation of the letters in “Node”. (See: Node, Deno, Endo.)
This blog post provides a scientific study of the possible runtimes, a ranking of them by brand name potential, and an estimate for when they will all be claimed.
Already-claimed names
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| node | The original: an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment. |
| deno | Deno is the most productive, secure, and performant JavaScript runtime for the modern programmer. |
| endo | A JavaScript platform … for secure communication among objects … distributed between mutually suspicious machines. |
| deon | Not a JS runtime, but there is already a JSON-like notation format of this name, so we can’t use this name |
Available names
That leaves us with 20 available permutations. Many of them would make quite poor names, so I’ve ranked them here in order by how strong I think the brand opportunity is.
Plausible names
| Name | Brand possibilities |
|---|---|
| oden | Strong mythology/comics reference possibilities here for logo branding. |
| nedo | Pronounce it “Neato!“ |
| edno | Pronounce it “Edna” and make this a Simpsons reference to Edna Krabappel and you’ve got a string brand and a cease-and-desist opportunity |
| doen | Pronounce it “Doin‘“ |
| edon | As in “Garden of”: a fresh perspective where no evil exists (get rid of casts) |
| oned | 1d, as in, one-dimensional. A JavaScript-to-wasm runtime where 1d is a joke on linear memory |
| neod | A daemon runner for elite hackers who are trying to find out the truth about the matrix |
Hard-to-use names
dneo dnoe edon enod eodn ndeo ndoe noed odne oedn oend onde
An important point
I hope the developer community will show some restaint and claim all of those 19 available permutations first.
Then, the final JavaScript runtime can claim the name done.
Exhaustion estimate
We can do a quick curve-fitting exercise on the available data:
| Year | Runtimes | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 1 | Node first public release |
| 2018 | 2 | Deno first public release |
| 2019 | 3 | Endo first demo |
To see that we can expect all 24 permutations to be claimed by 2029:
If you got this far
You might like some of my more serious writing for JavaScript people:
- <iframe>able finance: a talk on working with iframes and building embedded UI products.
- Constraint programming in JavaScript: a talk on why and how to program using constraint solvers.
Errata
- Thanks to A. Gupta for correcting several mistakes with regard to names that I had claimed were not usable but which did in fact have good branding potential.
So help me, do not send me emails about this post. I do not want to know your thoughts. If you have corrections, please file them directly to the HN comments section.