As far as I know, modern Node compat in Deno is also quite great - I just import packages via 'npm:package' and they work, even install scripts work. Although I remember that in the past Deno's Node compat was worse, yes.
> Deno is written in Rust, which allows them to move faster and more safely. Contributing to and extending Deno is a breeze. You can add Rust crates to the runtime and use them from JS.
> Could you not just build a URL loader and cache for importing in Node.js? Could sandboxing not just be a flag in Node.js? Do you really need TypeScript built in?
There are open PRs on node for the first two parts ^^ It's 100% doable.