I haven't, as I said I haven't worked with node except for that project a few years ago. I know webpack is not a requirement but the alternatives I could find at the time were even more complex (that may have been due to my lack of experience). I think directly importing dependencies from their URLs looks simpler from a new user point of view than using a package.json or similar and having to decide between several very similar project managers (npm, yarn, pnpm, etc).

I read the ts-node GitHub readme and I think it has the same friction as node for me. My main issue has been having to either clutter my global (root required) space or doing a local install and having to mess with either PATH or one of the alternatives to executing locally like npx. From what I have seen Deno is just a download and you are ready to go single executable, from an usability point of view nothing beats that.

I am mostly speaking from my little experience and ignorance so correct me or suggest better alternatives if you think I'm wrong.

You are right.