Mistake? Gah. Probably in a lot of cases. The ecosystem around it is both “robust” in the sense of projects and libraries, and “objectively awful” for permitting some of the recent security issues seen.
ECMAScript was never intended for where it’s at now, and all the lipstick Google applies won’t change that, even if it “works fast” “now”.
What I’d pick for a new project? It depends, tell me about the project. …it probably won’t be Node.js though.
Ryan Dahl created Deno to address his regrets regarding Node.js shortcomings, limitations.