It wasn't worth recreating packages everytime you needed something that Deno had. If you ended up needing something and there was already something on npm for it, it was easier to just switch back to using node than to adapt/maintain a fork or alternative to an npm package. I think the lack of npm compatibility earlier on led to a lot of churn. Deno would probably be dead if they never improved the npm compatibility, especially considering the rise of bun promising performance improvements like Deno, but with better node compatibility at the time.