Would anyone be interested in an article about the crusade to move JS to ESM? I've been considering writing one, here's a preview:

Sindresorus wrote a gist "Pure ESM modules"[0] and converted all his modules to Pure ESM, breaking anyone who attempted to `require` the latest versions of his code; he later locked the thread to prevent people from complaining. node-fetch released a pure ESM version a year ago that is ~10x less popular than the CommonJS version[1]. The results of these changes broke a lot of code and resulted in many hours of developers figuring out how make their projects compatible with Pure ESM modules (or decide to ignore them and use old CommonJS versions)--not to mention the tons of pointless drama on GitHub issues.

Meanwhile, TC-39 member Matteo Collima advocated a moderate approach dependent on where your module will be run [2]. So the crusade is led not by the Church, but by a handful of zealots dedicated to establishing ESM supremacy for unclear reasons (note how Sindresorus' gist lacks any justifications and how weak TFA's justifications are). It's kind of like the Python 2 to 3 move except with even less rationale and not driven by the core devs.

0 - https://gist.github.com/sindresorhus/a39789f98801d908bbc7ff3...

1 - https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-fetch?activeTab=versions

2 - https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/33954#issuecomment-924...

user:	reactus
created:	March 8, 2023
karma:	33