TS-ESNode VS volta

CommonJS is a great module system if you're using JS for scripting Unix (which it excels at). Is there a good reason to use ESM though? I've been half-joking that it's the "extinguish" phase of Microsoft's EEE strategy for JS.

I know one legitimate reason is "tree shaking" (source-level LTO when bundling modules). Dumber, static import/export statements probably simplify that in some way. However ESM destroys the isomorphism between JS modules and the filesystem.

One change that ES modules introduced, I think, for no other reason than to be backwards incompatible, is changing the behavior of the default export (`export default foo` transpiles down to `module.exports.default = foo` instead of `module.exports = foo`).

Other "ohai guys this is the new normal now" kinds of changes are making the dynamic imports async-only (after not supporting them for a while) as well as changing the behavior of module resolution.

And the cherry on top is called TS-ESNode: https://github.com/K-FOSS/TS-ESNode because TypeScript modules and ESM are the same thing yet you need to somehow find this third-party shim which is required for them to work together at all. It's enabled by wrapping the interpreter, just like Yarn2's new dependency resolution.

Your local machine should have Node.js and npm installed. Wrangler CLI requires a Node version of 16.13.0 or later to avoid permission issues.

For node version management, I highly recommend Volta (not affiliated) - https://volta.sh

Go to https://volta.sh and install Volta

Alternatively, a better way to manage Node.js releases on your machine is to use an environment management tool like Volta that can install and switch between multiple versions seamlessly.

To use TypeScript you need Node.js installed, be sure to use the latest LTS version. You can check it by running node -v in your terminal. If you don't have it installed, you can download it here, or use a version manager like asdf, nvm, or even volta.