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FWIW they did it[0]. Alameda is promise based AMD
[0]: https://github.com/requirejs/alameda
While I agree the dynamic nature of CommonJS would be problematic, there were successful projects around treeshaking commonjs[0] that worked really well.
I think dynamic imports have some of the same footguns here, to be honest. Can't deny ESM is easier to statically analyze though, that much appears to be true across the board based on available evidence.
[0]: https://github.com/indutny/webpack-common-shake
Your first point is absolutely spot-on but I am curious as to how much treeshaking was on the minds of masses at the time. The tooling of that era didn't really have any good support for tree shaking even for non-AMD includes and it was quite experimental tech (as in, I don't think it was a decision making factor for the majority of the tools on the scene).
The second point actually isn't strictly valid. I've written my own "all-in-one" async custom loader [0] that can require() CommonJS/AMD includes or regular "add a script tag" includes w/out any exports, all asynchronously, with asynchronous dependency trees for each async dependency in turn. You can define in the HTML source code a "source map" that maps each dependency name to a specific URL, so that you don't need knowledge of the filesystem tree to load dependencies.
Ideally, this source map can be generated via the tooling you use to compile the code (e.g. `tsc` is aware of the path to each dependency) but I haven't written my own tool to generate the require path to url map.
[0]: https://github.com/mqudsi/loader
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 `require`ing his code; he later locked the thread to prevent people from complaining. node-fetch released a pure ESM version a year ago that is 16x 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). 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...
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 `require`ing his code; he later locked the thread to prevent people from complaining. node-fetch released a pure ESM version a year ago that is 16x 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). 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...
> I think the biggest miss was not making mixed mode (default) for Node do it the way webpack/babel, etc did it by default in terms of interop. I get they wanted to make it more implicit to call cjs from esm, in the end it just inhibits conversion of existing libraries as dependencies are now a bigger hurdle.
Huge huge agreement.
I forget the specifics but there was some super tiny corner case around maybe default exports that could potentially create ambiguity & that spawned a multi-year bellyaching around doing anything at all for interop. What Node got was incredibly hard fought for against much resistance to interop.
But the final compromises made everything so much more painful for everyone. So many esm projects but oh look a .eslintrc.cjs, how unsurprising & sad.
It's extra maddening because node had a wonderful just works (except that tiny tiny tiny corner case) interop via @standard-things/esm, which seamlessly let the two worlds interop. It'd been around for years before node started shipping support, and it was no ceremony just works bidirectional interoperability, and it took basically no effort or thought from the developers point of view to use. It sucked seeing us walk back from great, mired by frivolous over concern for a obscure corner-case.
https://github.com/standard-things/esm
> You write this as if that mattered... Should he only works on stuff that gets more download?
It was a statement of fact. You appear to be drawing conclusions that were never hinted at nor implied. It's tiresome.
> It's normal to be sad to have lost someone that was working on something you needed, but anything else is just entitlement.
How and why are you applying entitlement and emotion to a documented statement of fact? Do you need to see links such as [1] to view that as fact? It's one of a myriad. Take your asinine analysis and commentary elsewhere, please.
[1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/meta/discussions/15