yosh

My take on ESM and the npm proposal isn't what you expect. [Thread]

The vast majority of developers don't have an opinion about the module syntax. They use whatever they use and are happy as long as it works.

In that context, breaks are unacceptable. But also, you have to reposition what the developer expectations are here, given that there aren't strong preferences and what they have is working just fine.

React people started using ESM cause React told them to. They expect this syntax, they don't expect the spec's semantics entirely because they are running through compilers anyway.

The problem is that this doesn't work in Node.js today, so Node.js is violating a growing expectation of the developer community.

However, nobody expects to use a new file extension, so the Node.js proposal is already out alignment with expectations. Being that these aren't strong preferences we should expect adoption to be minimal and existing workflows to continue.

The npm proposal turns ESM adoption into a breaking change, which is not what I or anyone would expect when adopting new syntax. Again, people don't really give a shit about module syntax, so why eat a breaking change?