I’ve managed several open source projects through their transition from CommonJS to ES modules and the least interesting part was the server-side of the equation. More often, the most exciting, and most excruciating aspect is wrangling TypeScript to emit browser friendly module paths. Anything short of relative paths everywhere won’t cut it, and TypeScript really doesn’t like to emit file extensions when TSX is involved.

There’s also some unsolved mysteries surrounding the path resolution defined by a package.json file, but at least there’s now a proper way to have a package use project root relative imports. Things usually go well until you get back to the browser, which now needs an Import Map to bridge the two worlds. I still haven’t figured out how to wean off NPM either since all the magic compiling CDNs use its namespace to create browser friendly bundles…sort of where we started from.

There’s a few foot guns on bundles now too, like deduping React so hooks work, along with some surprises about modules being stateful. And while Deno is pushing the dream forward, I can’t help but feel they compromised the vision too far for Node compatibility. At this rate, I could see Node v30 being a merge of the two projects.

I’m honestly happy it’s all coming along. It seems like this is JavaScript’s Python 3 moment, where everyone has to rewrite code to slightly new paradigm for the next generation of apps to fully appreciate. I’m most thankful for async imports operating like ordinary Promises!