ES modules are terrible
> <i>And then people go "well you can statically analyze it better!", apparently not realizing that ESM doesn't actually change any of the JS semantics other than the import/export syntax, and that the import/export statements are equally analyzable as top-level require/module.exports.<p>...<p>"But in CommonJS you can use those elsewhere too, and that breaks static analyzers!", I hear you say. Well, yes, absolutely. But that is inherent in dynamic imports, which by the way, ESM also supports with its dynamic import() syntax. So it doesn't solve that either! Any static analyzer still needs to deal with the case of dynamic imports somehow - it's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.</i><p>I think while OP's right in theory, there is still a lot of difference between the two: ESM has dedicated syntax for static loading of modules and that syntax is strongly communicated to be the standard solution to use if you want to load a module. Yes, dynamic imports exist but they are sort of an exotic feature that you would only use in special situations.<p>In contrast, CommonJS imports are dynamic by default and only happen to be statically analysable if you remember to write all your imports at the beginning of the module. That's a convention that's enforced through nothing and is not part of the language or even of CommonJS.<p>As an exercise, try to write a static analyser that simply ignores dynamic imports and just outputs a dependency graph of your static imports - and compare how well this works with CommonJS vs ESM.