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I do have a question that's only tangibly related to fetch, I was wondering what Nodes stance is on the seemingly increasing gap between the NodeJS and browser

I do have a question that's only tangibly related to fetch, I was wondering what Nodes stance is on the seemingly increasing gap between the NodeJS and browser implementations of the JavaScript engine. It's still very common to see Node modules that use require(), for example, but would otherwise work flawlessly in a browser where there is no require() support (without using shims and other libraries).

inglor 5y ago
I don't speak for the project a whole :) Node has supported ESModules (`import`) for a while and you can use it (either by naming your files `.mjs` or setting `type: module` in your package.json. There is a solid interop story between require/import and you can mix if you want. `require` is going to be supported "forever" so code doesn't break and both module systems work. As for the general question: Node is committed to supporting modern JavaScript and to not allow such a gap to be created. If you see a place Node doesn't do a great job at that please tell us!
- arcatek 5y ago
  However note that ESM in Node comes with drawbacks that prevent end-users from relying them in various situations. Those will be mostly solved once loaders become stable, but until then it's still advised to ship packages as both CJS and ESM.
  - rattray 5y ago
    How do you do both?
    - inglor 5y ago
      It's very easy to re-export ESM (import) as CJS (require) and vice-versa. The main issue is that ESM by default For example to use `require` inside ESModules you would do: ```mjs import { createRequire } from 'module'; const require = createRequire(import.meta.url); require('./whatever-in-cjs'); ``` There is a reason this isn't "by default" though since ESM doesn't "silently" interop with CJS to not make writing universal code harder.
    - arcatek 5y ago
      Usually you setup a transpiler to target both. For example, my packages are bundled with rollup towards both cjs & esm: https://github.com/arcanis/clipanion/blob/master/rollup.config.js#L6-L17 https://github.com/arcanis/clipanion/blob/master/rollup.conf...
      - rattray 5y ago
        Helpful, thank you!
jeswin 5y ago
> I was wondering what Nodes stance is on the seemingly increasing gap between the NodeJS and browser implementations of the JavaScript engine. It's still very common to see Node modules that use require()... "Seemingly increasing gap" - how did you come to that conclusion? If anything the gap has reduced since the availability of ES modules. I see more and more libraries preferring ES modules, but ultimately that's up to the library developers.

inglor 5y ago

I don't speak for the project a whole :) Node has supported ESModules (`import`) for a while and you can use it (either by naming your files `.mjs` or setting `type: module` in your package.json. There is a solid interop story between require/import and you can mix if you want. `require` is going to be supported "forever" so code doesn't break and both module systems work. As for the general question: Node is committed to supporting modern JavaScript and to not allow such a gap to be created. If you see a place Node doesn't do a great job at that please tell us!

arcatek 5y ago
However note that ESM in Node comes with drawbacks that prevent end-users from relying them in various situations. Those will be mostly solved once loaders become stable, but until then it's still advised to ship packages as both CJS and ESM.
- rattray 5y ago
  How do you do both?
  - inglor 5y ago
    It's very easy to re-export ESM (import) as CJS (require) and vice-versa. The main issue is that ESM by default For example to use `require` inside ESModules you would do: ```mjs import { createRequire } from 'module'; const require = createRequire(import.meta.url); require('./whatever-in-cjs'); ``` There is a reason this isn't "by default" though since ESM doesn't "silently" interop with CJS to not make writing universal code harder.
  - arcatek 5y ago
    Usually you setup a transpiler to target both. For example, my packages are bundled with rollup towards both cjs & esm: https://github.com/arcanis/clipanion/blob/master/rollup.config.js#L6-L17 https://github.com/arcanis/clipanion/blob/master/rollup.conf...
    - rattray 5y ago
      Helpful, thank you!

jeswin 5y ago

> I was wondering what Nodes stance is on the seemingly increasing gap between the NodeJS and browser implementations of the JavaScript engine. It's still very common to see Node modules that use require()... "Seemingly increasing gap" - how did you come to that conclusion? If anything the gap has reduced since the availability of ES modules. I see more and more libraries preferring ES modules, but ultimately that's up to the library developers.