Browsers never required extensions, see https://unpkg.com/ https://unpkg.com/ You can load scripts in browser just fine without extension. > Now, that does no

Browsers never required extensions, see https://unpkg.com/ https://unpkg.com/ You can load scripts in browser just fine without extension. > Now, that does not work in TS because they adamantly refuse to modify any of the emitted JavaScript code at all, with no clear explanation except that it’s long-standing policy. Instead they expect you to import “foo.js” in TypeScript, even though that file doesn’t exist until after compilation. That’s a problem, and it seems like it’s caused by the TS team, not Node. I think they should provide a better explainer. But node.js resolution algorithms is already incredibly complicated, and adding path rewriting to typescript is not going to make it better. There are things like dynamic import and third part libraries. Typescript would need to either analyze whole of project node_modules or bundle custom runtime resolver like webpack breaking compact with deno and friends. Imagine situation: import lib from 'somelib/subpath' How TS would know that some lib have extension in subpath and it need to add/remove js ext? https://nodejs.org/api/packages.html#extensions-in-subpaths https://nodejs.org/api/packages.html#extensions-in-subpaths What if typescript is running in deno/bum or wasm? > Hmm, what is it that Node is doing that’s so bad? I don’t understand why that issue is a big problem. My conclusion is that successful projects without BDFL are prone to corporate takeovers. You have people that working in corporations without writing code and want to make political career as "core" team member of project.