There are a few hiccups, but I've found ESM to be a huge win overall. The killer feature for me is the ability to write code that can be imported in a browser w

There are a few hiccups, but I've found ESM to be a huge win overall. The killer feature for me is the ability to write code that can be imported in a browser without any sort of build step. You don't even need node/npm. Just download the file/directory from somewhere and import. It's perfectly feasible to build a complex browser app with many dependencies using nothing but git submodules. The main thing you're missing out on is the optimizations that come with bundlers. But they should be treated as just that: optimizations. You shouldn't be required to use a bundler just to develop/distribute JS programs.