(Most) everyone was already using bundlers at this point. Tree shaking was much easier to do after the dependency graph became computeable. Which it wasn't with

(Most) everyone was already using bundlers at this point. Tree shaking was much easier to do after the dependency graph became computeable. Which it wasn't with CJS; require could happen anywhere with any parameters. And require happening anywhere while being sync was kind of a non-starter. That freeze is amplified by most projects having hundreds of not thousands of requires across it's dependency graph. There's definitely some truth to your gripes. Back in 2015 there was a ton of latent hope http/2 push and ESM would let us get away from bundling & perhaps even needing build steps at all. That hasn't panned out. Indeed, push was removed entirely! https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/K3rYLvmQUBY/m/vOWBKZGoAQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/K3rYL... Except it's still the core backend for Push API. Alas, fetch, in spite of many years of asking for it, never got the ability to observe a Push request, so devs literally never had a chance to explore the possible content update/content discovery use cases that make so so much sense in Web Push Protocol. Crying waste & shame; Push had promise outside of asset delivery but it never got a chance (except the deeply browser-intermediated Push API). There are a variety of tools & options for bundlers to emit bundled esm. Which would nicely make your bundle usable by multiple different consumers.