+this ... AMD was just weird and clunky to use in practice... CJS bundlers were much easier to grasp by comparison, and when browserify (and those that followed) came out, it was kind of a no-brainer at the time. If ESM were finalized maybe even 2 years earlier, we'd probably be using that already for everything. I think the Node team choosing to make esm/cjs interop more difficult than what babel had been doing slowed down the switch. I get the reasons why, I just don't agree with the approach in the end. I think if they made the interop good, and declared after Node v#, it would be esm only, that would have worked out better for everyone. The risk being a kind of Python 2->3 paralysis. If the interop was good for a few versions, I don't think the friction would have been that bad. Then after 2-3 years, the switch could have been much cleaner.