Agree that node/npm are the dumpster fire of JS, but ESM is still going through growing pains too. I have switched off of Node over to Deno. It natively supports ES modules. But most of the time I try to consume an ESM the code was designed to only load in a browser. It gets especially complicated if the ES module is using something like WASM - using FFMPEG via an ESM using WASM is the current use case I'm working on.