This is not a talk about browsers, hence the readFileSync examples

The reason we got here in the first place was trying to standardize the language and its module loading. If you come up with a solution that doesn't work in browsers, we're back to the same thing. Instead of the `require()` polyfill, we'd need the `importSync` polyfill.

Nor do they have require(). That’s not the point.

And the fact that require() is non-standard is why we're talking about ESM now. Node can cook up another non-standard package loading thing whenever they want. It just won't be ESM. And if you don't care what browsers do, then we're not talking about ESM.