Bait and switch tactics seem really common in the web space.
Web components were supposed to make it easier to share components between frameworks. But from what I can tell, this never fully materialized because the tools provided by web components are insufficient and people end up having to import additional libraries. Despite web components being around, most developers continue on with React and friends.
With ES modules cascading loads I think there was a lot of handwaving done by claiming you would eventually use HTTP2 to push the full asset graph to the client. Did that ever materialize? What tools support that? Generating this asset graph sure sounds like a build step, and since it's possible to have dynamic imports you also have to be prepared to handle those somehow.
Adding async support to CommonJS might've been easier than migrating to ES modules. I know that Webpack had support for that at some point, although it wasn't widely supported in other ecosystems.
A lot of interesting features of the module system are considered out of band and have barely been developed and explored, since it's not part of ECMA Script. Module import maps and the like are starting to get supported by browsers. Generating those probably requires a build step too.
Web components were supposed to make it easier to share components between frameworks. But from what I can tell, this never fully materialized because the tools provided by web components are insufficient and people end up having to import additional libraries. Despite web components being around, most developers continue on with React and friends.
With ES modules cascading loads I think there was a lot of handwaving done by claiming you would eventually use HTTP2 to push the full asset graph to the client. Did that ever materialize? What tools support that? Generating this asset graph sure sounds like a build step, and since it's possible to have dynamic imports you also have to be prepared to handle those somehow.
Adding async support to CommonJS might've been easier than migrating to ES modules. I know that Webpack had support for that at some point, although it wasn't widely supported in other ecosystems.
A lot of interesting features of the module system are considered out of band and have barely been developed and explored, since it's not part of ECMA Script. Module import maps and the like are starting to get supported by browsers. Generating those probably requires a build step too.